Building an OCI environment for future growth

Daikin Applied is the world’s leading innovator in heating, ventilation, and air
conditioning (HVAC) products, delivering superior air quality and energy efficiency with innovation in advanced technology, IoT, and next generation compressors. Daikin's parent company, Daikin industries, Ltd. reports revenues over $24 billion and has more than 70,000 employees worldwide, making it the largest HVAC manufacturer in the world.

Oracle’s E-Business Suite (EBS) is the beating heart of Daikin’s business and, until
recently, it relied on a third-party partner to run and manage the mostly on-premise
infrastructure. However, this was costly, challenging to scale, and required a big,
dedicated team to handle while also creating bottlenecks when resources were
stretched. The company decided to plot a pathway to a more sustainable and efficient  future with a smart factory approach.

Daikin asked its existing hosting partner to recommend how best to transform its
enterprise infrastructure and it suggested migrating to a fully managed Oracle Cloud
Infrastructure (OCI) platform. The next step was to find the best strategic IT partner
to help Daikin plan and execute the migration, as well as take care of the ongoing
management and maintenance.

“We wanted to get out of the ownership mindset with all of the associated upfront
investment and transition to a full cloud environment,” explains Sanjay K Pillai, Senior Director IT at Daikin Applied Americas. "We also needed an effective disaster recovery component as that had been sorely lacking.”

Following a comprehensive evaluation, Daikin selected Fujitsu as its OCI partner based
on its extensive knowledge and experience in complex Oracle deployments, as well
as its longstanding relationship with Daikin globally. Fujitsu’s understanding of Oracle
networking, digital core infrastructure, applications, and databases proved crucial in
completing a few months migration to the new cloud environment. 

Now, Fujitsu provides 24/7 workload managed services, database admin services,
and Oracle Management Cloud (OMC) for proactive monitoring, ensuring optimal
availability and performance. It also supports Agile Product Lifecyle Management
(PLM) and Oracle Analytics Cloud (OAC) environments.  

“Fujitsu took ownership of absolutely everything, which helped ensure a seamless
migration.  
Weekly reviews with top delivery leaders kept us on track,” adds Pillai. “I can honestly
say that I have never seen that level of collaboration and accountability with any other
vendor during my career.”  
 

OCI, managed by Fujitsu, now forms the bedrock for Daikin Applied America’s operations, with multiple plants now fully supported around the clock. The solution can scale effortlessly to meet demand and Daikin needn't worry about allocating internal resources to keep things running smoothly. At the same time, proactive monitoring spots issues before they cause problems, always ensuring peak availability.

Following the success of this deployment, Daikin engaged Fujitsu to establish
ServiceNow as its service management platform and introduce service management
after the OCI migration.

This means that the company is well placed to handle future growth, with new disaster
recovery in place to cope with any unforeseen events.

“We can flex up and down as business needs require. We have also been able to
redeploy upwards of 20 employees internally since we no longer need to look after
infrastructure,” concludes Pillai. “Together with Fujitsu, we have built a collaborative
partnership which delivers the results we need to compete and succeed.”