AN AMBITIOUS TIMELINE FOR THE MIGRATION

“Having already had very good experiences with AWS as a data center extension in Germany, the complete migration of a data center to the cloud was the next logical step for Festo”, says Marcus Fetzer, Head of IT Cloud Management and project manager at Festo SE. 

The challenge: an ambitious timeline. The date for the migration was set at the start of the project in the first quarter of the year; however, there was significant additional time pressure because the old leases were going to expire at the end of the year. A migration procedure had to be coordinated for all applications in cooperation with the respective application managers, and suitable infrastructure resources had to be provided. Critical infrastructure services, such as payroll accounting, access control, and Internet telephony could not be affected by the migration under any circumstances. On-site resources were also extremely limited, as internal IT Specialists had to take care of the technical setup of the on-site office. 

SMOOTH DIGITAL MOVE WITH AMAZON WEB SERVICES

With AWS as a cloud service provider, Festo gained a lot of positive experiences regarding classic cloud services. This played a major role in ensuring that the digital move went smoothly. 

AWS EC2 as the basis for virtualized Windows and Linux instances provided application managers with a familiar environment on which to deploy their services. The golden images set up by Festo IT already contained all standard software, including the necessary configuration, so that new instances were available quickly and in the familiar configuration.

With AWS RDS, another proven and low-maintenance service is available to relieve database administrators of routine activities with managed databases and allow application managers to use a standardized environment. In addition, the inclusion of automated maintenance for updates and backups in the existing backup solution extended the Festo concept. 

The extensive use of resource tagging within AWS greatly facilitated the allocation to internal cost centers. This allowed costs to be allocated on a percentage basis. 

AWS is currently present in 22 geographic regions which is beneficial for internationally operating companies and was also a positive factor for this project. The international presence of AWS meant that colleagues from Festo in Canada were able to access both a test and productive environment for their newly developed internal training system on short notice and with proven tools.

CLEARING THE WAY FOR FURTHER PROJECTS

After the start of the project, all applications were examined during an assessment phase in collaboration with the Cloud Specialists at Zoi to determine their suitability for the cloud. This helped to answer questions such as: Are there any special technical requirements, such as latency times, that must not be exceeded? Are there complex dependencies between applications that need to be taken into account during migration? Are there licensing or special legal obligations? These questions and other requirements were reviewed and evaluated using a cloud decision tree to determine the right pathways.

The results led to a migration strategy for the applications. Using a joint, cross-team approach, the experts for Windows, Linux, databases, backup, and network developed the operating concept for the migration strategy which reflects the standard procedures at Festo in detail and explains the new range of applications in a comprehensible manner. 

The migration and international expansion of our cloud usage help us standardize and consolidate across locations. Synchronous control, absolute transparency, and cost reduction – these were just a few reasons for using AWS.

We are proud that all applications were successfully migrated and that there were no disruptions to ongoing operations. The cooperation with Zoi was also extremely professional. The teams involved convinced us with their know-how and the individual implementation of our requirements for the move.

The Cloud Transformation process proved to be very successful.

“Migrating the existing applications while simultaneously setting up the new site was a demanding task that required our full attention. In addition to making the workflow and implementation much easier, the professional provision of Festo IT services based on Amazon Web Services and the expertise of Zoi were a tremendous support for my colleagues and me”, says Jonathan Cohen, BRM and responsible for overseeing IT Infrastructure at Festo Corporation USA. 

Clear the way because Festo SE is now transferring the successful process to other locations. Next up, the Cloud Transformation project is looking at a site in Asia.

To enable the provision of cloud services directly by Festo employees, the company is also working on an automation solution. The goal is to enable the cloud resource and its provision in a matter of minutes along with the correct, subsequent cost allocation. 

As part of the digital customer journey, fields such as predictive maintenance are also an exciting topic for the world's leading supplier of automation technology. The volumes of data generated by big data and its automatic processing require a platform that can be provided in the cloud as a matter of course. The transformation of the existing system landscape should be embedded in a cloud infrastructure that is flexible and scalable. Staying in line with the cloud first principle, every application at Festo will be checked for its feasibility using cloud services. 

ABOUT FESTO

Festo is both a global player and an independent family-owned company based in Esslingen am Neckar, Germany. The company supplies pneumatic and electric automation technology to 300,000 customers in over 35 industries and more than 175 countries. The group's turnover is 3.07 billion euros – generated by companies based in 61 countries.