Bega Cheese Limited, one of Australia’s leading dairy and food companies, said it completed its technology migration project within the designated 12-month period following its acquisition of Lion Dairy and Drinks’ (LD&D) business in late 2020.
The $560 million acquisition expanded Bega Cheese’s branded foods portfolio, manufacturing, and distribution infrastructure, but a challenge rose to seamlessly integrate the LD&D applications, data, and processes into Bega’s existing or expanded infrastructure.
The food company then tapped IBM company SXiQ to handle the data migration.
Zack Chisholm, chief information officer of Bega Cheese, said the transition project posed both a challenge and an opportunity as the integration was to be executed while both Bega Cheese and LD&D were fully operational and had only room for minimal business disruption.
Additionally, the acquisition required an application and data separation with core infrastructure, remaining with the seller.
In a media release, SXiQ outlined the complexities involved in the business transition, which included replacing remote site hosting infrastructure, transitioning core business processes and systems, deploying new cloud infrastructure, and migrating previously LD&D-hosted desktop and cloud-based applications to the Bega Cheese network.
The dairy company worked closely with SXiQ to develop the end-state, migration, and execution planning for significant partners of the program. The plans included the migration of mission-critical applications, databases, and their associated backups, as well as the implementation of prod and non-prod Amazon Web Services accounts and Landing Zone to house all LD&D workloads.
The project resulted in a “historically significant technology transition,” according to SXiQ, which created an improved position for highly automated cloud platforms designed for the Bega Cheese business.
Bega Cheese will also now be able to accelerate innovation cycles, grow a cloud DevSecOps operating model of Bega Cheese IT, and deliver rapid results with better outcomes.
“By uplifting infrastructure, cloud management tooling and practices, SXiQ has enhanced management of Bega Cheese’s cloud assets, improving consistency, security and reducing time to deploy cloud infrastructure in the future,” said John Hanna, chief executive of SXiQ.
