The Gokongwei Group has completed its migration to the cloud at the end of 2021, making it the biggest migration of its kind to the cloud of any Philippine-based company.
In a statement, the Gokongwei Group sad that it made a conscious decision for the shift to digital transformation not just to gain a competitive edge but to ensure success and business resilience.
The group's digital transformation journey started in 2018, with a holistic data center modernization project that saw JG Summit Holdings Inc. migrating their main data center in the Philippines to the cloud. In 2019, they announced the strategic partnerships with ePLDT, Infosys and Microsoft to help them achieve their greater digital transformation ambition. They completed their migration at the end of 2021.
By migrating to Microsoft Azure, the Gokongwei Group, one of the leading conglomerates in the country, was able to pivot to become a digital company, future proofing their business groups.
Microsoft Azure is the foundation of Microsoft’s intelligent cloud and intelligent edge strategy, providing startups to enterprises the cloud services, developer tools, scale and security needed – no matter where they are at in their cloud journey. More than 95 percent of the Fortune 500 choose Azure.
Infosys and Microsoft are working with the Gokongwei Group to use artificial intelligence to drive monitoring and operations control which can aim to increase productivity for the company in the coming years. With the Gokongwei Group’s drive to innovate, the company is a step closer to its goal of becoming the first truly digital conglomerate in the Philippines.
“The Gokongwei Group and their industry-defining transformation has elevated them into an enterprise of tomorrow, which is crucial as the digital and traditional economy continue to be on a growth trajectory,” said Sandy Gupta, Vice President of Sales, Marketing and Operations, Microsoft Asia Pacific. “Together, Gokongwei Group and Microsoft are empowering every person and every organization in the Philippines, through innovation and digital transformation to build an inclusive, economic society. Our customers can trust that we will never compete against them. We’re not a search company; we’re not a retailer. We are an enterprise technology company.”
“We are thrilled to be a strategic partner in the Gokongwei Group’s drive of constantly innovating its operations to answer the growing and changing demands of the market. On behalf of PLDT Enterprise, we thank the Gokongwei Group for trusting us to be part of their end-to-end digital transformation journey through our VITRO Data Center colocation services. We express our utmost commitment to continuously invest in world-class infrastructure and industry-leading expertise to serve their evolving needs,” said JojoGendrano, FVP & Head of PLDT and Smart Enterprise.
Infosys, a global leader in next-generation digital services and consulting, was crucial in both formulating and executing the Gokongwei Group’s transformation strategy. This involved migrating various data centers across multiple business units into a single unified Microsoft Azure-based platform and upgrading the group's SAP ERP system to SAP S/4 HANA.
"We are delighted to collaborate with the Gokongwei Group in their digital transformation journey. Our expertise in digital technologies backed by decades of experience in navigating the business landscape will definitely bring in a lot of synergy, that will help them realize their vision of long-term digital transformation. We are proud to help the Gokongwei Group enhance their business journey as they seek to positively impact more consumers across the Asia-Pacific region in the future," said, Karmesh Vaswani, Infosys executive vice president and global head consumer, retail and logistics.
The Gokongwei group is composed of JG Summit Holdings, Robinsons Retail Holdings and Summit Media, the organisation is a crucial contributor to the Philippine economy with diversified businesses that include airlines, consumer and consumer-packaged goods (CPG), financial services, manufacturing, petrochemicals, real estate, retail and media.
“The Gokongwei Group has been a part of the Philippines’ history since our founding in 1957. We’ve served our community for many years, and we endeavour to continue doing so well into the future,” said Carlos G. Santos, chief information office of JG Summit Holdings Inc. “Our vision and purpose have steadfastly remained – an unrelenting commitment to provide our customers with better choices, creating shared success with our stakeholders. We knew that achieving that requires an entrepreneurial mindset, and our ambition needed to be on a foundation of integrity. Which is why when it came to digitalizing the organization, across all companies, we knew it needed to be Microsoft, the industry’s most trusted and comprehensive cloud offering.”
When the pandemic hit, the Gokongwei Group was ahead of the curve. Through easy and secure collaboration powered by Microsoft 365, their hybrid workforce was able to ensure business continuity where needed, stay focused on their customer needs, and provided improved service – all while staying safe.