ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½

When it comes to success, innovation and adjustment is a necessity even for some of the most prominent businesses in the world. Coca-Cola Bottlers Japan Inc. (CCBJI) is one of the world’s largest bottlers of Coca-Cola products and represents 90% of its parent company’s business in Japan. This involves the operation of around 700,000 vending machines, 340,000 outlets, 17 plants, and 11,000 trucks that distribute one of the most popular beverages to 125 million people. While such scale represents a remarkable achievement, it also presented the organization with substantial challenges.

Extensive operations of this sort resulted in incredible data-related demands. And while CCBJI was managing a massive, classical SAP datacenter environment of over 2,500 TB, the company wanted new capabilities that required a different approach to data management. In order to reduce downtime, improve its backup and disaster recovery processes, lower costs, and enable additional innovations such as the introduction of business intelligence (BI) and AI, CCBJI would need a new data platform. In reviewing its future goals, the company concluded that it would be best served by a migration to the cloud.

“We rely on data to run our business, to serve customers with products they want when and where they want them – it’s extremely important that data is stable and available in a timely manner to place big bets on product development and sustainability.”

Maki-Kado, Executive Officer and Chief Business Management & Sustainability Officer CCBJI

However, such a project would require the transition of a tremendous amount of data and had to avoid impacting the business during this process. In addition, CCBJI determined that it wanted to perform the migration within a six-month timeline to properly support its agenda. Such a substantial undertaking would require extensive expertise if it were to succeed, which led the company to engage ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ as its partner to perform a comprehensive data migration from a traditional datacenter to the Microsoft Azure platform.

Collaboration enables accelerated migration

In order to meet the tight deadline, ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ rapidly deployed a quick response team that was on the ground in Japan within weeks. This group of experts then coordinated with CCBJI stakeholders as well as teams from Microsoft and NetApp to plan out an executive a migration that would occur side-by-side with day-to-day business.

The partners began their collaboration with a series of workshops that focused on reviewing the bottling company’s existing SAP data systems and processes as well as its objectives. Moreover, the project team examined the specific challenges brought on by the need to work and migrate at pace and without any disruption to standard operations.

Based on this review, the partners then developed a mutually agreed-upon plan that would leverage Microsoft Azure technology and Azure NetApp Files to move 114 business-critical applications to the cloud system. Experts from all four organizations came together to manage and support a unified initiative that saw the project proceed at the pace needed to meet the timeline established by CCBJI. In doing so, the project team delivered a solution that provided the storage infrastructure and high-quality performance that would enable the bottling company to obtain greater insights from its data and pursue new innovations.

“ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½, Microsoft, and NetApp each brough unique visions, capabilities and value propositions of having done this before – allowing us the flexibility and performance required to run our entire IT enterprise for the next 3 to 5 years.”

Harsh Kachhwaha, CIO CCBJI

A transition for the future

Following a rapid, high-intensity project, CCBJI, ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½, Microsoft, and NetApp completed a smooth migration that saw the bottler’s SAP data landscape migrated to the Azure cloud platform within five months. With this futureproof solution, the company saw its working speed and application response time improve by 30% while the time required for backing up the data fell by 50%. In addition, CCBJI gained access to a multi-tier backup approach that ensured the preservation of key data in the event of major disruptions and natural disasters.

With the successful migration of over 2,500 TB of data as well as 250 additional servers and virtual machines, the bottling company is also better prepared for the future. The Azure platform is better prepared to support the implementation of BI and AI solutions, enabling further innovation that will continue to improve the quality and speed of CCBJI’s services, which have already drastically accelerated as a result of the migration. This ensures that when the company takes additional action in the future, it will be able to rely on a stable technology and a reliable database.

With a lower cost of ownership and faster services, CCBJI is now better positioned than ever to support its customers at the right time, right place, and with the right product.