Case Study: RectorSeal OCI Lift & Shift
"RectorSeal Enhances Performance and Achieves Seamless Transition with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure"
November 1, 2023
Challenge
RectorSeal, a leading provider of quality solutions for the professional trades serving heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC/R), plumbing, electrical, and construction markets., faced several challenges that necessitated a transition to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).
The first challenge was cost-efficiency and resource scalability. The company found that the cost of its current hosted environment was comparable to OCI and even more expensive in some instances. OCI offered cost-effective solutions and the ability to scale resources as needed.
Additionally, performance issues were plaguing RectorSeal's production system. Frequent downtime was affecting productivity, largely due to unstructured data and high-demand reports running directly on the transactional database, causing performance bottlenecks.
Resource constraints were another issue. RectorSeal's previous environment had limited resources, making it difficult to accommodate growing demands quickly. There was a need for agility and rapid provisioning of resources.
Solutions
To address these challenges, RectorSeal collaborated with KS2 Technologies and leveraged OCI to provide effective solutions.
The first step involved transitioning to enterprise licensing, which moving to OCI enabled. This upgrade from Oracle Database standard edition licensing for JD Edwards to enterprise licensing unlocked features like Flashback for rapid data recovery and Data Guard.
Another key aspect was improving architecture. OCI's architecture introduced a separate reporting server, reducing the impact on the transactional server during reporting operations, thus mitigating performance issues while still providing access to virtually real-time data.
Furthermore, OCI provided high availability and disaster recovery capabilities, ensuring continuous operations and minimal downtime in case of emergencies.
Resource scalability was made possible through OCI's flexibility, allowing RectorSeal to scale resources instantly, eliminating the need for time-consuming requests and server downtime.
The implementation of Oracle’s Zero Downtime Migration strategy using Golden Gate ensured seamless data replication, near-live data availability for testing, and a significant reduction in the cutover window during migration.
RectorSeal also made sure to involve business users extensively throughout the project, preparing them for testing and ensuring their active participation in user acceptance testing (UAT) and cutover activities.
Results
The adoption of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure yielded several benefits for RectorSeal.
First and foremost, enhanced performance was a major achievement. RectorSeal estimated a 40% improvement in application performance compared to their previous setup. This boost in performance significantly increased user confidence and productivity.
Tom Fluker, Vice President of IT at RectorSeal, emphasized, "RectorSeal's partnership with Oracle and KS2 Technologies has transformed our business, ensuring smoother operations, improved performance, and readiness for future innovations. The successful transition to OCI demonstrates the company's commitment to embracing technology to meet evolving business demands."
Cost savings were another notable outcome. OCI's cost-effective solution eliminated the need for shared tenant spaces and delivered superior performance at a significantly lower total cost. The consistent global pricing structure offered by Oracle ensured no hidden cost variances, simplifying budget management.
Moreover, OCI's flexibility and future capabilities, such as AI, positioned RectorSeal to adapt quickly to evolving technology needs. The architecture and capabilities of OCI also provided RectorSeal with high availability and a robust disaster recovery solution.
Seamless data migration was achieved through the use of Oracle Golden Gate, allowing RectorSeal to migrate data with minimal disruption and significantly reduce the cutover window.
"By partnering with KS2, we had a great team environment that allowed a seamless migration for the user community. While our SMEs were deeply involved in testing, most users were not even aware of a change,” Fluker added. “We are now in a much stronger position to improve our reporting by eliminating many ETL processes and cutting data delays by up to 75%. Through KS2 discovery and technical leadership, we were able to focus on validation and communications, leaving the technical 'worry' in their hands."
Lastly, OCI enabled easy resource scalability, making it simpler for RectorSeal to accommodate growth and acquisitions efficiently.
For more information about KS2's OCI capabilities, and the managed services that can get you there, contact the experts at KS2.