Partnering to manage business-critical cloud applications
Solvay is an advanced materials and specialty chemicals company committed to developing chemistry that addresses key societal challenges. The company is headquartered in Brussels, Belgium, with around 24,500 employees in 62 countries, realizing over €10 billion in revenue in 2019. Solvay has selected Rappit as a global partner to support, maintain, and improve all of its apps on the Google Cloud Platform. Resulting in a high-quality, future-proof application landscape served at a lower integral cost.
Their challenges
- Cloud applications are strategic for Solvay to continue to innovate with quality. With the increase of projects within Solvay, the company decided to industrialize application development based on the Google Cloud Platform.
- Solvay already developed many tailor-made, business-critical applications on the Google Cloud Platform in HRM, purchasing, sustainable development, and security. An example of an application is Solvay’s HRM appraisal, compensation, and development app used by all its 24,500 employees. The app is available in ten different languages.
- The applications span various innovative technologies such as big data, the internet of things, and machine learning capabilities.
- Applications were built and maintained by different vendors and teams across Solvay’s businesses. Each application was maintained differently, and the industry’s best practices around quality assurance (such as continuous integration / continuous delivery, and automated testing) were not followed.
Our solutions
- Establish a partnership with one highly experienced vendor for maintenance of all Google Cloud-based applications.
- Application maintenance consists of corrective maintenance, preventive maintenance, perfective maintenance,
evolutive maintenance (enhancements), and defining test cases for key scenarios. Integrations from the applications to back-end systems like SAP ERP and Ariba and using Managed SOLR on Google Cloud Platform are in the scope of the maintenance
provided.
- Additionally, apart from maintenance, periodic new enhancements and evolutions are also taken up by the Rappit team.
- After an extensive selection process, Rappit was selected as a global strategic partner.
- The Rappit team will also advise on architectural improvement across the applications and offer recommendations for
cost optimization and security improvements.
Results
- Higher quality: one vendor maintains all apps through a customizable maintenance plan. Adoption of industry best practices
(CI/CD, test automation) for software development. +50% increase in user satisfaction. - Flexibility: leveraging Solvay’s existing processes allows for speed in the onboarding process, support activities, and addressing the needs of IT and businesses. 100% on plan.
- Future-proof apps: not just app maintenance but also enhancement, so that apps are future-proof and enabled e.g. IoT applications.
- Lower integral cost: up to 50% cost reduction in cloud consumption by optimizing the Google Cloud Platform.
Enabling 10x scale up of cloud projects
A short clip from the interview with Jennifer Vink and Li-Lian Tan Tellier from Solvay explaining the cloud transformation journey of Solvay with the use of the cutting-edge technology of Google Cloud, with the help of Rappit.
Solvay
Solvay is a global leader in advanced materials and specialty chemicals, committed to developing chemistry that addresses key societal challenges. Innovation is a vital part of the company’s DNA and has been connecting people and scientific minds for 156 years. Headquartered in Brussels and employs over 24,500 employees in 62 countries.
Solvay’s products are used in planes, cars, batteries, smart and medical devices, and in mineral and oil and gas extraction, enhancing efficiency and sustainability. Its lightweight materials promote cleaner mobility, its formulations optimize resource use, and its performance chemicals improve air and water quality. Founded in 1863, Solvay today ranks among the world’s top three companies for the vast majority of its activities and delivered net sales of over €10 billion in 2019. Solvay is listed on Euronext Brussels (SOLB) and Paris and in the United States, where its shares (SOLVY) are traded through a Level I ADR program.