Candy fans around the world love the Trolli brand. Trolli’s creative gummy candies such as the popular apple rings, sour glow worms and sweet Trolli burgers are available in more than 100 countries.
Willy Mederer laid the foundation for this success in 1948 when he started a confectionery business in Fürth, Bavaria. Today, the Mederer Group, with its brands Trolli, efrutti and Herbert’s Best, is a third-generation family-owned company with international operations.
The Mederer Group employs over 2,300 people in Germany, Spain, France, the United Kingdom, China and the United States. In recent years, the group has grown significantly faster than the market. It now generates 70% of its revenue outside of Germany.
At-a-Glance
The Mederer Group, manufacturer of the popular Trolli gummy candies, modernized its SAP landscape with SUSE and the managed service provider TakeASP. All SAP S/4HANA applications and SAP HANA databases now run on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP applications in TakeASP’s private cloud. Together, TakeASP and SUSE provide the Mederer Group with a secure, high-performance and scalable platform that supports future growth and helps standardize global business processes.
Standardizing Global Operations with SAP S/4HANA
The Mederer Group has built its success on a spirit of innovation and a willingness to experiment. At the same time, the company focuses strongly on quality, efficient processes and operational excellence. The company manufactures its gummy candies in state-of-the-art production facilities and invests heavily in digital technologies and process automation.
As the Mederer Group continued to expand internationally, it needed to standardize business processes and IT systems across its global operations. To support this effort, the company decided to implement SAP S/4HANA as a unified, modern foundation for future growth.
“Many locations and business units have long operated their own systems to manage their internal processes,” explains Alexander Eckert, Head of IT International at the Mederer Group. “With SAP S/4HANA, we wanted to simplify global collaboration. Our goal was to become a company with a single source of truth.”
The Mederer Group had first adopted SAP following an acquisition and gradually rolled out the platform across additional locations. As the number of SAP systems increased, the company entrusted the operation of the underlying infrastructure to a large IT service provider. “However, the outsourcing arrangement was relatively costly and inflexible,” says Eckert. “We often had to wait a long time for necessary adjustments or for urgent requests to be resolved.”
With an eye toward the upcoming implementation of SAP S/4HANA, the Mederer Group wanted its SAP outsourcing to be more agile. “We were looking for a service provider who could bring more speed and transparency to day-to-day operations. At the same time, we needed a partner to actively guide us through the transformation process,” says Eckert.
In TakeASP, the Mederer Group finally found an SAP service provider that could meet these requirements. The Würzburg-based company specializes in SAP Basis and infrastructure services. It offers flexible operations support for both SAP and non-SAP environments. TakeASP can run its managed systems on-premises at the customer’s site, in its own secure cloud infrastructure in Frankfurt or in the SAP Cloud.
“From the very beginning, TakeASP gave us the confidence that we could work together as true partners,” says Eckert. “The combination of high technical expertise and personalized support from dedicated contacts convinced us.”
“With SUSE’s tools, it takes us only about eight hours to implement a three-tier SAP infrastructure with development, test and production systems. SUSE’s automated workflows save us at least 50% of the work and ensure a consistent configuration across all systems.”
Nico Probst
Member of the Executive Board for Sales and Administration
TakeASP AG
Why SUSE solutions?
TakeASP consistently relies on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP applications to operate SAP environments for its customers.
"The SUSE platform has proven itself in numerous projects and enables us to deliver critical SAP applications with high performance, availability and security," explains Nico Probst, Member of the Executive Board for Sales and Administration at TakeASP. "In particular, SUSE's optimizations for SAP HANA databases offer us and our customers tremendous added value. We also appreciate SUSE’s long support cycles, which give companies a great deal of flexibility when planning updates and migrations.”
TakeASP’s technical specialists are thoroughly familiar with the capabilities of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP applications. They leverage SUSE’s best practices and the included tools, such as saptune, to optimally prepare systems for running business-critical SAP workloads.
TakeASP uses SUSE Multi-Linux Manager to simplify daily operations. It allows administrators to manage different customer environments via a central interface and automate deployments and updates. The team also relies on SUSE Multi-Linux Manager for internal IT systems running other Linux distributions, enabling it to seamlessly manage mixed-Linux environments from a single console.
As a SUSE Managed Service Provider (MSP), TakeASP receives direct technical support and a wide range of training offerings from SUSE. The company regularly exchanges insights with its contacts at SUSE regarding new technologies, service models and infrastructure topics. SUSE’s flexible MSP licensing helps TakeASP create customized managed services for its customers. It also gives TakeASP a simple way to bill customers for the SUSE solutions they use on a pay-as-you-go basis.
“SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP applications was also an important factor for us in TakeASP’s overall package,” emphasizes Eckert. “We wanted to use an operating system that is certified by SAP and recommended for all workloads. SAP and SUSE have been working together as partners for many years. Therefore, we can rely on the technologies from both vendors to work well together.”
TakeASP assumed responsibility for running the Mederer Group’s existing SAP workloads on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP applications. At the same time, the managed service provider began building the new SAP S/4HANA infrastructure in its private cloud.
After extensive testing and preparation, the Mederer Group’s new SAP S/4HANA environment went live. “The transition to SAP S/4HANA is an enormous transformation process, especially at the organizational level,” says Eckert. “That’s why it was so important for us to make the technological transition as smooth as possible. We needed to have a stable and reliable foundation for running the new applications right from the start.”
The impact of SUSE solutions
Accelerates SAP transformation through efficient infrastructure management
SUSE enabled TakeASP to rapidly build the infrastructure for the Mederer Group’s new SAP landscape. The service provider used SUSE Multi-Linux Manager to deploy the required system resources in the TakeASP cloud. The tool’s automated provisioning and preconfigured templates for SAP workloads significantly simplified the Mederer Group’s transition to SAP S/4HANA.
“With SUSE’s tools, it takes us only about eight hours to implement a three-tier SAP infrastructure with development, test and production systems,” explains Probst. “SUSE’s automated workflows save us at least 50% of the work and ensure a consistent configuration across all systems.”
As a result, the Mederer Group benefits from a highly scalable infrastructure and stable operations. TakeASP leverages SUSE Multi-Linux Manager to stage and test updates in development environments first, ensuring zero business disruption before automated deployment to production.
“With SUSE and TakeASP, we don’t have to worry about the security and availability of our SAP infrastructure,” says Eckert. “Instead, we can focus entirely on business-related topics such as streamlining processes and implementing new workflows with SAP S/4HANA.”
Optimizes system performance for SAP HANA workloads
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP applications also helped Mederer Group employees work efficiently with the new SAP applications from the start. With saptune, SUSE provides a tuning tool that automatically optimizes the operating system for SAP S/4HANA’s requirements. It sets the recommended parameters for different system components, thereby creating a platform optimized for SAP workloads.
Workload Memory Protection in SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP applications ensures that SAP applications always have the necessary memory resources. The technology prioritizes critical workloads and protects them from memory pressure caused by other processes.
“Memory management is the decisive factor for the overall performance of SAP HANA databases,” explains Probst. “SUSE helps us make optimal use of existing resources and process even complex queries and data-intensive workflows in real time.”
Provides end-to-end visibility across the SAP infrastructure
SUSE and TakeASP have made the entire SAP operation significantly more transparent for the Mederer Group. “The previous outsourcing model was essentially a black box for us,” says Eckert. “We didn’t know which operating system our SAP applications were running on, nor did we have insight into the status of the individual systems. Thanks to SUSE and TakeASP, we now have the visibility needed to make informed decisions about our SAP operations.”
With SUSE Multi-Linux Manager, the TakeASP team has a centralized overview of all Mederer Group systems. The team can view patch levels, software versions and configuration details in one place. As a result, TakeASP could establish uniform operational standards across the entire SAP landscape and simplify maintenance planning. At the same time, the TakeASP team is able to identify and resolve potential issues early.
SUSE Multi-Linux Manager also allows TakeASP to document all relevant system information and share it with the customer. The integrated reporting features support compliance with regulatory requirements. "With the SUSE platform, we can demonstrate that we have applied the latest security patches across all systems and that security settings comply with SAP recommendations," says Probst.
What’s next for Trolli and the Mederer Group?
Following the SAP S/4HANA go-live, the Mederer Group will continue transforming its SAP landscape. The project team will connect additional international sites to the environment in the coming months. The goal is to harmonize processes across all locations and thereby lay the foundation for further growth.
Going forward, the Mederer Group continues to rely on close collaboration with TakeASP. “TakeASP has long been more than just a traditional service provider to us,” emphasizes Eckert. “The team has become an extension of our own team and will also support us on future projects.”
TakeASP is currently preparing to migrate the Mederer Group to the latest version 16 of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP applications. Additionally, the project partners are evaluating other SUSE technologies. "SUSE Virtualization could be interesting to us in the future," says Eckert. "When the time comes to replace our current virtualization solution, we will certainly take a closer look at SUSE's cloud native virtualization platform."