The Client
Fonterra Co-operative Group Limited is a publicly listed New Zealand multinational dairy co-operative, owned by thousands of New Zealand farmers. The company is responsible for approximately 30% of the world's dairy exports with revenue exceeding NZ $22 billion, making it New Zealand's largest company. Fonterra’s IT strategic partner since 2007, HCLTech has been instrumental in their execution of cloud migration strategies.
The Challenge
Migrating legacy ERP systems and homegrown apps from on-prem datacenters to the cloud
Challenges related to changing business requirements, legacy technical debt, cyber compliance and overall performance required a pragmatic forward-thinking approach as our client sought to seamlessly migrate their Oracle-based systems and applications from on-premises data centers to the cloud without disrupting regular business operations.
The Objective
All initiatives pointed to the singular objective of transforming employee experiences at Fonterra
The partnership between Fonterra and HCLTech was established with objectives specifically focused on transforming employee experience while also emphasizing:
- Data security enhancements
- Performance reliability improvement
- Legacy system modernization
- Cost optimization
- Compliance assurance
- Overall improvement of enterprise applications like ERP, HR, payroll and operational systems with the potential to positively impact employee experiences
The Solution
Migration of full technology stack to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure
Core to Fonterra’s cloud-first transformation strategy and in collaboration with both Fonterra and Oracle, HCLTech successfully migrated on-premises applications — including Oracle JD Edwards, Oracle Hyperion, Oracle WebLogic, Oracle databases and various Oracle custom applications (APEX) — to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).
To successfully transition these applications to the cloud platform required careful planning, future-proof cloud architecture, complex configurations and meticulous execution. It also involved delivering on the following:
- The ‘Zero-Trust' security model for OCI
- The ‘Hub and Spoke’ model to provide a structured and efficient way to manage network resources, enhance security, facilitate connectivity and manage databases in a complex hybrid and multi-cloud environment
- A roadmap for migrating Fonterra’s HR applications to OCI while simultaneously modernizing them to meet current and future business needs efficiently and securely
- Re-prioritization and re-classification of several custom applications to ‘critical,’ requiring changes to the application architecture in OCI — this involved implementing changes for High Availability (HA) and Disaster Recovery (DR), deploying Real Application Clusters (RAC) and enhancing integration capabilities
The Impact
A 30% boost in performance KPIs and 60% reduction in mean time to recovery
The successful migration of Fonterra’s Oracle JD Edwards, Hyperion, Apex and HR applications to OCI mitigated risks related to supportability and security.
It also provided heightened data security, robust disaster recovery capabilities and the ability to handle demanding workloads.
Significant benefits included:
- 30% faster performance compared to on-premises
- 60% reduction in Time to Recovery (TRO) for database recovery during crises
- IT can now focus on developing new applications, exploring emerging technologies (like machine learning), responding to evolving business needs and improving processes
Overall we are delighted to deliver better business outcomes with this transformation. "Working collaboratively with HCLTech to get key resources and insight to best practices, particularly around APEX and JDE, was ultimately the key to success and strengthens our ongoing partnership,” said Andrew Faid, Head of Cloud Business Office, oCTO, Fonterra IT
