Welcome to Cloud Chronicles: Real-World Transformations. In today’s podcast, Megan Testani, VP of Marketing and Business Development at Project Partners, discusses what led three organizations to move their on-prem ERP systems to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) or Oracle Cloud Applications.

Megan Testani, Project Partners: Let’s begin with Randy Martin, Director for Financial Applications Strategy and Innovation at AtkinsRéalis. Randy, can you briefly describe AtkinsRéalis, the systems you were on, and the main drivers that led your organization to move your on-premise ERP systems up to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure?

Randy Martin, AtkinsRéalis: We had an EBS platform on aging infrastructure, and so one of our big drivers was refreshing that infrastructure. So, we took the opportunity in 2021 to move that into OCI. We also had a major upgrade of EBS at the time – we went from 11i out to 12.2.9.

We were looking for improvements in scalability and performance that we got from Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and better maintenance of our security posture, but there are lots of tools within OCI that help with that. Also, it allowed us to better focus on what we do best and not focus as much on our infrastructure.

We were able to utilize the marketplace for managed services for infrastructure, which is robust for OCI. We were able to find a good partner who could take that load and allow us to focus more on our application management.

Megan Testani, Project Partners: Thank you, Randy. Next, let’s move over to Laurence Cauchy, the Enterprise Performance Management Center of Excellence Director for AtkinsRéalis. Now, Laurance, you were moving from an on-premise PPM system to Oracle Cloud Applications. Can you tell us a little bit about why you chose to do that?

Laurence, AtkinsRéalis: Yeah. Before migrating to the cloud, we had two distinct instances of Hyperion financial management. One that was Atkins’ legacy and one that was SNC’s legacy. SNC bought Atkins in the past, so we had these two instances. Like Randy said, we also had an aging infrastructure, and it was hard to maintain.

So, we decided to move to the cloud and consolidate those two instances into one single instance. The cloud is a lot easier to maintain. You don’t have infrastructure maintenance to do. It’s a lot easier to manage access roles and responsibilities. Combining the two instances provided more visibility on all the financial data for our corporate and financial teams. Also, the user experience is a lot better in the cloud application than it was in the old applications that we had. So it’s a major benefit for us.

Megan Testani, Project Partners: Thank you, Laurence. Next up, let’s speak with Wino Verschoor, the Director of Applications for Vanderlande Industries. Wino, can you briefly describe a little bit about Vanderlande, the systems you were on, and the main drivers that led your organization to move your on-premise Oracle ERP up to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure?

Wino Verschoor, Vanderlande: Thank you. Maybe I should tell us a little bit about Vanderlande—people don’t know it. We deliver automated material handling systems to airports. Examples are Amsterdam Airport, LAX, Hong Kong, and Jeddah Airports, which are very big market leaders. We also deliver systems for e-commerce companies like Amazon, which is very big customer of ours. We even do parcel companies; examples are FedEx, UPS, and DHL. Yeah. Back to this topic. We have Oracle systems in our landscape, you know, running Oracle JD Edwards ERP, and we use Oracle Primavera for project planning and even Oracle JD Edwards on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

In 2022, we moved from the IBM AS400 series to OCI for JD Edwards. The main driver for that was that our hardware was at the end of its life. We had to make big investments to expand and replace that system. We had security and performance requirements that were met, and there was a cost-competitive offer. Then we had a cloud vision, too, so there was an opportunity to move to OCI.

A second driver was that our company expected to see huge transaction growth. We transformed our logistical ground model, which affected transaction growth. Thirdly, the maintenance landscape was quite scattered, as we had different partners doing database, middleware, and application maintenance. So, that was an opportunity to optimize that. So, those were the three main drivers for moving to the cloud.

Megan Testani, Project Partners: Thank you, Wino. Next, let’s hear from Jochen Rahm, the CTO for PROMATIS (an ITG Company) and the Program Manager for PRODINGERS‘ digitization strategy. Jochen, since we will be focusing on PROTINGER for this, can you briefly describe a little bit about the organization, the systems they were on, and the main drivers that led your PROTINGER to both move an on-premise Oracle ERP system into Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and move some of its systems into Oracle Cloud Applications – a kind of hybrid environment?

Jochen Rahm, PROMATIS: PRODINGER is a German company with three locations that provides servicing and selling of industrial packing material. So, what happened to them? They wanted to change three elements: an old application landscape and old integration platform hardware, and they wanted to change their decentralized processes to a centralized process and organization.

Those were the drivers for starting the digital transformation program. Now, I will show you a phased approach to the next step (discussed in our next episodes). We already have Oracle E-Business Suite with Oracle Fusion Cloud applications as a hybrid approach—also, the topic of integration platforms and OCI topics.

Megan Testani, Project Partners: Thank you, Jochen. That wraps up Episode 1 of Cloud Chronicles: Real-World Global Transformations.

Join us for Episode 2, where we will discuss the key considerations in planning an enterprise transformation.