Case Study | Medline

Medline Industries’ Complex Migration to Azure: Zero Downtime, Zero Disruptions, Zero Critical Events Post-Migration

Case Study | Medline

Medline Industries’ Complex Migration to Azure: Zero Downtime, Zero Disruptions, Zero Critical Events Post-Migration

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This wasn’t a simple, single SAP migration—it was a highly complex project involving thousands of servers and hundreds of applications. Protera proved to be an excellent listener throughout, ensuring that everyone understood their roles, responsibilities, and objectives. The coordination was outstanding, and from an execution standpoint, it doesn’t get much better than that.
 
- Jason Kaley, SVP IT Operations & Architecture at Medline Industries 
18

Month Migration

0

Critical Events Post-Migration  

80
%

Improvement in key SAP workload transaction times

(Internal Measurement)

 

medline

 

Amid rising tariffs and an increasingly complex regulatory landscape, the healthcare industry faces unprecedented pressures. Medline—a $25+ billion leader in medical-surgical supply manufacturing and distribution with a portfolio of more than 335,000 products—helps providers meet these challenges head-on. With a global supply chain built for resilience, Medline supports healthcare facilities and providers by helping ensure they have the supplies they need.

Challenge

As Medline has continued to grow, its leaders recognized that the company’s large and complex SAP environment—spanning 27 landscapes and 86 systems—could face performance challenges that affected user experience, from slow transaction processing to poor database response times. Beyond SAP, the company also manages approximately 1,200 non-SAP workloads that would benefit from improved performance and greater resiliency.

Medline realized refreshing their on-premises environment meant they’d eventually come up against scalability limitations and performance degradation issues. Those factors—and a significant estimated cost associated with a full on-premises overhaul—sent the team looking into more flexible and future-proof alternatives for their SAP and non-SAP workloads in the cloud. 

  • High maintenance costs and degraded performance at on-premise data center prompted Medline to investigate an Azure cloud solution 
  • Required expert SAP on Azure migration specialists to architect the highly complex landscape of ~1,600 servers by selecting the optimal Azure VM series for each workload 
  • Business needed a modern infrastructure to provide the security and scalability needed to support future growth and handle increased workloads 

Protera Solution  

Protera analyzed the landscapes and developed a migration strategy in two workstreams:  SAP and non-SAP. With an 18-month migration timeline, Protera developed a phased approach that included proof-of-concept, performance testing, and an application and database readiness assessment.   

Protera’s cloud migration team created a detailed, step-by-step migration playbook that included network design to minimize latency, and incorporated high availability and disaster recovery. 

Protera architected a best-in-class SAP ERP on HANA deployment in Azure, harnessing the potential of Azure's new Intel-powered Mv3 series for high memory and superior performance. With a combination of white-glove service, our custom migration modules—ProDiscovery and ProMigrate—and end-to-end automation (Terraform and Ansible), the journey to the cloud was efficient, cost-effective, and aligned with Medline’s strategic business goals. 

  • Deployed one of the largest Intel 32 TB SAP HANA-certified VMs on Azure (M-series Mv2 & M3). Medline was one of the first in the industry to deploy this new technology.
  • Leveraging Azure NetApp Files, Medline unlocked enterprise-grade storage performance, enhanced data protection, and simplified management across their Azure infrastructure, ensuring both scalability and resilience for mission-critical SAP workloads.
  • Utilized a combination of Microsoft and SAP technologies including Azure Migrate, HANA system replication, and Oracle RMAN. Terraform and Ansible leveraged for landing zone, server builds, configuration, and system replication. 
  • Developed automation for Virtual Machine Scale Sets (VMSS) for auto-scaling SAP application servers   
  • Enabled Multi-Site HANA System replication, including on-prem copy-back for various business needs.   
  • Executed the project within the prescribed migration timeframe, with zero business disruption. 

Outcomes 

Through rigorous project planning, iterative mock runs to validate the efficacy of the migration approach, and a multi-tier replication setup, Protera completed the migration of ~1,600 systems in an 18-month project, with separate workstreams for SAP and non-SAP. Performance testing post-migration showed an 80% improvement in key SAP workload transaction times.

  • Top 4 Business Transactions – Average Response Times 58.75% faster 
  • 99.99% uptime achieved with real-time failover and log shipping with minimal performance impact  
  • Implemented Zonal HA/DR, providing near zero RTO/RPO, with multi-node HANA cluster using Availability Zones & STONITH fencing for cluster failover. 
  • Seamless failover across regions with no business disruption.
  • No data loss observed during migration (<5 min failover time).

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This was far from a typical vendor–client relationship. From the start, both teams recognized each other’s strengths and leaned on one another’s expertise. Protera contributed deep SAP knowledge, and experience navigating the Microsoft channel, while Medline brought an intimate understanding of our business model, requirements, and internal considerations to ensure success.
 
- Marshall Lancaster, CIO at Medline Industries  

Future-Ready 

The Azure migration, led by Protera, provides Medline with an Azure footprint optimized for scalability, standardization, performance, and security. The new platform removes the risk of end-of-life hardware from IT planning and delivers a target platform for mission-critical enterprise workloads, such as SAP Applications, to meet next generation requirements such as Mpower™, Medline’s integrated, AI-enabled supply chain platform that allows healthcare providers to automate workflows and leverage predictive analytics to mitigate supply chain disruptions.

Summing up the impact of Medline’s move into the cloud, Kaley reflects, “The migration wasn’t just a technical success but also a strategic move that set the stage for innovation.” He concludes, “It’s allowed us to improve agility, and support AI and data-driven initiatives like Mpower™ to push supply chain management forward.”

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