What would I like you take away from this. So
#1 is that this Oracle e-Business Suite is being done with Oracle Cloud IaaS/PaaS and it works. The case study I have for this customer was pretty complex – you can start smaller and simpler if you like…. But don’t fear, the knowledge and experience is out there to do this…..
#2 This is a completely viable cloud route for you if you are not ready for ERP Cloud or in conjunction with elements of ERP Cloud to fill out your Cloud strategy.
Irish Life is Ireland’s leading life and pensions group with a market share of over 30%. The company provides a wide range of risk protection, pension, savings and investment products for both the individual and group markets in Ireland.
Like most Financial Services company’s we take a conservative risk adverse approach when it comes to adopting new technology.
In 2016 we made “Platform decisions” a core pillar of our IT strategy.
We did this to ensure the On-Premise Versus Cloud debate took place each time we looked to introduce, replace our update an IT system
So what made us choose to put Oracle Financials in the Cloud?
It came down to three primary factors
Total cost of ownership over a 5+ year period
System vitality
Supportability, scalability and flexibility
What was our biggest challenge?
Stakeholder management
Deal with the compliance issue upfront …….
We knew we needed to address this and make a step change.,
Cover ICOFR, EU and Canadian Regulation that was the context we were working in.
So what the Brief…..
Two project in 1 – assess was it feasible with a short-sharp engagement then complete the upgrade/migration.
Oracle cloud reference architecture
So in terms of managing and EBS instance on Oracle Cloud IaaS with our service wrap we found that we could provide that complete support @ 28% saving versus On-Premise equiv.
So in terms of managing and EBS instance on Oracle Cloud IaaS with our service wrap we found that we could provide that complete support @ 28% saving versus On-Premise equiv.
Phase 2 started in earnest in February 2017. With a two DBAs, 2 Cloud IAAS specialists, two functional consultants and 3 developers, and through out the project Version 1 have supplied other key members to support the process from OS hardening specialists to training writers. The upgrade went live on the 11th September and took a 110 hour outage.
So we identified and used cloud in a number of ways to progress project / upgrade
Burstting allowed us to upgrade faster – up memory and procs
Stood up early vision and instances to rework CEMLIs and KT
Reduced dependency on clients IT team
The first task was to stand up a vision instance to allow the developers to re-develop the CEMLIs. In an on premise upgrade this can often take up to 6 weeks to get new hardware or VMs provisioned, configured and deployed. This was a great kick start and helped them get in early when normally only the DBAs would be working. We have even used this cloud deployed Vision instance process in on premise upgrades to get the same head start for the developers and cut the full project duration.
Minimal input was required from Irish Life IT at this stage, leaving them free to keep working on BAU and preparing their own SIT and DEV instances for testing their in house apps.
Oracle Cloud IAAS also allowed us to burst the processors and memory to improve the initial deployments and this was appreciated especially when it came to the full cut over to Production.
The DBAs loved standing up new servers, with templates ready to go the process was quite painless. The Cloud specialists could then harden them to the standards Irish Life required. The bursting worked well and provide a good performance boost that would be required when upgrading and 21 year old EBS instance.
Get an Early Start on CEMLI redevelopment by compiling custom objects against a Vision Instance, Grab the opportunity to get the users up to speed with changes to standard functionality and new processes. The current 11.5.10 instance had been in use for the past 7 years or so users new it intimately, R12 brought the changes to TCA and Payments etc and early end user training workshops on a Vision instance helped define further more focussed training on keys changes when SIT was available.
What the DBAs said – be prepared for tuning when in the Hybrid mode of EBS In Cloud integrated back to On-Premise.
SQL Tuning
MTU Tuning
Technical problems are easy and solvable – cultural and other barriers are the tricky ones
Don’t just do it as a cloud project – mind the core purpose of your project ie an EBS Upgrade in a dynamic and functioning business
Stakeholder management – it much more complex than on a standard project.
Use tools like “ force field analysis” to continually assess where your project stands
You will most likely have under estimated the effort required to close off the non IS elements
Really commit to it because you will be given opportunities to walk away from the Cloud element