Until its sale to BlueScope, Orrcon’s business applications were hosted and managed from Hills’ data centre. They relied on Hills for both their JD Edwards ERP (which managed their manufacturing and distribution functions) and their RFgen Warehousing and Mobility software.
An agreement negotiated at the time of the purchase meant that Hills continued to host and support Orrcon’s applications until early 2016, giving BlueScope time to seek an alternative hosting arrangement. In 2015 the decision was made to migrate all of Orrcon’s business applications from the Hills’ data centre, and carry out a long overdue upgrade of their aging version of the JD Edwards ERP.
While BlueScope had the option to host Orrcon’s solutions in their own data centre, Larry Howard, the company’s CIO, stood firmly behind a strategy which would see a shift to outsourcing a major part of IT solutions for the newly acquired Orrcon Steel business.
“The steel sector has been under pressure, so the business was looking closely at costs,” said Ian McInerney, BlueScope’s Business Systems Lead – Orrcon. “The expense of hosting in-house, and then hiring the expertise we’d need to support JD Edwards and RFgen especially, just didn’t stack up. External hosting was the obvious solution.”