A state-owned entity, Water Corporation maintains a vast network of more than 52,000 km of pipeline, delivering water, wastewater and drainage services to a region spanning roughly 2.6 million km2. And to keep that critical resource flowing to its millions of customers, the organization relies heavily on its entrenched SAP architecture.
“SAP is the core—the beating heart, if you will—of our corporate systems,” explains Steve Elliott, Head of IT Services at Water Corporation. “It touches many aspects of our operation across the entire enterprise. We couldn’t manage our pipelines, we couldn’t track our finances, we couldn’t keep the water running without it.”
Unfortunately, the collection of on-premises servers that Water Corporation had used to support its SAP infrastructure was nearing its end of life and needed updating. But purchasing more hardware didn’t seem like the right solution.
“Sustainability is a priority for us,” notes Steve. “We have a commitment to reach net zero by 2035, and we’ve used that commitment to influence our recently enacted Evergreen IT strategy. We want to move our systems forward responsibly, so there are really two key architectural principles that we’re embracing as we set off on this Evergreen journey. Number one: we’re employing a cloud-first approach for our back-office services. Number two: we reuse before we buy, and we buy before we build.”