Solvay selects one vendor for end-to-end support of applications on Google Cloud

About Solvay

Solvay is a global leader in advanced materials and specialty chemicals, committed to developing chemistry that addresses key societal challenges. Solvay brings advancements in planes, cars, batteries, smart and medical devices, water and air treatment. The company is headquartered in Brussels, Belgium with around 26.500 employees, realizing over 10 billion revenue in 2019.

Challenge

• Applications were built and maintained by different vendors and teams across Solvay’s businesses. Each of these applications was maintained differently and the industry best-practices around quality. assurance (such as continuous integration/continuous delivery, automated testing) were not followed.
• The applications span a wide variety of innovative technologies such as Big Data, Internet of Things and Machine Learning capabilities.
• Increasing number of digital Google Cloud applications, not able to scale to operate. With each of these applications being built with no centralized sharing of best practices & processes.
• Need for accountability driven policies and user action traceability to ensure security and cost control.
• Need for a highly trained operations team that can provide 24 x 7 support and ensure service availability for mission-critical applications.

Solution

• Establish a partnership with one highly experienced vendor for full end-to-end service delivery of Google Cloud from applications development maintenance to cloud operations.
• New enhancements and evolutions done by the Vanenburg team
• Move from many scattered landing zones to 1 centrally professionally set-up and managed GCP landing zone where ‘security by design’ is the starting point.
• Simplify and automate infrastructure provisioning and ensure infrastructure consistency through Infrastructure as Code (IaC).
• Continuous configuration automation and set up of scalable and best in class continuous integration & continuous delivery (CI/CD) processes for the hundreds of app.

Results

• Higher quality: one vendor maintaining all apps through a customizable maintenance plan. Adoption of industry best practices (CI/CD, test automation) for software development and +50% increase in user satisfaction.
• Flexibility: leveraging Solvay’s existing processes allows for speed in the onboarding process, support activities and addressing the needs of IT and the businesses.
• Increased security: enterprise-wide security, resource visibility and utilisation across workloads leading to improved security and an integral (hosting) cost reduction.