Off-shore Cloud solution helped the business globalise: Orica

Adopting a Cloud solution based overseas enabled Orica to globalise, accoding to global IT infrastructure and operations manager, Hubert van Dalen.

The mining gear provider was looking to move to a Cloud based automation solution as part of a push to improve its IT performance.

“We had a system in Australia that was relatively mature and built over the last 15 years, but the other regions did not want to use it and complained that it was too slow,” Dalen said.

After that, Dalen said he began to look at an alternative platform to improve the company’s IT processes.

Gartner’s models were used to see which on-premise and Cloud based models were available, as well as the advantages and disadvantages of each one, and then alternative Cloud platforms were investigated.

After using ServiceNow, an IT service management software provider, for an implementation with GlobalFoundaries, an independent semiconductor foundry, Dalen said the decision was made to use the solution for Orica.

“For that price point and the standardisation that would come with it, we felt we would make a big leap,” he said.

Going global

Dalen said the decision to go with ServiceNow was closely connected with Orica’s decision to globalise last year.

“The solution would not run from Australia, which would help us with a cultural change,” he said.

“This would signal that the organisation is changing and all the decisions are not coming just from Australia, and that we are doing things globally.”

Dalen adds that company only had a short time frame to move onto the new platform, so negotiations with ServiceNow were carried out quickly.

“The initial development was ready in a few days, and we went live with the first processes this year,” he said.

Patrick Budmar covers consumer and enterprise technology breaking news for IDG Communications. Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_budmar.