RPCHosting: Transitioning to the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure

RPC UK has been providing successful Oracle Primavera product solutions to clients in a wide range of industry sectors since 1992. We were one of the first UK partners to transition to the Modernised Oracle PartnerNetwork at the beginning of 2020, having been an Oracle Platinum Partner for some years prior to that. We’re proud to be members of the Oracle Cloud Sell Track and the Oracle License and Hardware Track and have a well-established relationship with Oracle and a proven track record of expertise in developing and implementing project controls solutions using products in the Oracle Primavera toolset.

As part of our full end-to-end lifecycle provision of project controls systems, we offer a complete Oracle Primavera P6 hosted solution to allow customers to access their Oracle Primavera environment from anywhere, at any time – in the field or in the office, with the ability to understand and interrogate schedules whenever you want, wherever you want, using Primavera P6 Visualizer with P6 Web Services Access.

The Hosting service was introduced as a natural extension to our existing solution and service portfolio, and enabled RPC to deliver the complete scope of project controls systems, including implementation, training and Business-as-Usual support.

Why the move to the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure platform?

When we first launched our Hosting service, we utilised the IBM SoftLayer platform. We had explored the first iteration of the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure platform, but its early capabilities fell short of other hosted infrastructure service providers. As time and the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure service progressed, a new iteration was introduced that offered many technical advantages, including automated backup and recovery, a high volume of up-time, improved Service Level Agreements, licensing costs included in the subscription and end-to-end encryption. There were financial benefits to the new platform, too: better technology at a lower cost, a reduction in our monthly support time gained as a result of simpler management and technology processes, and – as a consequence of the reduced load on our support team – greater capacity for evaluating enhancements to the service we would be able to offer.

How DSP helped to drive the project’s success

Transitioning our RPCHosting service and our existing clients to the new Oracle Cloud Infrastructure platform would be a major operation that needed to be completed without interruption or downtime for our clients, and with the confidence that the new platform would be stable and that the transition would be as seamless as possible. Our selected managed service provider, DSP-Explorer were integral to the success of this transition phase and to the architecture of the solution that preceded that.

DSP worked with the RPC technical resource team to fully design, develop and test to solution prior to go-live and they continue to be a key part of our service. DSP provides exceptional support to RPC and this allows us to provide the same level of support to our own customers. Since the deployment of the service, DSP have remained part of our team, supporting us with designing, developing and deploying subsequent system updates and enhancements. They have been fundamental in the success of the transition from platform to platform behind our hosting solution and in the ongoing service that we are able to offer our hosting customers and more.

Benefits of moving to the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure platform

The OCI platform brings multiple benefits for our hosting customers over and above the previous system platform:

• Automated backup and recovery
• High volume of uptime
• Better SLA’s than previous provider
• Licensing included in subscription
• End to end encryption
• Less cost for better technology
• Reduction in support time required

The transition to the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure platform has brought benefits to other areas of RPC’s business, too. Utilising the connection bridge between Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and MS Azure, we are now able to offer a fully hosted remote platform for our training service, with the back end hosted on the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and a remote desktop hosted on Azure, allowing us to deploy the Oracle Primavera P6 application at the front end as a remote app. This has greatly improved our ability to offer online training remotely to customers in any and multiple locations and the connection between the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and MS Azure allows us to offer this as an optional, add-on service to our customers.

The Oracle Cloud Infrastructure platform offers a simple and modern interface, with 100 per cent end-to-end encryption that guarantees a safe and secure environment for both end users and RPC. Clients can have their Oracle Primavera P6 solution implemented faster than ever before on proven Cloud Services technology and without the cost and complexity of deploying a new infrastructure and delivering new IT systems locally. The ‘bring your own licence’-based service allows access to a global network that includes infrastructure, hosting, operating system software and updates, ensuring that customers are never working on out-of-date systems and have scalable memory and storage options and a hosting solution that adapts as their business grows and changes.

Underpinning all of this is the reassuring knowledge that the backend database is supported by Oracle.

We’re proud of the service our RPC Hosting offering presents and grateful for the exceptional work of the DSP team in enabling us to effect a seamless transition for our existing customers and offer an industry-leading cloud hosting solution for the future.