Services Provider Lemongrass Launches New Disaster Recovery Offering For SAP Applications

Professional and managed services provider Lemongrass Consulting is launching a new cloud-based disaster recovery service for clients running SAP applications either on-premises or in the Amazon Web Services cloud.

The new Lemongrass Disaster Recovery offering, which utilizes AWS CloudEndure for system migration and disaster recovery capabilities, leverages Lemongrass’ long-time expertise in SAP applications running on AWS and includes the service company’s assessment, project planning and implementation services.

“SAP is becoming more prominent in the cloud and people have been moving their SAP workloads to the cloud,” said Jake Echanove, senior vice president of solution architecture at Lemongrass, in an interview with CRN. The new service “allows us to automate and drive down the complexity of these business continuity workloads.”

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Atlanta-based Lemongrass focuses exclusively on what it calls the SAP-to-AWS space, offering services to help businesses and organizations implement, migrate, operate and automate SAP software running on the AWS cloud platform.

The company’s expertise encompasses much of SAP’s software portfolio including the SAP S/4 HANA, SAP Business Suite and SAP BusinessOne enterprise resource planning application suites; the SAP HANA database, CRM and SRM (supplier relationship management) applications, and more.

Lemongrass partners with both SAP and AWS – the service provider is an AWS Premier Consulting Partner – and the company also partners with other solution providers who work with SAP BusinessOne, the vendor’s application set for small and mid-size customers.

Lemongrass already offers business continuity and disaster recovery services for SAP workloads. The new service takes the software, processes and capabilities the company previously provided and formalizes them into a repeatable framework built around CloudEndure.

AWS acquired CloudEndure, an Israel-based startup focused on disaster recovery and application and data migration, in January 2019.

Echanove said that by utilizing the CloudEndure technology Lemongrass can better automate replication and backup services and offer a faster return-to-operation time – known in the industry as Recovery Time Objectives and Recovery Point Objectives.

The new service also leverages Lemongrass’s expertise with SAP architectures: The company works with customers to understand their SAP environments, including “application intricacies and integrations,” Echanove said, “and ensure they are well protected.”

An increasing number of SAP customers are choosing to run their SAP applications in the cloud and are using Lemongrass’ professional services that include assessing a client’s IT environment and needs, project plan development and system implementation.

Some customers, however, choose to continue running their core SAP applications within their own data centers and Lemongrass’ new service can back up their data and system configurations to AWS, Echanove said.

Another driver behind the growing demand for disaster recovery services is the escalating number of cyberattacks, Echanove said, especially ransomware attacks that lock up IT systems until a ransom is paid. The Lemongrass Disaster Recovery service can help mitigate the impact of such incidents by providing a way to roll back an IT system to an earlier, pre-attack configuration.

“That’s something that has been at the top of customers’ minds,” Echanove said. “Every business thinks they have a good business continuity plan until something happens.”