Case Study ► Mining
From ground to cloud: How NACG leveraged cloud technology for scalable growth
Overview
To advise earthworks specialist North American Construction Group (NACG), Syntax worked closely with Oracle to choreograph a migration to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), leading a complex JD Edwards (JDE) application and infrastructure transformation that encompassed both a primary JDE environment and a separate JDE implementation for a recent acquisition. The migrations removed obstacles to growth, giving NACG access to infrastructure and platform capabilities to scale quickly and securely.
Customer Profile
Name: North American Construction Group
Location: Acheson, Alberta Canada
Industry: Heavy Construction & Mining
60+
Heavy Construction & Mining
Largest
Independently-owned heavy construction and mining fleet in Canada
Zero
Data integrity issues in the transformation
Challenge
With over 60 years of earthworks experience, NACG operates one of North America’s largest fleets of haul trucks, shovels, and mining equipment. NACG was looking to modernize its JDE legacy platform from a third-party hosted IBM i Power Systems (AS/400) environment to a modern hyperscaler platform. NACG’s legacy JDE platform did not interoperate or integrate easily with other systems, and finding the talent to maintain the technology was a growing challenge. Moving to OCI, NACG could shift to managed infrastructure and technology services to reduce costs and take advantage of enhanced security and disaster recovery for its 24/7 operations. Syntax, an Oracle Strategic Managed Service Provider (SMSP), brought a broad knowledge of both OCI and IBM i Series to complete the migration and support the newly migrated JDE environments, reducing risk and ensuring a successful transformation.
– Modernize to eliminate dependence on a dwindling skill set.
– Reduce cost by shifting to scalable infrastructure and technology managed services.
– Take advantage of hyperscaler versatility to grow with the business.
– Partner with a firm that bridges expertise across JDE, IBM i Series, and OCI systems inherited from the merger.
– Ensuring a seamless transition to the new platform required careful planning and execution.
Approach + Solution
Transforming NACG’s ERP infrastructure required significant changes to the JD Edwards environment, including a database migration, an operating system change, and a JD Edwards Tools release upgrade to achieve desired business outcomes. The methodology to migrate the solution thus required careful orchestration, technical expertise, and project management experience.
A well-choreographed transition
Syntax Professional Services held a NACG planning session to validate assumptions in the statement of work, reviewing timeline and responsibilities to ensure alignment. Syntax designed and provisioned a target landing architecture on OCI to support both JD Edwards estates and take advantage of the proximity of OCI data centers near each user base. Older operating systems that were no longer supported, such as Windows 2008, were addressed as part of the supported architecture, and the latest JD Edwards Tools Release was installed on the OCI instance. Syntax developed a comprehensive methodology to migrate JD Edwards data across disparate database platforms. NACG had many customized indexes built directly on the AS/400, rather than in JD Edwards. Because recreating so many indexes would have added overhead and load to the Oracle Database, Syntax worked with NACG to identify the high use/high value indexes to recreate.
Enhanced agility and protection
NACG immediately benefitted from the new platform’s scalability, one of the primary advantages of OCI vs. an on-premises system. Instead of manual failover across servers, OCI provides advanced recovery capabilities on demand at a lower cost, while also improving both the recovery time objective (RTO) and recovery point objective (RPO). Syntax’s security program, which includes both managed endpoint and vulnerability solutions managed by a 24/7 security operations center (SOC), provides NACG with best practice cyber security, a built-in compliance program, and lower risk.
Managed services with visibility
Syntax’s migrate-to-manage approach ensures that NACG’s systems are manageable, high performing, and highly available, with comprehensive proactive monitoring. Syntax manages NACG’s infrastructure—business continuity planning, disaster recovery, performance, and availability—as well as technology—the JD Edwards foundational application technology (CNC) database, middleware, and tools releases. Syntax also plays a critical role in managing consumption through its FinOps program by consistently monitoring and turning off systems that are not being used to avoid unnecessary charges. Through the Syntax Customer Experience Hub (CxHub), NACG has visibility into its cloud environment 24/7, including availability, performance, security, and service management data.
“NACG has more than doubled our revenue in the last few years. The flexibility to adapt and grow our cloud-based JD Edwards environment allows our business to grow more quickly. Syntax understood both ends of the infrastructure spectrum—our old IBM i Series (AS/400) environment and the new Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI)—to effectively orchestrate the transition. With Syntax managing the infrastructure and technology, I trust that we are in good hands.”
– Nathan Okrainetz,
Business Solutions Manager, NAC
Results
NACG can easily scale according to the needs of the business, with the most mission-critical application – JD Edwards – running on a fully managed, modern cloud platform. Syntax continues to support NACG’s business growth and related acquisitions, providing architecture advisory services to facilitate interoperability and ensuring that NACG always has the technical and functional resources it needs to scale its systems.
Transforming infrastructure for growth
• Internal shift from data center operation to facilitating business growth
• Removed dwindling AS/400 skill set as a staffing obstacle
• Cost savings in equipment, staff, and data center operations
• 80%+ improvements in RTO and RPO
• 24/7 visibility into system performance, availability, security, and service
management metrics
