Medline manufactures and distributes 335,000 medical-surgical products across a global supply chain that ranges from local pharmacies to broad, large health systems and hospitals. That supply chain has been put under strain with rising tariffs and changing regulations, making efficiency and agility more important than ever. The company’s legacy SAP ECC on HANA system was the foundation for that supply chain, but it had become a burden rather than an enabler. For the sake of agility and scalability, Medline decided it needed to move to the cloud with Microsoft Azure, SAP, and Intel. While that decision meant avoiding a $10 million expenditure on new hardware, it wasn’t just about cost savings. Moving to the cloud was a forward-looking decision with the goal of setting the company up for the next decade. Large-memory Mv3 VMs powered by 4th Gen Intel Xeon processors give Medline the capability to run its SAP ECC workloads with room for scale. Azure’s storage and monitoring features were selected to meet Medline’s high expectations for performance, availability, and visibility. It’s important to note that the project design was more than just a “lift and shift.” The implementation of Azure Site Recovery enables business continuity, flexible demand-based computing, and the integration of advanced analytics, AI, and automation layers with the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform. Immediate Improvement The decision to move to their SAP system to the cloud with Intel and Microsoft Azure has paid off for Medline. SAP transaction performance is up 80%, and average response times dropped nearly 60%. Critical IDoc processing, a key function of partner integrations, is over 50% faster. With those gains Medline has seen faster order fulfillment, better inventory visibility, and fewer IT bottlenecks. The company’s operating model has transformed over time, moving away from large capital investments to refresh its technological capabilities and now adopting a cloud-based consumption model. Enabling an AI-Driven Supply Chain Medline’s cloud-native SAP environment enabled the company to partner with Microsoft to build Mpower, a supply chain platform that layers AI and collaboration tools such as Copilot, Power BI, and Azure AI services on top of SAP. This will allow Medline to spot supply chain disruptions early, recommend product substitutions, and keep critical supplies flowing to hospitals and clinics. What This Means for SAPinsiders Consider the impact of a cloud transformation beyond migration. Take advantage of what a move to the cloud offers and explore how it can transform your processes and enable the adoption of modern capabilities such as advanced analytics, AI, and intelligent automation. Prioritize business outcomes along with IT improvements. Medline saw acceleration in many of its IT processes but the actual value of its cloud migration with Microsoft, Azure, and SAP was the speed and reliability achieved in their order fulfillment and supply chain. Examine how you can change your innovation cycle. While Medline may have been on a once-a-decade ERP change before this project, the migration to the cloud enabled them to scale for changes in the next decade as they happen. Learn more: Medline sparks a revolution in healthcare supply chain management with SAP on Azure.