RHI Magnesita: Completing a cloud transformation in 13 months without business disruption
A benchmark for transformation in the refractory sector
To stay ahead of changing customer needs and remain flexible in a dynamic market environment, RHI Magnesita, the global leader in refractories, launched a major IT initiative. As a first step, the company successfully transferred its entire SAP system landscape to an SAP Cloud ERP Private solution. In partnership with SAP Services and Support, the company successfully completed this complex migration with no downtime, laying the foundation for future business process optimizations as part of the RISE with SAP journey.
| Industry | Region | Company Size | Partner |
| Industrial manufacturing | Vienna, Austria | >20,000 employees | Atos SE |
single systems successfully migrated to the cloud.
of unplanned downtime during the migration.
project duration.
Head of Global IT Operations, RHI Magnesita
Maximizing value for customers by modernizing business operations
As a global leader in refractories, RHI Magnesita combines technological innovation with environmental and social responsibility to deliver high-grade products that withstand extreme temperatures of 1,200°C and beyond. Its products are used globally in a wide range of sectors, including steel, cement, nonferrous metals, and glass. With a vertically integrated value chain, from raw materials to refractory products and full performance-based solutions, RHI Magnesita serves customers around the world. The company’s operations include 68 main production sites and recycling facilities, 12 raw material sites, and more than 70 sales offices.
RHI Magnesita has built a path to success through its commitment to research and development, operating five R&D hubs and centers worldwide. The annual investment in R&D activities tops €83 million, with the company continuously raising the bar for innovation. Likewise, automation and digitalization are strategic priorities. They help it keep pace with changing customer demands and prepare its business operations for the future by increasing competitiveness, reducing operating costs, and developing new ways of maximizing value for customers.
Keeping up with customer demands through data-driven decision-making
To meet its goals, RHI Magnesita initiated a digital transformation program to rebuild its business process landscape on advanced ERP in the private cloud integrated into a sophisticated technology environment. Through this ambitious multiyear program, the company intends to standardize and automate processes across its global operations, enabling data-driven decision-making from end to end.
A critical early phase of the project required migrating its on-premises business landscape to SAP Cloud ERP Private capabilities using a brownfield model.
With the scope of the migration covering 36 systems across 12 system landscapes and a tight project schedule of just 13 months, RHI Magnesita opted for the RISE with SAP journey. After assembling an internal team of specialists, which was extended by experts from SAP, Atos SE, and other partners, the company chose professional services offerings from SAP Services and Support to lead the brownfield migration. With this team, RHI Magnesita could rely on guidance and proven expertise to orchestrate a “lift-and-shift” approach to move its core on-premises applications to its new cloud environment on Amazon Web Services.
The data extraction and migration tasks were split between SAP and Atos, with a range of services used to execute the technical migrations to the private cloud overseen by the SAP Enterprise Cloud Services team. The team included data migration experts from Romania, enterprise architects from Germany and Austria, and project management expertise from Austria.
Strengthening its position as a refractory partner of choice
By putting its trust in SAP Services and Support to execute the lift-and-shift migration to SAP Cloud ERP Private through RISE with SAP, RHI Magnesita minimized downtime and avoided business disruption. All 36 systems across the 12 landscapes were successfully migrated on schedule without impacting business continuity.
RHI Magnesita completed the migration of productive systems within the designated 36 hours of planned downtime, with stable cutovers and consistent performance and availability facilitating operational continuity and robust security and compliance. In transferring the business environment to the private cloud, RHI Magnesita can now keep pace with the ongoing migration to SAP S/4HANA.
The project laid the technology foundation for the company’s largest digital transformation by providing a more flexible, secure, and scalable operating environment in the cloud and the tools and resources to modernize faster. Through standardization and process simplification, RHI Magnesita can continuously drive innovation forward, delivering real business benefits across the company.
Head of Digital Transformation, RHI Magnesita
Featured partner
Atos SE is an SAP platinum parter and a global leader in secure and decarbonized digital technology, providing a range of digital solutions, consultancy services, digital security and decarbonization offerings, and an end-to-end partnership approach. Atos was instrumental in RHI Magnesita’s transformation by conducting data extraction tasks