The cloud is a buzzword that comes up in almost every company these days. However, moving to the cloud can be easier said than done. Many companies have reasons for staying away from the cloud, while others know that the cloud is their future but are unsure and apprehensive to take the first step. The latter is the case for Vaughn Construction, a Texas-based commercial general contractor and construction manager with over 1,000 employees.

When Vaughn saw the hardware for their HR, accounting, and document management systems needed a refresh, they viewed it as an opportunity to dip their toes into the cloud. Oracle’s unique ability to offer large or small customers an end-to-end support in their cloud journey was exactly what Vaughn was looking for, and the two teams worked together to make Vaughn’s first cloud migration a successful one.

Vaughn Construction’s company philosophy is to deliver projects in a family atmosphere, and Vaughn’s migration to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) was no exception. Oracle and Vaughn created a family atmosphere between their teams and continue to be committed to the success of the other.

“Oracle was committed to the end result, not a number of consulting hours,” said Vaughn Construction’s director of information systems.

Vaughn’s requirements

Often the case when hosting in on-premises data centers, Vaughn Construction had applications due for a hardware refresh. However, to move to the cloud, Vaughn needed to be 100% confident in the infrastructure, price, performance, and migration plan. Another major emphasis included backups and their retention policies—mission critical back-office applications. Oracle kept these considerations in mind and presented a proposal that they felt checked all boxes for Vaughn’s HR application, which was selected to migrate first. Vaughn was impressed with the plan, but as Oracle often tells customers, they told Vaughn, “Don’t take our word for it. Let us get your hands on OCI and prove this.” Vaughn was given an OCI environment and a formal pilot to production ensued.

The pilot

The pilot had the goal of proving the price and performance of OCI’s infrastructure but also proving the promise of the OCI account team that they would help Vaughn through the process. This promise included OCI onboarding sessions, technical deep dives, and hands-on working sessions. Over the next months, the teams set up Vaughn’s infrastructure, which consisted of Windows virtual machines (VMs) fronted by a load balancer, SQL server, and vast storage from OCI Block and Object Storage services.

Challenges

Before the application was migrated, Vaughn’s VMs needed to be converted from VHDX to an OCI-compatible image. To aid in this process, the Oracle team contacted their partner ZConverter, who provide next-generation backup, recovery, and migration as a service. Traditional backup and migration tools require the same source and target systems, which can be troublesome in the cloud where you often avoid controlling the hypervisor. ZConverter eliminates this issue by allowing an any-to-any migration through their source-agnostic ZIA backup format. Using this system, Vaughn migrated their VMs after just two sessions: One for planning and one for migration.

The migrated application still needs to communicate with Vaughn’s data center, so the VPN bandwidth between OCI and their on-prem network was another focus. After migration, it was determined the VPN’s bandwidth was not enough for the HR application. Oracle and Vaughn quickly worked together with Vaughn’s network provider to coordinate a FastConnect connection. The correct parameters and plan were put into place, and the FastConnect was implemented to provide dedicated bandwidth between OCI and Vaughn’s data center.

“Oracle didn’t make us work through resellers or overseas ‘tech support.’ We worked directly with Oracle engineers,” said Vaughn Construction’s director of information systems.

The outcome

This venture was Vaughn’s first time in any cloud, so the beginning had a learning curve. However, Oracle provided Vaughn with the proper knowledge, tools, and resources to be successful. When problems arose, Oracle proved that they could provide pointed support. As a result, Vaughn’s HR application is up and running in OCI. Oracle not only provided help needed but also coached Vaughn throughout the migration. Vaughn can now work on their cloud environment autonomously, where they were new to cloud a few months ago.

Oracle’s price and performance also shone through. Vaughn saw firsthand the price, performance, and capabilities of OCI the account team promised. They also implemented backup and retention policies that meet company requirements, and a backup and restore plan has been vetted and put into place.

Oracle’s end-to-end support

The way Oracle’s Gen 2 Cloud was architected and OCI’s position in the market allows Oracle to be aggressive with pricing and the support that they give to customers. This aspect of OCI doesn’t get talked about enough. Every OCI customer gets a dedicated account team, consisting of sales and engineers throughout the entire sales cycle. This account team can also loop in over 3,000 cloud engineers and architects spread throughout the world that cover every technology imaginable. Oracle has also rolled out Oracle Cloud Lift services to minimize the cost and effort of migrations. Lastly, Oracle Support is 100% included with any OCI pricing you see. OCI 24/7 support isn’t a yearly cost or a percentage of your bill—it’s completely free.

What’s next for Vaughn?

Oracle and Vaughn have continued their cadence calls, and this story is long from over. With the increased bandwidth provided by FastConnect, Vaughn is evaluating if they can eliminate the need for virtual desktops. After this evaluation, the teams can begin constructing a plan to move the accounting and document management systems to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

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