When you’re running the largest pipeline network in North America, “downtime” isn’t just an inconvenience — it’s a national risk.
In this episode of Lemongrass Roots, Energy Transfer’s Senior Director of SAP, Randall Grogan, joins Eamonn O’Neill and Rogan Morrison to unpack one of the most complex, high-stakes SAP modernization journeys happening today.
Energy Transfer is a name many may not recognize, yet its systems power critical infrastructure that millions rely on. Randall has spent decades leading SAP programs across the Energy sector, and today he is navigating one of the industry’s most ambitious transformations: moving Energy Transfer’s mission-critical SAP landscape to RISE with SAP. They needed extreme resilience, uncompromising cybersecurity controls, and ultra-low latency for their commercial systems — while maintaining the flexibility to integrate billion-dollar acquisitions rapidly. A conventional hyperscaler approach couldn’t deliver that.
Then SAP introduced a little-known option: Customer Data Center (CDC) — a private cloud RISE with SAP model deployed inside the customer’s own environment. And suddenly, the conversation changed.
Together with Eamonn and Rogan, Randall takes us inside the decision-making, negotiation, and execution process, including:
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Why they initially resisted RISE with SAP — and the moment CDC made the journey viable
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How they negotiated a six-year contract tailored for growth, acquisitions, and uptime
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The contract clauses and metrics most enterprises overlook until it’s too late
- Why “lift and shift” was the smartest strategic choice — not a compromise
- How they’re approaching AI credits, consumption, and governance now
- Why sovereign cloud and CDC models are becoming a major trend among large enterprises
If you're an IT leader wrestling with hardware refresh cycles, RISE with SAP timing, sovereignty requirements, or SAP transformation risk, this episode gives you the clarity you’ve been looking for — straight from the people who’ve lived it.
