Loudoun Water
Cloud Transformation Case Study
SAP solution for fast-growing water utility
Cloud-based automation opening doors for greater efficiency
Deloitte’s approach to the cloud transformed how Loudoun Water solved its IT challenges and paved the way to scale innovative solutions for its growing customer base.
Loudoun Water, a public utility in Northern Virginia, delivers water to over 80,000 customers in Loudoun County. As the county’s population expanded and more residents came to rely on Loudoun Water, the utility found the situation offered a unique opportunity to re-invent itself: The utility was asking more than ever from its IT infrastructure and it needed that infrastructure to be secure, flexible and available around the clock.
Loudoun Water decided that a transition from an on-premises to infrastructure as a service solution, hosted on Azure, could provide the scalability and reliability it needed—not only supporting the demands of its organisation and customer base now, but also promising a better way to handle future growth and challenges. In addition, cloud-based automation would open the door for greater overall efficiency and cost management, while a concurrent programme of resource reskilling offered the promise of improved productivity and work capacity in needed technical areas.
What happened next
Deloitte and Loudoun Water collaborated to design and build a reliable and scalable SAP solution on Microsoft Azure Cloud on Deloitte’s OpenCloud management platform. Deloitte cloud architects advised the utility’s network team in architecting and developing a secure network architecture that included periodic security upgrades built to withstand repeated outages or even a disaster. Over the course of 18 weeks, the team designed and built an end-to-end SAP® architecture that met Loudoun Water’s needs, including eliminating performance issues that had recurred in the past.
The result is a public utility that has transformed into a Kinetic Enterprise™ with the ability to continuously evolve. From its new foundation of future-facing systems, the organisation can more effectively handle an increasing workload and prepare for anticipated growth. Deloitte’s approach to the cloud transformed how Loudoun Water solved its IT challenges and paved the way to scale innovative solutions quickly for its growing customer base.
The utility was asking more than ever from its IT infrastructure and it needed that infrastructure to be secure, flexible and available around the clock.
The Wins
1. Complete cloud migration and decommissioning of mission-critical SAP and non-SAP on-premises services, while avoiding expensive CapEx investments in new on-premises hardware
2. Hardware and platform upgrades resulting in improved application speed and performance, improving the utility's ability to respond to customers
3. A disaster recovery solution providing complete business continuity, assuring the ability to provide round-the-clock customer service
4. IT focused on more strategic initiatives, with “lights on” and value-added activities managed by Deloitte Cloud Managed Services on OpenCloud
By the numbers
25+
Systems modernised and upgraded in database and operating systems
30%
Overall system performance improvement, resulting in a direct improvement in customer call handle time
$
Eliminated several hundred thousand dollars in new CapEx
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