Successful release change to SAP ERP 6.0

For some years, KCA DEUTAG Drilling GmbH, a leading international drilling company in the offshore and onshore business, employed a SAP R/3 system / Release 4.6C with numerous modules for its 1,300 users worldwide. In addition, the company used the SAP IS-Oil industry solution. Expiring maintenance contracts, projected future system demands and enhancement of the SAP system for a new plant in Russia moved KCA DEUTAG to undertake a release change, and thus to provide a central Unicode-capable solution.

In order to rapidly implement the release change for the three-stage system landscape of production, development and test systems, including parallel Unicode conversion, as smoothly as possible, KCA DEUTAG settled on external support by Dortmund-based SAP specialist Uniorg. With this purely technical upgrade, the first concern was to map the existing IT landscape one-to-one.

"The greatest challenge lay in the extremely complex application structure, with the adaptation of over 150 in-house developments, themselves previously reduced from over 1,000", recalled UNIORG project manager Hans-Dieter Haas. "In addition, there were extremely varied logistical processes and a complex testing phase using over 100 company codes in over 20 countries, plus the resulting time-zone complications". Moreover, it was necessary to convert the SAP IS-Oil industry solution to the corresponding SAP ECC Industry Extension Oil & Gas 6.0. "So we're all the more pleased to have successfully concluded this project, which took only three months form start to launch, within the agreed financial and time guidelines", Heinz Niehaus, KCA DEUTAG's IT chief, sums up.

KCA DEUTAG (www.kcadeutag.com) is a globally active group whose core business lies in management and manufacturing of offshore, as well as offshore drilling installations for the oil and gas industries. KCADEUTAG is responsible for operation and maintenance of over thirty oil platforms in the North Sea, the Caspian Sea, as well as off the coasts of Angola and Sakhalin, Russia. For onshore activities, KCA DEUTAG owns over 60 land-based drilling installations, operating worldwide.

KCA DEUTAG has two main offices; one in Aberdeen, Scotland, the other in Bad Bentheim, Germany. In addition, the group maintains regional branches in Europe, Russia, Africa, Asia and the Middle East. The company has been in the oil drilling business for over a century. It employs 1,645 people in Germany; the number of employees worldwide is about 8,000. Total sales for 2007 were over 1.2 billion USD.

The companies of Dortmund-based UNIORG Group(www.uniorg.de), with their roughly 150 employees, offer businesses of any size and industry a wide array of products and services for the solution and implementation of all requirements arising in design, development, modernization and operation of company-wide IT systems. Among these are all aspects of classic SAP consulting, computer center services, managed services, E-business solutions and cross-company integration of business administration information systems. For over 30 years, the certified SAP partner has enjoyed a sterling reputation with its clients. These include well-known groups such as Moeller, Yazaki and Philips, along with numerous medium-size companies in various industries, e.g., Denon/Marantz, Dr. R Pleger Pharmaceuticals, VEKA, or Wilo.

Additional information: UNIORG Group, Lissaboner Allee 6, 44269 Dortmund
Phone: 0231 / 94 97-0 Fax: 0231 / 94 97-199, www.uniorg.de
Media contact: Dr. Peer Walter Jahn, p.jahn@uniorg.de

PR agency: IT Public Relations, Maja Schneider, Tel.: 030-79708771,
ms@it-publicrelations.com, www.it-publicrelations.com