How Mondelez’s Internal Engineering Team Is Fueling Its Move to Cloud
Mondelez International is extending its relationships with AWS to migrate its on-premise SAP systems to SAP RISE on AWS. As part of this, they’re currently migrating workloads from Azure into AWS and moving to a serverless, automated infrastructure.
Doing so will reduce both costs and complexities by requiring less maintenance activity by a third party to a fully automated model, Kostas Georgakopoulos, Mondelez chief technology officer and chief information security officer, told CGT.
"It's showing up on our financials, it's showing up on our operational excellence, and it's showing up in our digital transformation.”
Mondelez has stood up a highly capable internal engineering team over the last four years that will be key to their success, said Georgakopoulos. The team includes about 40 people who are based in the United States, Europe, and India.
See also: Learn more about Mondelez’s $1.2 billion transformation
The company has already fully automated its IT service request platform on AWS. Requests are filed on ServiceNow, with parameters then taken into a CI/CD platform. That pipeline then fires up an automation they’ve created on AWS.
“In less than 20 seconds, you can have a single workload — or a thousand workloads — and all of them will have a full integrated stack of all our identity and access management controls.”
This also includes the full stack of cyber controls, such as advanced threat protection, logging, monitoring, alerting notification, and built-in resiliency and availability by region.
Looking Ahead
The move to cloud will also help Mondelez further its sustainability goals by removing the energy requirements for powering servers. The company has already successfully sunset hundreds of workloads from Azure and moved them over to a serverless landscape on AWS, said Georgakopoulos.
“We're consuming less power. We're spending less money. We're polluting significantly less. It's a win-win for us, and it's a massive contribution to our sustainability.”
While moving to cloud may not be the right option for every digital transformation, Georgakopoulos noted that having an internal engineering organization can make it a strong choice.
“If you don't have your own engineering talent to drive and fuel that digital transformation, cloud is going to become more complex for you, more costly, and will likely not contribute to a growth strategy — and may become a hindrance to the business as well.”
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