Cegal helped Aibel with migration to Oracle Cloud
Aibel was at a crossroads: Should they continue to operate Oracle solutions on their own servers, or should the offshore service company move to Oracle Cloud? Aibel chose the cloud. With Cegal as a technology partner, Aibel has gained a more stable and flexible Oracle platform and reduced IT costs.
Nils-Kristian Midttveit starts: “Oracle is an essential product for us. The majority of Aibel's core business applications are Oracle-based.”
Midttveit is responsible for application management in Aibel and all software licenses. Therefore, following up on the Oracle systems used in Aibel is a vital part of his work. Now both Midttveit and Aibel were at a critical crossroads. Today's Oracle systems had to be upgraded. The choice was between upgrading software and hardware and operating it locally (on-prem) in Aibel's server park or moving the Oracle solutions and databases to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).
Aibel is a leading service company within the oil, gas, and offshore wind industries, building and maintaining platforms and other critical infrastructure for the entire energy industry. The company holds a leading position within the European offshore wind industries and electrification of offshore oil and gas installations and onshore processing plants. Aibel is one of the largest suppliers on the Norwegian continental shelf and a full-range supplier of innovative and sustainable solutions. The roots go back to 1882 when the Electrical Bureau was established. More than 4,700 employees work at the company's offices in Norway, Thailand, and Singapore.
Chose the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure
Aibel chose to say farewell to its own servers and decided to move to the cloud, to Oracle's data center in Amsterdam. The Oracle Cloud data center in Amsterdam is literally next door to the data center where Aibel has its SAP HANA instance. OCI has a number of advantages: scalability when needed for increased capacity, flexibility, continuous updating and development, security, as well as better options for connecting to other systems.
However, going from old on-prem solutions and systems on-prem can be risky and time-consuming. For Aibel, it was critically important that the company's core applications had full functionality after the upgrade and that the transition to Oracle Cloud provided as little downtime as possible.
Leif Andre Brekke, assistant project manager for the Oracle Cloud project at Aibel, says: "It was a challenge that our Oracle solution was over seven years old. Both the operating system on our Oracle servers and the databases needed an update."
In order to prepare for the move to OCI, we faced demanding tasks. We needed a competent partner with experience with corresponding projects.
Leif Andre Brekke, assistant project manager for the Oracle Cloud project at Aibel
Aibel chose Cegal as the Oracle Cloud transformation partner. Cegal is Oracle's largest partner in the Nordics and the partner that has done the most migration projects to the Oracle Cloud.
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Technological judo
Leif Andre Brekke continues: “The preparation for OCI was technological judo. Cegal's project manager was flexible and found solutions to the various challenges that arose along the way.”
Brekke praises Cegal for being flexible, open, and goal-focused and adds:
“The project manager had a good project plan and was good at meeting milestones and budgets. It gave us confidence that we were going to reach the finish line.”
Roy Helge Rasmussen, responsible for Oracle's Database Appliances in Aibel, says: “To ensure that the migration to the cloud went as quickly and smoothly as possible, we moved the test databases to the Oracle data center well ahead of the migration. This allowed us to test databases and connected applications before moving.”
The resources in Aibel IT and Cegal's consultants completed the cloud migration successfully. The power to the old Oracle machines could be turned off in the spring of 2023.
Saving NOK and CO2
“What are the first results of the cloud migration?”
Nils-Kristian Midttveit answers: “We are very pleased that OCI gives us the ability to scale the Oracle solution up and down as needed. Our employees who work with heavy business applications also notice that database jobs are processed faster and provide more stable applications. We also expect that the physical proximity of the SAP HANA solution will considerably improve the performance of certain of Aibel’s central databases. In addition, security and restore possibilities are considerably better than today’s solution, and the new solution is overall cheaper with better value.”
Leif Andre Brekke adds: "At the same time, Aibel will benefit from a future-proof platform that will be much easier to adapt to current and future needs."
Cegal has delivered a very good project, giving us a good starting point for stable database operation and further improvements. We are so satisfied with Cegal that Aibel chose to let Cegal take over the operation of our Oracle solutions.
Leif Andre Brekke, Aibel
The transition from its own on-prem servers to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) also means that Aibel uses less energy for computer systems and IT solutions - and thus also lower emissions of greenhouse gases. OCI in Amsterdam is 100% renewable - and thus 0% emissions.
The IT analysis company IDC has calculated that the use of cloud data centers can contribute to a reduction in emissions of at least one billion tonnes of CO2 over the next few years globally. IDC has calculated the emission reduction by using its own figures relating to the operation of on-prem servers and cloud data centers and comparing them with figures and analyses from other companies.
Many servers that are out at companies are also not used. Analyzes done by Oracle show that "30 percent of all servers that are on-prem, in the companies' own data rooms, are "zombie" servers that have no workload, but still use electricity."
