Fender Chooses Lemongrass to Lead its SAP-to-Cloud Growth Initiative

By STS News Desk On Jan 12, 2022

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Leading Global Guitar Brand Moves SAP Systems to AWS As Growth Demand for Physical and Digital Products and Services Surges

Lemongrass, the “SAP in the Cloud” company, announces the completion of a project to migrate Fender Musical Instruments Corporation (FMIC) to Amazon Web Services (AWS) and the ongoing management of FMIC’s SAP landscape in the cloud.

Since 1946, Fender has revolutionized music and culture as one of the world’s leading musical instrument manufacturers, marketers and distributors. FMIC, whose portfolio of owned and licensed brands includes Fender®, Squier®, Gretsch® guitars, Jackson®, EVH®, Charvel®, Bigsby® and PreSonus®, follows a player-centric approach to crafting the highest quality instruments and digital experiences across genres. Since 2015, Fender’s digital arm has introduced a new eco-system of products and interactive experiences to accompany players at every stage of their musical journey. This includes innovative apps and learning platforms designed to complement Fender guitars, amplifiers, effects pedals, accessories and pro audio gear and inspire players through an immersive musical experience.

Demand for FMIC’s physical and digital products and services has been steadily growing in recent years with a massive surge the past two years as the industry welcomed nearly 16 million new players in the U.S. alone. However, the SAP systems and the hardware on which they were running required additional support to accommodate the company’s growth. Some systems, including aged hardware, had limitations and required updates, making ongoing change and maintenance challenging for the business.

In 2020, FMIC made the decision to upgrade its SAP systems to the latest version of SAP ERP Central Component, re-platform the application to SAP Suite on HANA, and move it to AWS. Doing so would improve its reliability, while allowing for greater scalability, security, flexibility and innovation. FMIC selected Lemongrass to lead the initiative.

Lemongrass is a leader in the planning, migration, operation and innovation of SAP in the cloud. It’s been an AWS Premier Consulting Partner for over a decade and has 6,000+ SAP servers and 300,000+ users under management. Lemongrass regularly helps clients overcome constrained infrastructure and technical debt. Its work with FMIC would be a two-step process that would allow FMIC to continue operating its SAP systems while at the same time Lemongrass would be migrating them to AWS. Lemongrass ran multiple practice runs to ensure that the downtime could confidently fit into the allowed window. The project was a success, and Lemongrass is now handling the ongoing management of FMIC’s systems.

“We chose Lemongrass due to the company’s wealth of experience and proven track record migrating and running SAP on AWS,” said Michael Spandau, CIO at FMIC. “Straight away we noticed how much faster everything runs on AWS, which is allowing our business users to get through their work more quickly and efficiently. In the future, we will look to connect our SAP data to broader initiatives to drive insight and further value to the business.”

“Working with FMIC has been terrific,” said Eamonn O’Neill, co-founder and chief customer officer at Lemongrass. “It’s a first-class organization from the top down. The IT organization truly understands how the cloud not only improves the performance of SAP but creates opportunities for innovation, too. Lemongrass is honored to have been selected to handle the migration and management of FMIC’s SAP systems on AWS. We look forward to a long and mutually beneficial partnership between our companies.”

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