Real-Time SAP Insight, Zero Downtime: Migros’ Journey to SAP Operational Excellence

Migros, Switzerland’s largest supermarket chain and retail group, faced the challenge of managing one of the most intricate SAP landscapes in the country. With over 125 SAP systems running across 120 Unix and 230 Windows® servers — supporting more than 13,000 users — the SAP Basis Services team needed a way to control costs, prevent outages, and simplify operations in a rapidly expanding environment.

They chose Avantra, the intelligent observability and automation platform purpose-built for SAP landscapes.

The Challenge: Complexity Beyond Control

By 2007, Migros’ SAP environment had evolved into a patchwork of monitoring tools and manual processes. The Basis team faced a growing list of operational hurdles:

• Multiple cobbled-together systems with no unified monitoring view
• Mixed technology landscape with no single tool to manage it
• Lack of early warning for performance or stability issues — problems detected too late
• Increasing administrative effort as the SAP landscape expanded

This complexity drove escalating costs, longer response times, and increased risk of critical SAP production failures. Migros needed a single, automated platform to centralize monitoring, standardize operations, and cut the manual workload.

The Solution: Centralized Observability and Proactive Automation

Migros’ SAP Basis Services team formed a task force to evaluate monitoring solutions. After testing five products, only two met their performance and reliability requirements. In a head-to-head trial, Avantra emerged as the clear winner.

With Avantra, Migros achieved:

• Centralized SAP monitoring across all systems — both HANA and legacy
• Customizable checks to address specific operational needs
• Real-time alerts via dashboard, SMS, and email to prevent downtime
• Automation for repetitive tasks like daily system checks and system copy post- processing
• Rapid onboarding of new systems into the monitoring process

The Impact: From Reactive to Preventive SAP Operations

With Avantra, Migros shifted from firefighting to forward planning:

• Up to 20 days saved on patch installation processes
• Server updates reduced from hours to 1–2 hours
• System copy post-processing cut from 3 hours to 3 minutes
• Onboarding a new system into monitoring reduced from half a day to 30 minutes
• Monitoring release updates deployed in less than a day (previously 2 months)
• Continuous monitoring of 120+ SAP HANA systems

The platform’s stability improvements helped Migros avoid two potentially business- critical outages. Automation freed the Basis team to focus on strategic initiatives, while a smaller database footprint and cleaner interfaces reduced infrastructure costs.

The Takeaway: Operational Efficiency at Scale

What began as a search for a unified monitoring solution became a transformation of Migros’ SAP operations. Avantra’s intelligent automation and real-time observability enabled Migros to efficiently manage a complex, hybrid SAP environment — without increasing headcount.

Today, Migros operates with greater confidence, lower costs, and the assurance that critical issues will be addressed before they escalate.

At a Glance

Challenges

• Disparate, hard-to-monitor systems
• No early warning system for critical issues
• High manual workload for SAP Basis team

Benefits with Avantra

• Unified monitoring for 125 SAP systems
• Real-time alerting and automated responses
• Significant time savings across patching, system copies, and updates
• Prevention of major production system outages