Migrating to SAP HANA to Improve Business Outcomes

Clark County, NV sets a forward thinking, innovative path using SAP and Dell Technologies infrastructure to digitally transform services.

Clark County, Nevada is one of the fastest growing and most dynamic counties in the country. It is an $8 billion public enterprise that serves close to 10,000 employees and 2.4 million residents across more than 140 locations, in addition to the 45 million visitors that come to enjoy Las Vegas every year. An epicenter for technology and civic innovation, the county uses technology to enhance the quality of life for their constituents.

Under the leadership of Nadia Hansen, the county’s Chief Information Officer, the IT organization focuses on using technology as an enabler to drive business outcomes, much like any other enterprise. This includes taking digital transformation seriously, with a unified IT approach that results in more reliable and efficient services. “There’s a lot of innovative, forward thinking things that are happening at the county,” says Hansen.

As their customers’ expectations increase, and to keep up with the growing demand for services, the county must constantly modernize. One key modernization initiative was the migration of the entire SAP environment from Oracle to HANA. John Parker, Senior Systems Programmer, was excited to upgrade the county’s environment, but also knew that his team would need a skilled partner to help them with the transition. Parker commented, “This SAP system runs the county. It does all of our accounts payable and general ledger. It does all of our payroll…there’s huge dependence on this SAP environment.”

According to Parker, the team was comfortable relying on Dell EMC PowerEdge servers for their new environment. “We migrated to Dell PowerEdge servers running VMware vSphere with Dell EMC PowerMax storage arrays. We were able to buy high-end Dell PowerEdge servers with massive processing power…massive memory, lots and lots of powerful high-end Intel® CPU-based hardware.”

“It was a very successful migration,” Parker reports. The county’s ERP department is ”very happy with the performance of the hardware and software. And all of the other agencies, the business units that are customers of our ERP department, they’re also happy. They get their paychecks in a timely fashion. All of our vendors get paid in a timely fashion. So, Dell hardware running VMware was a big success for us.”

With the new SAP solution, Clark County has experienced an 80% reduction in both payroll financial posting processing time and financial actuals report processing time along with a 65% reduction in grant management balance sheet reports processing time.

Parker and his team also appreciated the management simplicity of the Integrated Dell Remote Access Controller (iDRAC). “Having that level of integration makes hardware maintenance and ownership much more simple,” says Parker.

“Dell knows a lot about SAP deployments, and they worked with us very closely as a partner,” Parker concludes. “They worked with our VMware account team to design and architect this whole environment, the virtual machines, the sizing, all of that, so that we would be able to succeed.” Hansen agrees, saying that “innovation can’t happen in a silo. We have been very fortunate to have partners like Dell for over 10 years. And this has been a fantastic partnership.”

To learn more

Read the full case study: Clark County, Nevada, successfully migrates to SAP HANA on Dell EMC servers

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About the Author: Nettie Olsen

Nettie Olsen is a Dell EMC customer advocate with over 20 years in the technology and telecom industry. She is passionate about new technology, sharing customers’ IT transformation stories, and understanding their expectations and goals. She is currently building the global Customer Success program as part of the Server Product Marketing team, and loves the passion around customer advocacy found at Dell EMC from all areas of the organization. She has an MBA from Thunderbird School of International Management and lives in the Dallas/Ft Worth area with her husband and dog. In her spare time, she attempts to learn the art of dressage.