Wacom and NTT DATA Recognized as Technology Leaders at GSA UK’s Annual Award Ceremony

On March 25th, The Global Sourcing Association awarded Wacom and NTT DATA as the winners in its Technology Enabled Project of the Year category. For 18 years, The GSA Awards have recognized and celebrated companies and collaborations that have demonstrated best practices in Strategic Sourcing. This year’s winners were also recognized for their superior, transformative response(s) to pandemic-related challenges.

Wacom and NTT DATA were selected based on the successful Microsoft Azure cloud migration for Wacom, a Japanese manufacturer with over 100 employees and global leader in pen displays and tablets for creative users. They successfully delivered a rapid and strategic cloud migration of Wacom’s mission-critical sales and accounting systems, delivered on the SAP ECC EHP7 Platform, in alignment with their SAP HANA roadmap and hosted on-premises in both Japan and the United States. The teams successfully navigated added complexity as the solution was successfully deployed amid the COVID-19 pandemic, which required all employees to work 100% remotely.

It starts with the right roadmap
The project’s scope demanded several issues be successfully addressed, including:

• Cost reduction,
• The ability for IT resources to better focus on core initiatives,
• Superior SLA delivery,
• Simplified and virtual management,
• Quick VM deployment, and
• Advanced IT security measures, including a cutting-edge risk mitigation solution.

The solution was delivered through a PM3 project methodology, which includes four phases―discovery, design, build and execution―that carefully consider each client’s existing business processes, infrastructure and applications. NTT DATA included professionals from its SAP and Microsoft Azure practices to collaborate with Wacom’s IT organization. With best-practice guidance from Microsoft and its own Azure professionals, NTT DATA architected a sandbox-tested comprehensive roadmap to ensure all features and integrations were ready for deployment.

Managed from the UK and delivered by cloud professionals in Romania, India and the United States, NTT DATA focused on Wacom’s Japan-based instances before addressing those in the United States. This process enabled NTT DATA’s experienced cloud engineers to greatly minimize complexities by separating and working on regions with varied time zones. As a result, the implementation was significantly accelerated in the United States by calling on experiences and challenges they faced and addressed when migrating Wacom’s Japan-based instances.

It ends with the perfect solution
Wacom now enjoys a restructured, global SAP solution that has allowed it to immediately take advantage of the advanced technology. It is now benefiting from a highly scalable solution that delivers enhanced stability, advanced security and simplified management.

Also, Wacom was able to apply a chargeback that provides a valuable reinvestment in its platform, reducing both OPEX and CAPEX. It will enjoy payback in two years and see a 41.5% ROI by year five. All 30 Windows servers and SQL database instances were rehosted to Azure, without any impact to the business and during a global pandemic that required all work to be done remotely. Most important, the migration was fully tested and deployed well ahead of Wacom’s critically important Christmas retail season.

“NTT DATA played a leading role in Wacom’s journey to the cloud with the design and migration of our ERP system to Azure,” said Pavan Kesapragada, Wacom’s Senior Director, Global ERP Applications. “Working in partnership they have been fully engaged from the outset, taking ownership for the architectural design, defining the migration approach, and executing the migration … Getting all this done remotely, across multiple time zones, during the global pandemic is a significant undertaking and deserves significant accolades; the NTT DATA team did a fantastic job from start to finish.”

Learn more about NTT DATA’s Microsoft Azure Cloud Migration practice.