DNOW’s SAP Modernization Journey

DNOW is a supplier of energy and industrial products and packaged, engineered process and production equipment with a legacy of over 160 years. Headquartered in Houston, Texas, with approximately 2,575 employees and a network of locations, DNOW offers a broad set of supply chain solutions combined with a suite of digital offerings branded as DigitalNOW® that provide customers access to highly complementary digital commerce, data and information management channels. Their locations provide products and solutions to exploration and production, midstream transmission and storage companies, refineries, chemical companies, utilities, mining, municipal water, manufacturers, engineering and construction as well as companies operating in the decarbonization, energy evolution and renewables end markets.

Business Situation

An established Protera customer for SAP BASIS support, DNOW was running SAP ECC in a private cloud and established the long-term goal of fully modernizing their SAP landscape to S/4. DNOW’s business was not ready for a rip and replace approach, instead engaging long-term partner Protera to support a phased approach to SAP modernization. The strategy compartmentalizes the project into a cloud migration, RISE migration, and finally an upgrade to S/4—all accompanied by ongoing managed services from Protera.

Migration to GCP

DNOW had SAP workloads across numerous data centers globally and needed to consolidate and optimize—to reduce both cost and landscape complexity. In 2020-21, Protera migrated the workloads to GCP, including network and security enhancements and a HANA database upgrade. As a result, DNOW realized cloud infrastructure cost savings and improvements in overall performance and scalability.

“We migrated the entire SAP platform of eight SAP products to Google Cloud, consolidating multiple data centers, and upgraded our database on HANA. Protera worked closely with Google to architect the solution including implementation, project execution, and deadline management so that we could deliver the system as quickly as possible.”

— Calvin Leong, Vice President of IT, DNOW

Modernize with RISE

The next phase of the SAP transformation was to transition the SAP workloads on GCP to RISE with SAP. Moving to RISE before upgrading to S/4 allows DNOW to segment technical and functional upgrades for tighter project control. Protera architected the RISE landscape and executed the project seamlessly—ahead of schedule and with zero user disruptions.

DNOW credits the success to Protera’s expertise in RISE with SAP migrations, careful pre-migration planning, rigorous project management, and our responsive team—quickly addressing issues and delivering solutions, not excuses. Protera closely collaborated with DNOW and SAP to provide project transparency and resolve techno-functional issues.

“It was a great go-live—the project finished ahead of schedule and was one of the best projects I’ve been on, well run and organized.  The team knew their jobs really well and had DNOW’s best interest at heart.” – Deidre Johnstone, Director Information Systems

Ongoing Managed Services

Throughout DNOW’s SAP evolution, Protera has delivered enterprise cloud services and ongoing stewardship of the SAP landscape. These services ensure that DNOW’s SAP and cloud investments are proactively monitored and optimized for performance and value.

• SAP BASIS Support
• 24x 7 Cloud Management with monitoring, alerting and 24x7 service desk
• FinOps
• OS Administration
• Data Backup & Recovery
• Security & Compliance
• ITIL Process Management

“With SAP running on the Google Cloud and with Protera’s support, we have peace of mind that our systems will run 24-hours a day, every day of the year. This also gives us greater confidence in our release management schedule from testing through to production.” – Calvin Leong, Vice President of IT

Business Outcomes

Increased Productivity

Migrating to GCP improved DNOW’s infrastructure’s performance, resulting in significant productivity enhancements, such as 4-5x improvement in month-end SAO batch processing

Fast-Track the Transformation

Because of the long-term partnership and ongoing cloud managed services, Protera is able to rapidly and expertly architect DNOW’s SAP landscapes—customized to their specific needs and use cases.

Cost Optimization

DNOW has been able to move from a capital-intensive infrastructure model to cloud-based services, with a standard fixed fee. Protera layers on our FinOps services—including a detailed monthly report with actuals, anomalies, and recommendations—to effectively manage cloud spend.

Roadmap Innovation

Based on the success of the projects, DNOW continues to work with Protera on identifying strategies to maximize their SAP investments, such as transitioning off Netweaver to web dispatchers and investigating how SAP’s emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and machine-learning can be integrated into the landscape.

Working with Protera, DNOW has successfully progressed their SAP modernization roadmap. The company is able to shift the focus from infrastructure management to innovation for customers, while providing a stable and scalable platform for future growth.