Amazon Web Service Study Case

Mikatasa Migrates On-Premise Ms.
Dynamics AX to AWS Cloud

About the Client
PT. Mikatasa Agung was established in 1976 and dedicated its resources to add more values into costumers live by providing high quality adhesives and paints that have been widely sought after in the market. Mikatasa has delivered the best adhesive and coating products for more than 40 years. With decades of experience and deep understanding, Mikatasa becomes the only adhesive and coatings company with a prominent position in B2B and B2C market. Growing rapidly, Mikatasa has become one of the biggest distribution networks with access more than 15,000 outlets in Indonesia and beyond.

Executive Summary

Since it was founded in 1976, Mikatasa has dedicated its resources to add more values into customers lives by providing high quality adhesives and paints that have been widely sought after in the market. The first product was Chloroprene Rubber adhesive, which was soon followed by Polyvinyl Acetate adhesives, whose brand, Rajawali, is now a market leader in Indonesia. For more than 40 years Mikatasa has been striving to deliver the best quality products to improve the home experience. Mikatasa’s adhesives and coatings have been used and permeate everyday lives.

Mikatasa previously used on-premise ERP (Microsoft Dynamics AX) since 2015. But their existing servers are about to reach full capacity and starting to have performance issue during month-end closing. Therefore, they consider migrating all the workload into AWS to improve their agility and scalability.

The Challenge

On-premise application, as we know, frequently issuing some problems when it comes to the more increasing workload. Horizontal scaling is not easily doable. Mikatasa had been struggling for years confronting with electricity issue and UPS in their own private data center, or even just adding more RAM capacity could spent for months waiting for the hardware availability. They understand, wasting the time solving this kind of technical issue is not a good thing. So moving to the cloud environment is not a choice anymore for them. It is a must.

Mikatasa previously used on-premise ERP (Microsoft Dynamics AX) since 2015. But their existing servers are about to reach full capacity and starting to have performance issue during month-end closing. Therefore, they consider migrating all the workload into AWS to improve their agility and scalability.But still, dealing with the desktop based application and make it cloud-friendly accessible needs little bit tricky way. Because we can’t just easily deploy the application to the cloud environment and access it via browser or whatever client apps. The application itself is not designed for it.

Why AWS

Facing those kind of problems forced their IT department to find the right cloud solution service provider which can provide all their requirements and of course solving their challenges. And also, Mikatasa already has a roadmap for further enhance their current ERP (it involves the capability to use ML for analytical reports), hence the needs for High Availability and tools to support that future roadmap become even greater. After several of discussions, researches, and following some seminars (and webinars as well), they’ve found AWS as the cloud platform that enables enterprises to migrate to the cloud in a seamless fashion. It enables companies to run software programs without installing them on computers, to store and access multimedia content via the internet, to develop and test programs without necessarily having servers and so on. And finally after comparing to some competitors, they decided to use AWS as their first choice.

Why the Customer Choose the Partner

The right cloud provider had been decided. Then what? Since AWS is the complete solution for migrating the traditional on-premise system to be “all in the cloud”, they have so many things provided there include infrastructures, tools, and services to support all customer needs. Mikatasa needed the right suggestion about what tools or services to use, and how to implement their system in the cloud environment from AWS Partner. Especially the partner who has knowledge about the system they use (Ms. Dynamic AX) as well. That’s when KANO and AWS came in as a solution. As a trusted AWS business and technology partner, KANO has been proven to offer tremendous benefits to business organizations and empower client to cope with future problem. KANO as AWS cloud computing’s partner enables enterprise to simplify migration planning.

Partner Solution

Given the chance to do POC, KANO came with the perfect fit solution. It tackled down all the challenges with the optimal sizing calculation. Below is AWS workload architecture that currently used by Mikatasa in their production stage.

Results and Benefits

Running Ms. Dynamics AX on AWS cloud gives Mikatasa many benefits. Now it’s been 4 months and counting since they moved the system to the cloud with no downtime at all. It also increases their employee performance since they don’t have to be in office (and connected to their local network) to access the system and do their operational daily routines. They just need to connect to the VPN Server in the cloud, login to the application, and do everything like usual. Nothing feels different, even though their current system is getting more robust now. They’re happy with it, and start imagining if they find this kind of solution since some years back.