Case Study: Waters achieves business continuity and consistent global SAP performance with Akamai Technologies

Akamai Enables Waters Corp. To Ensure Business Continuity And Significant Global Performance Improvements For SAP® Applications Delivered By SSL VPN

Waters Corporation, a global manufacturer of analytical laboratory instruments with about 5,000 employees and a single global instance of SAP delivered via an SAP NetWeaver Portal, faced performance and availability challenges for nearly 2,000 remote employees and external partners. Web applications accessed over SSL VPN were vulnerable to Internet outages and middle‑mile problems (e.g., cable cuts, regional poor Internet performance), causing slow response times and risking business continuity and productivity.

Waters deployed Akamai’s globally distributed CDN and IP Application Accelerator to route around middle‑mile issues and accelerate SSL VPN application delivery. The solution ensured high availability (targeting five‑nines), delivered significantly faster and more consistent response times worldwide—especially in challenged regions like India and China—leveraged existing VPN hardware, and restored confidence in Waters’ single‑instance global SAP strategy.

Waters

Paul Newton

CTO, Waters Corporation