Technology & IT | Sunday 5 January, 2020 3:13 pm |

By moving the company’s IT infrastructure to Microsoft Azure, Al Jomaih Holding and Shell Lubricating Oil Company Limited (JOSLOC), has saved $1 million in hardware investment.

Having Opted for a cloud-based IT infrastructure, JASLOC called upon the expertise of Microsoft Azure to handle the transfer from their on-site datacenter, which had experienced various downtime issues owing to a nearby disaster recovery site. With the business operating round the clock production seven days a week, as well as a sales team working Monday to Sunday, JOSLOC needed to find a solution that improved an already well-oiled machine - which is exactly what the Saudi Arabia-based company did.

Admin and Maintenance Tasks Down 70%

 

JOSLOC awarded the contract to Microsoft Azure after considering other systems on the market and soon SAP ECC6 workloads were run through the platform. This was following a total transfer time of just 72 hours, minimising disruption to the business, ensuring that production and sales-maintained efficiency without missing internal targets. This now allows for JOSLOC to run critical workloads, including enterprise resource planning (ERP), finance, plan maintenance and sales and distribution in SAP ECC6 on Azure’s cloud-based infrastructure with ease.

By working with Cloud4Rain, an Azure-certified member of the Microsoft Partner Network, time spent on SAP administration and maintenance tasks by the JOSLOC team fell by 70%, freeing up more time and resources to focus on new strategies to continue to push the business forward into the future.

Costs Reduced by 18%

On top of that, Thamer Alharbi, president of Microsoft Arabia said: ‘’ JOSLOC has also reduced operational and maintenance costs by 18%. Having already tripled business over the last decade before freeing up resource that was otherwise spent on maintaining previous systems, JOSLOC’s move into cloud hosting signals an exciting time for the business’’.

Because of the initial success of the partnership, JOSLOC is now considering new and exciting ways as to how to build on the relationship with Azure, which includes the intention of upgrading all of the joint venture’s SAP workloads to SAP S/4HANA within the cloud by 2020.

Sultan Hamami, IT Manager at JOLOC, was thrilled with the results of the transfer and is excited to continue the working relationship between Azure and Al Jomaih and Shell Lubricating Oil Company.

He said: “With SAP on Azure, we’ve reduced maintenance and operational costs by 18%, but we’ve also shifted to a more powerful, flexible, and reliable environment with experts working for us on the back end.

“With SAP ECC6 on Azure, we have better hosting options and more tools, such as dashboards to monitor service performance. That gave us the confidence that Azure was the right cloud platform for us.”

Hamimi added: “With Azure, we deliver enhanced services to our business leaders, so we can give them the right information at the right time to make more informed decisions in a challenging market.”

Part of the continued partnership sees JOSLOC considering other potential applications that can be hosted via Azure, such as analytics programmes, AI and Internet of Things (IoT) solutions. All of this is with the end goal of streamlining the business by optimising production time and keeping costs to a minimum, thus increasing company revenue.

“With Microsoft, we have a roadmap with so many options to bring more value to the business,” Hamimi said. “When we calculate the gains we’re going to have in three years’ time, it’s going to be a big win.”

JOSLOC Save $1 Million

In order to achieve the same level of productivity within their original on-site datacenter, JOSLOC would have needed to invest in the region of $1 million in investment in hardware, as well as additional costs in recruiting staff to maintain and operate it. 

The joint venture’s move places the company in a strong position for the decade ahead, in which to continue to build on a highly successful 2010s. With superior technology which opens up new possibilities, allowing the business to dedicate more resource than ever before into devising new and exciting strategies, Al Jomaih Holding and Shell Lubricating Oil Company are set to go from strength to strength.