Supporting Beko’s Cloud Migration and Managed Services Journey

Beko is a global leader in home appliances and consumer electronics and serves as the corporate umbrella brand for Arçelik, part of Koç Holding in Türkiye. The company designs, manufactures, and distributes a wide range of products including refrigerators, washing machines, dishwashers, cooking appliances, air conditioning units, and small domestic appliances across more than 140 countries.

In 2024, Arçelik unified its global operations under the Beko corporate brand, reflecting a strategic transformation in response to increasing competition, evolving consumer expectations, and macroeconomic pressures such as energy costs and housing market fluctuations. The company continues to differentiate itself through innovation in energy efficiency, sustainability, and smart/connected appliances.

In Europe, Beko strengthened its market position through the formation of Beko Europe, combining Arçelik’s European operations with Whirlpool’s former EMEA major domestic appliance business. This positioned Beko as a key player in a highly competitive regional market, requiring scalable, resilient, and cost-efficient IT infrastructure to support operations.

Beko (Arçelik) operates a large-scale, business-critical IT landscape supporting SAP workloads, manufacturing operations, and digital platforms. As part of its AWS transformation, the company required a scalable, secure, and cost-efficient operating model across multiple environments. Managing both SAP and non-SAP workloads across multiple AWS accounts introduced significant operational complexity, requiring standardized governance, centralized control, and consistent automation practices. In addition, SAP systems are mission-critical, meaning that any downtime directly impacts manufacturing operations, supply chain processes, and overall business continuity. At the same time, key operational activities such as patching and maintenance were partially manual, increasing the risk of human error, extended downtime, and inconsistencies across environments.

During the initial SAP production deployment, Beko encountered significant network-related cost and performance challenges. SAP application and SAP HANA database nodes were distributed across different Availability Zones, leading to a high volume of inter-AZ data transfer between tightly coupled components. This architecture resulted in increased network costs as well as higher latency, directly affecting the performance of critical SAP workloads. Given the scale and continuous data exchange of SAP systems, these inefficiencies posed a substantial financial and operational risk if not addressed.

In addition to network challenges, the storage layer required significant optimization. Amazon EBS volumes were often overprovisioned to meet peak performance requirements, leading to unnecessary cost overhead. Amazon EFS file systems were not utilizing lifecycle tiering, and Amazon S3 storage lacked appropriate lifecycle and archival policies. As a result, storage resources were not being used efficiently, causing increased infrastructure costs and suboptimal performance utilization. Without proper optimization, these issues would continue to scale with the environment, limiting Beko’s ability to maintain cost efficiency while supporting growing business demands.

How Commencis solved the customer challenge

Commencis addressed Beko’s operational and architectural challenges by implementing a comprehensive AWS-based solution focused on automation, standardization, and cost optimization. A key component of the solution was the adoption of AWS Systems Manager to automate critical operational workflows across SAP and non-SAP environments. End-to-end automation was developed for SAP lifecycle management, including system stop and start procedures, patch orchestration using AWS Patch Manager, pre-maintenance AMI-based backup workflows, and automated system health validation. This approach eliminated manual intervention, reduced operational risk, and ensured consistent and repeatable processes across all environments.

To address network-related cost and performance challenges, Commencis redesigned the SAP workload placement strategy. SAP application servers and their corresponding SAP HANA primary database nodes were aligned within the same Availability Zone to minimize latency and reduce inter-AZ data transfer. At the same time, secondary nodes were retained in separate Availability Zones to maintain high availability and failover capabilities. This architecture achieved a balance between cost efficiency and resilience, significantly reducing unnecessary network costs while improving application performance.

Commencis also implemented a comprehensive storage optimization strategy across Amazon EBS, Amazon EFS, and Amazon S3. EBS volumes were analyzed and right-sized based on actual workload requirements, with gp3 volumes used for performance-critical systems and cost-effective st1 volumes applied to non-critical workloads. For Amazon EFS, lifecycle policies and tiering mechanisms were enabled to automatically move infrequently accessed data to lower-cost storage classes. Similarly, Amazon S3 storage was optimized through the implementation of lifecycle and archival policies, ensuring that data was stored in the most cost-efficient storage classes. These improvements eliminated overprovisioned storage, reduced overall infrastructure costs, and maintained the required performance levels for SAP and supporting workloads.

In parallel, Commencis supported Beko’s migration activities by leveraging AWS Application Migration Service (MGN) to perform lift-and-shift migration of non-SAP workloads, enabling rapid and reliable server replication with minimal disruption. Additionally, AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) was used to migrate selected databases to AWS while ensuring data consistency and minimizing downtime. This combination of services accelerated the migration process and reduced operational complexity during the transition to AWS.

AWS Services used as part of the solution

The solution leveraged a wide range of AWS services to deliver a scalable, secure, and highly automated cloud environment. Amazon EC2 was used to host SAP and non-SAP workloads, while Amazon EBS, Amazon EFS, and Amazon S3 provided a flexible and optimized storage layer tailored to performance and cost requirements. AWS Systems Manager played a central role in enabling automation, configuration management, and patch orchestration across all environments.

