Challenge

Our customer is India’s largest pigment manufacturer and a global leader in creating innovative pigment products for industries such as coatings, plastics, inks, cosmetics, and personal care. With a legacy spanning over 70 years, the company has grown its footprint to include subsidiaries in the US, Europe, Mexico, Japan, and China, selling its products in more than 85 countries. Headquartered in Pune, India, the company has two manufacturing facilities, a dedicated R&D center, and a network of regional offices and warehouses across the country.

The impressive growth of the company caused mounting challenges with its IT infrastructure. The company had been relying on SAP ERP since 2000, updating the platform regularly to keep pace with technological advancements. However, as the business expanded and became increasingly global, the limitations of the legacy system became evident. The infrastructure struggled to scale with the company’s growing operational complexity, rising customer expectations, and the need for real-time insights into global sales and profitability.

Recognizing the need for a transformative approach, Sudarshan embarked on a comprehensive business process re-engineering (BPR) exercise in 2019. The exercise resulted in a coherent blueprint for modernizing the company’s IT infrastructure to support its ambitious growth plans while optimizing costs.

The company turned to its long-time technology partner, Unique Solutions, to implement this digital transformation. We had already earned the company's trust through its deep technical expertise, seamless project execution, and unwavering commitment to delivering best-in-class solutions. Together, we devised a two-phase strategy to modernize the pigment manufacturer’s IT environment.

Solution

The first phase of the transformation focused on migrating the company’s legacy SAP ERP system to SAP HANA. This migration addressed many of the challenges identified during the BPR process, enabling the company to track key performance indicators in real time and improve decision-making across its operations.

In the second phase, the company adopted the HPE GreenLake hybrid cloud platform to transform its broader IT infrastructure. The HPE GreenLake platform emerged as the ideal choice for several reasons. First, it offered a pay-as-you-go model that provided full cost transparency, eliminating the need for upfront capital expenditures and avoiding the costs associated with over-provisioning. Second, it allowed the pigment manufacturer to maintain control over its data, avoiding the steep egress charges often imposed by public cloud providers. Third, the platform delivered highly predictable performance for predictable workloads, ensuring that the company’s mission-critical operations were not disrupted.

The solution was built on a robust foundation of HPE ProLiant servers, with VMware software providing advanced virtualization capabilities. HPE SimpliVity was integrated for backup and disaster recovery, while HPE StoreOnce ensured efficient data protection. This comprehensive infrastructure not only addressed the company’s current needs but also provided the flexibility to scale and adapt as the company continued to grow.

Outcome

Today, the customer’s IT environment is lean, scalable, and equipped to handle the demands of a growing global business. The HPE GreenLake platform has enabled the company to transform its operations one application at a time, delivering improved performance, enhanced data security, and greater process automation.

The success of the HPE GreenLake implementation has reinforced our customer’s position as a leader in its industry. By aligning its IT infrastructure with its business goals, the company is now better equipped to meet customer expectations, navigate market challenges, and drive innovation. As the company continues to grow, the HPE GreenLake platform and Unique Solutions will remain a cornerstone of its digital transformation journey, providing the agility, performance, and scalability needed to stay ahead in a competitive global market.