Founded in 1997, Fora supports approximately 235,000 employers and 4.5 million blue-collar workers in Sweden with navigating their collectively agreed pension and insurance solutions. It is owned jointly by The Swedish Trade Union Confederation and The Confederation of Swedish Enterprise.
At-a-Glance
Fora helps over 235,000 companies and their employees navigate their collectively agreed pension and insurance solutions. Before Fora engaged with SUSE, workers could reinvest their pensions only once a year. By deploying SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications and SUSE Multi-Linux Manager on Microsoft Azure, Fora established the strong foundation to transform its processes to offer more flexibility and better yields on pension premiums, as well as continuing to provide customers with a high-quality, secure service.
The journey to SUSE
Almost half the population of Sweden relies on Fora to help them organize their pensions and work insurance. Each pension holder and contributor expects to receive efficient, reliable and convenient service.
Always looking for new ways to build on its strong reputation for excellence and innovation, Fora saw an opportunity to transform its services by offering blue-collar pension holders the ability to reinvest their pensions on a monthly, rather than an annual basis, just as white-collar pension holders have already been doing at Fora’s sister organization Collectum. This would give the pension holders an equal opportunity to benefit from greater future returns by providing more granular control over their pension funds. At the same time, Fora aimed to make it easier for employers to perform mandatory reporting to bodies such as the Swedish Tax Authority by enabling a standardized process and aligning the reporting schedules for both pensions and insurance schemes.
To achieve these goals, Fora needed to transition from annual to monthly payroll data collection: a move that would increase already high transaction volumes and add significant pressure to its on-premises IT systems. In addition, the organization’s existing SAP CRM application lacked the ability to process large data sets in-memory, which created a further roadblock for Fora’s ambition to process key data faster and at a larger scale.
“Employers, workers and unions are all dependent on Fora—so the high availability provided by SLES for SAP Applications is crucial for keeping our operations going.”
Why SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications?
To gain headroom for larger volumes of transactions, Fora decided to adopt the SAP HANA in-memory database and SAP Fioneer. Upgrading its on-premises IT environment and managing the migration in-house was deemed too costly, risky and time-consuming for Fora’s lean IT team. To reduce costs and simplify IT management, Fora enlisted the support of Accenture to drive its adoption of SAP Fioneer and migrate the company’s existing SAP applications to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications (SLES for SAP) running on the Microsoft Azure cloud.
“We wanted to find the best environment for running SAP Fioneer solution in the cloud,” explains Christoffer Eile, CIO at Fora. “SLES for SAP Applications came highly recommended by Accenture, and we really valued the deep and long-standing partnership between SAP and SUSE. With SUSE, SAP and Accenture, we knew we would be in safe hands.”
Why SUSE Multi-Linux Manager?
To ensure optimal performance of its SAP solutions (including SAP HANA, SAP Fioneer and SAP for Insurance), Accenture recommended that Fora manage patching and other important maintenance processes with SUSE Multi-Linux Manager.
“With transaction volumes only set to increase and our instances of SUSE and SAP environments expected to grow in tandem, any steps we can take to simplify IT management go a long way,” says Eile. “We selected SUSE Multi-Linux Manager on the recommendation of Accenture, but also because it was very intuitive to use and offers a broad range of powerful tools.”
The impact of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications
Enables seamless cloud migration
When Fora brought in Accenture as a strategic partner, it had a 24-month deadline to implement monthly reporting. Therefore, it was important for the chosen OS platform to integrate smoothly with SAP and Azure to reduce obstacles. With SLES for SAP Applications designed in collaboration with SAP and optimized for deployment on-premises and in the cloud, the joint team felt that it was the most reliable and secure platform for achieving a minimum viable product in time.
With the transformation completed, blue-collar pension holders can now reinvest their premiums 12 times a year, giving them more control over their funds.
Delivers high availability
SLES for SAP Applications includes the SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability component, which enables application-aware automated failover for SAP systems. This allows Fora to ensure always-on SAP applications for business-critical work and, in turn, delivers reliable services to customers.
Eile explains: “Employers, workers and unions are all dependent on Fora—so the high availability provided by SLES for SAP Applications is crucial for keeping our operations going.”
The impact of SUSE Multi-Linux Manager
Improves IT management and enhances security
Fora’s SAP landscape includes a large number of virtual Linux servers to support the development, testing and production instances of multiple SAP components. SUSE Multi-Linux Manager simplifies the provisioning, patching and configuration of these Linux instances for faster, more consistent deployments and greater security. Technical support teams have more time to work on value-add tasks, while keeping key systems protected from cyber threats without increasing management overhead.
Eile adds: “Being responsible for managing information about the incomes of a large proportion of Swedish workers means that we must be very strict about cybersecurity. SUSE Multi-Linux Manager is an excellent complement to other measures we already had in place, helping keep our systems robust and ensuring we never miss a critical upgrade or patch.”
What’s next for Fora?
In the coming months, Fora will explore expanding the automation of IT management tasks such as server hardening with SUSE Multi-Linux Manager and expanding its use of SUSE solutions across its IT estate and newly acquired environments.
Eile concludes: “We look forward to continuing our work with Accenture and SUSE in the years ahead. Having already achieved such a dramatic change for our pension holders, I have confidence that we will continue improving and building a fairer society for workers.”