Microsoft Azure Case Study

Comprehensive management of agricultural output with SAP solutions run on Microsoft Azure.

Summary “This was a strategic decision. By using Microsoft Azure Region: LatinAmerica as a platform for our computer center we were able to Industry: guarantee the continuity of our business and keep pace

Client profile with the company’s growth from the IT department.” Agribusiness company developing grain Cesar Oliveira, IT Corporate Director. products for and exploitation based on , corn, cotton, and sunflower.

Initial situation The end of the technical support contract for the servers at the company’s own datacenter was drawing to a close and the El Tejar, a company dedicated to intensive farming, migrated its company needed to ensure the continuity entire datacenter to Microsoft Azure. The project included 60 of the business. servers, including those used for the full installation of SAP, which Solution was one of the largest-ever implementations of its kind in the The computer center migrated to Microsoft Azure. agricultural sector. The new set-up offers the flexibility and access needed to keep pace with a dynamic and demanding business Benefits  This was the largest complete managing over 100,000 hectares of different crops, using farming- implementation of SAP solutions run on specific applications which are fully integrated with the tax and Microsoft Azure in the agribusiness sector at world level. governmental authorities . The company is now able to provide its  Operational flexibility. operations with comprehensive support, no easy task as they are  Cost equation oriented towards profitability. spread out over a broad geographic area, present a high degree of  Availability and access to applications complexity and are often far-removed from urban centers. and services from different places.  Integratio of third party applications.

“One of the key reasons Situation Solution underlying the decision El Tejar is an Argentine crop farming concern Following the succesful implementation of concerned the speed with over 20 years’ activity in the agricultural the corporate contingency response system, commodities market. It grows and markets El Tejar decided to migrate its entire with which we planned soybean, corn, cotton, wheat and sunflower datacenter, involving 60 servers. to Microsoft and carried out the crops at regional level. El Tejar its own Azure. land and strives to meet strict sustainable “This was a strategic decision. By using migration. In just five farming criteria. The company currently runs Microsoft Azure as a platform for our over 100,000 hectares. months, we had moved computer center, we were able to guarantee 60 servers into the The company’s production model is based on the continuity of our business and keep pace the organization of integrated agricultural with the company’s growth from the IT cloud, including several centers hosting a number of activities, in department,” says Oliveira. Gastón Cosma, business-specific addition to sowing and crop-growing, such as from the Wezen Group, the Microsoft partner harvesting, storage, research and with expertise in Azure and responsible for applications and the full development facilities. El Tejar also has its overseeing this migration plan, adds that installation of SAP as own machinery workshops and in some “One of the key reasons underlying the locations runs its own electricity plants. decision concerned the speed with which we our management planned and carried out the migration. In just The location of these centers and the five months, we had moved 60 servers into system.” numbers of people involved prompted the the cloud, including several business-specific company to establish complete communities Gastón Cosma, Wezen Group. applications and the full installation of SAP where their staff and workers live with as our management system.” their families. The communities also have their own schools and there are recreational El Tejar is one of a mere handful of and cultural activities. agricultural companies in the world which run their operations using SAP. “We have 17 “Our operating processes are quite complex. servers which run the full version of this Some of our farming units are in extremely application with all its modules (Finance, remote areas and each one involves handling Controlling, HR, Sales & Dist., Materials a broad spectrum of variables that are Management, Project System, Plant constantly changing,” says Bernabé Muro, Maintenance, Quality Management, the company’s Comptroller. Production Planning and Control, Task and “We have been using SAP in our integrated Resource Management). We had excellent management system for a long time. references about the SAP cloud-based However, when we saw that we were nearing solution and, given the particular features of the end of the maintenance contract for the our business which is spread out over a wide HP servers at our Datacenter, we considered area and the connectivity throughout all our the possibility of migrating to a cloud-based sites, we decided to set everything up on structure, given the characteristics of our Microsoft Azure and use it in this business,” adds Cesar Oliveira, IT Corporate environment. We understood that this would Director at El Tejar. provide us with the capabilities, flexibility and support we need, which is highly reassuring,” explains Oliveira. SAP has been streamlined to operate on Azure and the implementation carried out by El Tejar includes the areas of production, research and QA.

For further information A particular feature of interest is that the Another singular aspect of this company’s organization’s Active Directory also runs on operations is that each farming unit not only To find out more about Microsoft the same platform in the cloud. The Directory deals with issues related to agribusiness, but products and services, visit: supports the identity check and security also handles matters pertaining to the www.microsoft.com/argentina system and was recently synchronized with communities of employees and their families.

For further details on El Tejar, the implementation of Office 365. It also It uses the same infrastructure system to visit: www.eltejar.com contains specific applications designed to manage eating arrangements, schools, and monitor the performance of agricultural any other basic necessities which may arise For information on the Wezen machinery, crop cycles, a geoinformation in these small populations. Group, visit: system to manage “precision farming”, a www.wezengroup.com business intelligence application, another designed to manage technical support, Benefits software developed to help with calculating taxes, duties and tariffs and another to “Microsoft Azure has given us the ideal manage and handle the issue of solution to upgrade our datacenter, phytosanitary certification; applications improving reliability and flexibility, which has containing SAP manuals and instructions, increased our efficiency all round. It is others for process management and without doubt a huge achievement to have , and a software program moved 60 servers with a full SAP solution in developed to provide a virtual classroom and barely 5 months, due as much to the features online training on demand for personnel. “We of this platform as to the technological were also working under time pressures for partners who helped us, Agile and, in two reasons: on the one hand, the end of the particular, Wezen,” summarizes Oliveira. support and maintenance contract for the Senior management has the information it servers, and on the other, the start of harvest needs at any time to assess the company’s time. We had a very narrow window of time in situation and performance at a glance from which to get everything done, and thanks to any location. the Wezen Group, we managed to pull it off,” explains the Corporate Director of IT. Another “Now that our datacenter is fully lodged on major contribution was made by SAP expert Microsoft Azure, we have achieved optimum firm Agile, which helped to get the system up integration and a high level of efficiency, and running in the new environment. despite the geographical dispersion of our operational sites. We manage over 100,000 “Each fully loaded truck must be weighed hectares and six different crops with different before leaving the field and the yield times and needs, ranging from R&D to corresponding invoice must be filled out harvest and sales. We are working in a highly immediately. We are connected directly to challenging market and it is thus extremely the local tax authorities at each location and reassuring to know that Microsoft is behind are thus able to make the relevant payments our systems infrastructure,” concludes the on the spot. We’ve successfully linked the businessman. applications included in the process on Azure to each organism involved,” says Cosma. Many of El Tejar’s processes are automated,

This success story is published exclusively for lending the organization even greater the purposes of information. MICROSOFT OFFERS NO GUARANTEES, WHETHER EXPLICIT dynamism. OR IMPLICT IN THIS DOCUMENT.

Published in January 2015. .