Amazon CloudWatch was utilized for monitoring, alerting, and operational visibility, while AWS CloudTrail provided auditing and governance capabilities by tracking all API activity across accounts. AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) ensured secure, role-based access control for both users and automation processes. AWS Transit Gateway enabled centralized and scalable network connectivity between multiple VPCs and accounts, and Amazon Route 53 Resolver supported hybrid DNS resolution. For migration activities, AWS Application Migration Service (MGN) and AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) were used to ensure efficient and low-risk workload and database migrations to AWS.

Third party applications or solutions used

The solution integrated several third-party technologies to support Beko’s enterprise requirements. SAP HANA and SAP NetWeaver formed the core of the business-critical application landscape, running on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES for SAP), which is optimized for SAP workloads. High availability for SAP HANA was achieved using Pacemaker clustering technology, ensuring automatic failover and system resilience. FortiGate firewall appliances were used to provide secure network traffic inspection and control, while NetBackup was utilized for centralized backup management across environments. These technologies were seamlessly integrated with AWS services to deliver a secure and enterprise-grade architecture.

Commencis Support Services During Pre and Post Migration

Commencis provided comprehensive support services throughout both the pre-migration and post-migration phases of the project. During the pre-migration phase, Commencis conducted detailed assessments of existing workloads, designed the AWS architecture, and developed migration strategies aligned with Beko’s business and technical requirements. This included defining the multi-account structure, designing network and security architectures, and ensuring readiness for migration activities.

Following the migration, Commencis delivered ongoing managed services to ensure the stability, performance, and continuous improvement of the environment. This included 24/7 operational support, proactive monitoring, and incident management. Root Cause Analysis (RCA) processes were established to investigate and resolve critical issues, particularly for SAP systems. Commencis also continuously enhanced automation frameworks, optimized resource utilization, and implemented cost optimization strategies to ensure long-term efficiency. This end-to-end support model enabled Beko to operate its AWS environment with high reliability, security, and operational excellence.

The solution architecture was designed as a multi-account AWS environment that separates SAP and non-SAP workloads into dedicated production and development accounts while centralizing shared services in a HUB account. This model provided clear separation between environments, improved governance, and enabled Commencis to manage operations in a more secure and scalable manner. Within the HUB account, shared operational services such as AWS Systems Manager, AWS CloudTrail, Amazon S3, and AWS Secrets Manager were centralized to support governance, automation, logging, and credential management across the landscape. Each SAP and non-SAP account was connected through AWS Transit Gateway, creating a hub-and-spoke connectivity model that simplified network management and provided a strong foundation for centralized operations.

From a networking perspective, the environment was designed to provide secure and controlled connectivity between workloads, shared services, and external access points. Transit Gateway was used to connect the SAP DEV, SAP PROD, NON-SAP DEV, and NON-SAP PROD environments to the central networking layer, while firewall integration was implemented to inspect and control traffic flow. The architecture also addressed a major cost and performance challenge by standardizing SAP workload placement across Availability Zones. SAP application servers and SAP HANA primary database nodes were aligned within the same Availability Zone wherever possible, which significantly reduced inter-AZ data transfer and improved latency between tightly coupled components. At the same time, secondary nodes remained distributed to preserve high availability and resilience.

The operational automation architecture was built around AWS Systems Manager and centrally managed from the HUB account. Commencis developed and shared standardized automation documents that were used across SAP and non-SAP environments for tasks such as Linux configuration, user creation, dependency installation, hostname standardization, monitoring agent deployment, and patch orchestration. This centralized automation model ensured consistency across environments and reduced the need for repetitive manual configuration. Together, the multi-account design, standardized network architecture, and centralized automation framework created a scalable and well-governed AWS operating model capable of supporting Beko’s business-critical workloads with improved reliability, security, and operational efficiency.

Benefits of the solution

The implemented solution provided Beko with a more scalable, secure, and operationally efficient AWS environment. By introducing centralized governance through a HUB account and standardizing network connectivity through AWS Transit Gateway, Commencis established a foundation that was easier to manage, monitor, and expand. The redesigned architecture improved control across both SAP and non-SAP environments while also supporting stronger operational consistency and governance.

From an operational perspective, the use of AWS Systems Manager automation significantly reduced manual effort in day-to-day maintenance activities. Processes that had previously required manual coordination, such as SAP stop and start procedures, patch execution, backup preparation, and validation checks, were standardized and automated. This resulted in an estimated 60 to 70 percent reduction in manual operational effort while also lowering the risk of human error and improving the reliability of recurring maintenance tasks. Automated AMI-based backup workflows further improved recovery readiness and reduced risk during patching and maintenance activities.

The solution also delivered clear cost and performance benefits. By aligning SAP application and primary database components within the same Availability Zone, Commencis reduced unnecessary inter-AZ traffic and improved application responsiveness. Storage optimization across Amazon EBS, Amazon EFS, and Amazon S3 helped eliminate overprovisioned resources and introduced more cost-efficient lifecycle and tiering strategies without compromising required performance levels. In addition, centralized monitoring, logging, and automation improved visibility across the environment, strengthened compliance and auditability, and enabled faster response to incidents. Overall, the solution allowed Beko to operate its AWS environment more efficiently while improving resilience, performance, and long-term cost control.