Contract manufacturer for the pharmaceutical and healthcare industry
Customer & challenge
The customer is a global contract manufacturer and development service provider for the pharmaceutical and healthcare industry. Its service portfolio includes the development, production and packaging of pharmaceuticals and dietary supplements.
As part of its cloud strategy, the contract manufacturer planned to replace its existing data warehouse reporting system based on QlikView with a modern cloud storage solution. The data was to be kept in Azure Data Lake Storage for later processing with Microsoft Power BI. In its move to the cloud, the company is using Microsoft components such as Azure Data Factory. However, the data integration service is incompatible with some of the company’s SAP systems due to a fragmented system environment resulting from multiple takeovers. An alternative solution was needed to transfer the SAP data to Azure from two legacy systems.
“Without Xtract Universal, it would have been impossible for us to transfer data from SAP legacy systems to the Azure cloud reliably and in line with compliance rules.”
Company Project manager
Solution with Xtract Universal
After evaluating the performance, security and compliance aspects of ten different methods for transferring the SAP data, the pharmaceutical company decided on Xtract Universal. “Xtract Universal uses the standard mechanisms for access to the SAP systems. For example, all SAP accesses are logged. That helps to ensure that we meet all of our company’s compliance requirements,” said a representative of the company’s data and analytics division.
“Theobald Software also assured us that we can access the data in our SAP systems with the interface and that they would provide support.”
Challenge
Transferring data from SAP legacy systems to
Azure Data Lake Storage
Added value
Convenient access to SAP data that meets
company’s compliance rules
Delivery and installation of the free trial version went smoothly. The company spent two months thoroughly testing Xtract Universal.
“With very good, professional service from Theobald Software,” added the responsible project manager. The data flows via Xtract Universal into Azure Data Lake Storage, which serves as a central data hub. Users at all of the company’s sites can then run reports off the data with Microsoft Power BI.
By using Xtract Universal, the pharmaceutical company is able to transfer valuable SAP data from legacy systems to the cloud for analytics and reporting. Azure Data Factory would not have been able to retrieve this data. Xtract Universal is extremely easy to use, so the data warehouse
project team can autonomously control which data are extracted when – without having to draw on the SAP team’s resources.
