Introduction
From being founded in 1908 and constructing the world’s first ever airship, the Zeppelin Group has evolved from pioneering aviation into a global mechanical engineering powerhouse operating across 190 sites in 35 countries. With more than €2.5 billion in annual revenue and over 7,000 employees, Zeppelin relies on fast, accurate data to support decision-making across complex business units. As part of a major SAP implementation, Zeppelin needed a highly automated, flexible data warehouse to deliver enterprise-wide insight—without locking into a rigid architecture.
Pre-WhereScape Challenges
- Complex enterprise landscape: Multiple companies and systems needed to be unified.
- High automation expectations: Existing infrastructure was already heavily automated.
- ERP transformation pressure: New data architecture needed to align with SAP HANA rollout.
- In-house tool limitations: Maintaining a custom integration tool was no longer viable.
- Future uncertainty: Architecture needed to evolve with changing business requirements.
Why WhereScape?
Zeppelin was not looking to replace manual processes—they were already highly automated. Instead, they needed a platform that could extend their automation strategy. WhereScape stood out by offering deep automation across the full data warehouse lifecycle, while remaining open, flexible and architecture-agnostic.
“Since we already had a very high level of automation in our virtual infrastructure, we were specifically looking for vendors that would offer a data warehouse solution with a possible approach for automation… this led us inevitably to WhereScape.”
– Stephan Schaumburg-Lippe, Application Development Consultant, Zeppelin
The Solution
Advanced Automation at Scale
WhereScape enabled Zeppelin to automate data integration, modelling and deployment across SAP HANA and SQL Server environments.
Flexible Design Approaches
The team can now use both model-driven design (via WhereScape 3D) and data-driven development (via WhereScape RED), depending on project needs.
Architecture-Agnostic Platform
WhereScape allowed Zeppelin to choose the best architectural approach for its environment—without being constrained by tooling.
Seamless SAP Integration
Using Theobald SAP Connectors, data was integrated efficiently into the warehouse without custom ETL redevelopment.
“What we liked about WhereScape is how open the solution is… We were not bound to a specific way on how to implement the data warehouse.”
– Stephan Schaumburg-Lippe, Application Development Consultant, Zeppelin
Results
🚀 Future-Proof Automation
- Data warehouse architecture adapts easily to future changes.
- Supports evolving business units, products and markets.
- Reduces long-term technical risk.
🚀 Faster, Better Decision-Making
- Central source of truth enables fast, precise reporting.
- Business requirements addressed more quickly.
- Real-time data processing supports operational agility.
🚀 Less Coding, More Value
- Developers focus on business logic rather than ETL code.
- Automation reduces complexity across the lifecycle.
- Consistent, repeatable delivery improves quality.
“Everything that is possible to be automated in our business logic and our business processes—we want to have it automated. WhereScape helps us achieving that goal in a simple and convenient way without the need to focus on coding.”
– Stephan Schaumburg-Lippe, Application Development Consultant, Zeppelin
Automation Built for Change
Markets, products and organisations constantly evolve. WhereScape enables Zeppelin to respond quickly—without redesigning the data platform.
From In-House Tools to Enterprise-Grade Automation
Zeppelin’s experience building its own ETL tooling meant expectations were high. WhereScape met and exceeded those expectations by matching existing capabilities and extending them further.
Rapid Adoption
Zeppelin’s team got to grips with WhereScape quickly, from validating architecture on day one and moving into full use almost immediately.
“On day two Zeppelin were already flying with WhereScapeThey got it very quickly, and realised WhereScape could do everything their tool did and more.”
– Rob Mellor, Vice President & General Manager EMEA, WhereScape