Publiacqua

Highlights

  • Drives 99.9%+ availability of core-business applications
  • Increases stability, reliability, and performance of mission-critical SAP landscape
  • Fosters innovation by delivering digital, mobile and self-service capabilities

Produkte

Providing over one million people with high-quality and readily available water is no easy task. Publiacqua aimed to offer mobile and online capabilities to its users, partners and customers, for even better services. To achieve this, the company migrated its SAP landscape to SAP HANA, running on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications. With boosted reliability, availability and performance, Publiacqua has launched mobile and digital services, paving the way for continuous innovation.

At-a-Glance

Established in 2002 and headquartered in Florence, Italy, Publiacqua employs 630 people and provides water supply services to a catchment area of 46 towns, serving over one million people.

Die Herausforderung

Managing extensive water supply networks, and delivering reliable sanitation to huge numbers of citizens, businesses and institutions placed increasing pressure on utility company Publiacqua, which must deliver vital services quickly and efficiently.

Publiacqua realized that the key to achieving this lay in technology, as Alessandro Neri, the company’s IT Manager, said: “Our IT department received more and more requests from our management, all aimed at enhancing how Publiacqua serves the community.

“We wanted to offer a new range of digital, mobile and self-service capabilities to our users, partners and customers, and aimed to seize the potential of the Internet of Things [IoT] and predictive maintenance. However, we faced technical hurdles.”

Publiacqua’s IT infrastructure was aging and inflexible, and hindered the company’s ability to innovate. Alessandro Neri said: “Many of our core processes were manual and spreadsheet-based, and performance and reliability were lacking.

“Our technicians had to sift through stacks of paperwork when in the field, potentially delaying checks or repairs to our water supply. Similarly, our partners needed to come to our offices in person to deliver documents each time we called a tender, which was very time-consuming. Likewise, our customers could only pay bills by heading to a branch, which sometimes meant traveling long distances and queueing for hours.”

“Our partnership with SUSE gave us the impetus to propel our business into the future, with digital tools that revolutionize the way we provide services to users, partners and customers.”

SUSE Lösung

The heart of Publiacqua’s business relies on a comprehensive suite of SAP applications, including SAP ERP and SAP Business Suite.

Alessandro Neri said: “To supercharge the power of our SAP landscape and support our business transformation, we looked for a best-in-class solution. After reviewing several options, we were impressed by SAP HANA, and aimed to determine the best operating system to complete our new environment.

“SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications immediately stood out: it offers the reliability, performance and efficiency we required to support our SAP world and sustain daily business operations—with a vision of continuous innovation.”

Publiacqua worked with SUSE Business Partner Tai Software Solution to implement SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications. The system is configured to deliver the ideal support for SAP solutions—including SAP HANA. Regular updates and enhanced releases further boost the support for SAP applications.

Publiacqua also harnesses SUSE Manager as part of its new environment, as Alessandro Neri said: “SUSE Manager helps us to centralize systems maintenance by acting as a single point of control for patch, report, access level, and configuration management.”

Die Ergebnisse

With the SUSE solution, Publiacqua has peace of mind that its business-critical SAP landscape is always running at maximum speed and performance. Taking advantage of the high efficiency and availability of its SAP applications, the utility can now launch innovative digital services that benefit users, suppliers and customers.

Alessandro Neri said: “Whenever the business calls, we answer. Publiacqua’s management requested innovative services to foster innovation, so we provided the right technology to meet this requirement.

“SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications was instrumental in achieving this, and allowed us to demonstrate the invaluable support that our IT team can provide to the whole business. We are all on the same page now, working towards one shared vision: to drive innovation across the company.”

Publiacqua now enjoys 99.9%+ availability of its SAP applications, and has fully digitized and centralized operations that were manual, slow and fragmented, such as the management of its partners’ network.

Similarly, employees now enjoy mobile capabilities, enabling them to carry out crucial work—repairs, investigations and more—whilst in the field. C-level executives are harnessing the power of IoT and predictive maintenance to enhance decision-making.

Finally, Publiacqua has launched a mobile app to save customers the hassle of visiting a branch: “From booking a spot in the queue at their local office, to paying bills on-the-go, our mobile app is used by increasing numbers of customers who leave enthusiastic feedback,” Alessandro Neri said.

“Our partnership with SUSE gave us the impetus to propel our business into the future, with digital tools that revolutionize the way we provide services to users, partners and customers.”