With a relatively small Oracle database footprint but some key business needs, SEFE was looking for a solution that would offer high availability and data recovery without a steep price tag.
Oracle Database@Azure gave the organization the capabilities it needed in a compact, cost-efficient form factor.
Halfway through migrating its 17 applications and 37 environments, SEFE is already seeing performance improvements of an average of 10%.
Energy security and decarbonization are driving factors for international energy company SEFE, which stands for Securing Energy for Europe. Serving more than 50,00 customers across Europe, SEFE plays a critical role in ensuring energy resilience while leading the transition to cleaner energy sources.
The organization approaches its technology in much the same way, ensuring that the needs of today are met while accommodating what the future may hold—all while being as efficient and energy-conscious as possible.
That’s why it made sense to migrate their IT environment to the cloud and modernize their data by implementing Oracle Database@Azure.
“Moving to Azure was about efficiency,” says Randy Moore, Executive Vice President of IT Infrastructure at SEFE. “Within the Azure datacenters, you get a lot more electrical and cooling efficiency than we could do on our own.”
Like most organizations, Moore says SEFE started thinking about a cloud transition when its on-premises hardware was nearing end of life and they needed to do upgrades, which was looking to be quite expensive. SEFE was looking for a solution that would meet its requirements for high availability and disaster recovery without a high price tag. With critical systems running on aging infrastructure, SEFE needed to act fast to avoid service interruptions and escalating costs. Oracle Database@Azure could meet both, with high availability and the flexibility that comes with it, as well as the ability to fail over to another region if needed.
“I have a big responsibility around data recovery and business continuity and the capabilities I’m getting in such a compact cost-efficient form factor is helping me advance and modernize our whole data recovery approach,” Moore says.
Moore says his team did a full business case and found that they would be net positive over a five-year period if they made the switch. They worked closely with the Oracle team to structure their licensing and get just what they needed.
The team then ran a proof of concept with two applications. They provisioned their environments in Oracle Database@Azure, moved them over, and then rolled them back—taking note of any learnings. With confidence in the process, they then moved over about 10 non-production environments before moving over the first production environment.
They are now halfway through their full migration and Moore says everything is running faster than it was on premises, a testament to how well the databases are running in Oracle Database@Azure. On average, applications are seeing about 10% better performance, as well as consistent low latency.
“Everybody’s thrilled with the performance,” Moore says. “And we’re slightly ahead on our business case.”
“Moving to Azure was about efficiency. Within the Azure datacenters, you get a lot more electrical and cooling efficiency than we could do on our own.”
Randy Moore, Executive Vice President of IT Infrastructure, SEFE
Not only did the migration avoid costly infrastructure upgrades, but it’s also already exceeding ROI projections—delivering performance improvements while advancing SEFE’s broader digital transformation goals.
The move to Oracle Database@Azure comes amid a “tremendous transformation program” technologically, Moore says. The organization moved to Office 365 last year, created a new Azure Active Directory and Entra environment, and connected that into legacy environments to be fully cloud joined.
“This gives us a brand new identity that builds for the future while having a cloud-based domain,” Moore says. “We’re a Microsoft first sort of organization. We look to Microsoft and their technology.”
Moore says SEFE is having conversations about how to utilize AI going forward and anticipates that Azure will be a part of that future, as well. With Azure, SEFE has unlocked a platform for experimentation and innovation—enabling development teams to iterate faster and deploy smarter.
“We see Azure as a competitive advantage,” he says. “Especially when you can build automated environments that allow development teams to very quickly try things and spin things up. The cloud gives us a really big capability and innovation and efficiencies that will help drive our company forward.”
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