RHI Magnesita

Customer & challenge

RHI Magnesita is the leading global supplier of highgrade refractory products, systems and solutions which are critical for high-temperature processes
exceeding 1,200°C in a wide range of industries, including steel, cement, non-ferrous metals and glass. Our purpose is to master heat, enabling global
industries to build sustainable modern life. With a vertically integrated value chain, from raw materials to refractory products and full performance-based solutions, RHI Magnesita serves customers around the world, with around 12,000 employees in 28 main production sites and more than 70 sales offices. Read more at: www.rhimagnesita.com.

In order to react faster and more effectively to customer inquiries as well as changing market demands, RHI Magnesita implements a digitization strategy based on Microsoft Azure. For internal processes, SAP systems are primarily used. The challenge was to find a way of connecting these two worlds. Specifically, the refractory products manufacturer needed a way to transfer data reliably and automatically from several SAP systems to
Microsoft Azure. It was not just a question of transferring standard SAP tables, but also of integrating SAP DataSources with Microsoft Azure.

“We strive to optimally utilize the solutions offered by Microsoft and SAP. Theobald Software has proven to be a great partner by providing the possibility to integrate even large amounts of SAP data into Microsoft Azure in a fully automated and reliable way.”
Thomas Fröhlich, Head of Data Platform, RHI Magnesita

Solution with Xtract Universal

The company decided in favor of Xtract Universal on the basis of a cost-benefit analysis and in light of its previous experience using interfaces by Theobald Software. Thomas Fröhlich, Head of Data Platform at RHI Magnesita, noted: “As part of a proof-of-concept, we tried to transfer data using the standard Microsoft tools. In principle, this approach worked, but not as efficiently as with Xtract Universal from Theobald Software. And the idea of mirroring to Microsoft Azure on a transactional level using replication software also did not convince us.“ Going live was a very straightforward process, and RHI Magnesita was able to do this in just a few hours. The business process data is extracted from RHI Magnesita’s SAP systems using Xtract Universal and written as a Parquet file to Azure Storage Accounts. The data is loaded onto the Azure platform for reporting purposes, while RHI Magnesita can use Power BI and native Excel as the front end. Thomas Fröhlich entered into more intensive discussions with Theobald Software because of RHI Magnesita’s desire to automate and standardize all of its data extraction processes. Xtract Universal offers a range of options, but the refractories company longed for more features. “The software development team at Theobald Software was very flexible and developed additional features upon our request to help Xtract Universal become even more scriptable. We can now perform hundreds of data extractions fully automated.“