Best Cloud for JD Edwards: AWS vs Azure vs Oracle | What You Need to Know

Transcript:
Cloud is in one size fits all, and it really changes depending on what you're running, what you're looking for, and something that we said earlier of you have to look in for.You have to figure out what you want to accomplish, what you're running, what your [...0.5s] real goals are [...0.6s] before you can make a decision like this fighter is right for JD Edwards, AWS, Azure, and Oracle Cloud.Are you choosing based on a real strategy or just what your competitors are doing [...0.6s] today or not your grandpa's JD Edwards?I sit down with cloud experts, Stuart Peterman, to help you confidently navigate public cloud choices for ERP. By the end, you'll have a decision making framework that protects performance, cost, and compliance. [...4.3s]Hello everyone, welcome back to not your grandpa's JD Edwards. I'm your host Nate Bushfield, and this episode is a must listen if you're even thinking about moving JD Edwards to the cloud [...0.6s] public loud decisions are high stakes.Pick wrong and you can be stuck with poor performance or even unexpected costs. Today I'm excited to be joined by Stewart Peterman, Enterprise Cloud Executive at ERP Suites. Stewart has helped organizations across industries find the right home for ERP workloads, balancy, performance, cost efficiency and compliance. So still [...0.5s] welcome.First off, how you doing today? I'm doing great, it's great to be back. Thanks again, Nate.Yes, the first reoccurring guest that we've had on the pod so far, gotta get you a nice little hat or a jacket. I'm not sure which way we're gonna go. Maybe we'll be like the yes and no, like you'll get a jacket with a number on it.Who's this say? But for those of you who have not met you yet, can you share a bit about your background and what brought you into the world of cloud and JD Edwards? Yeah, absolutely. So from the beginning my entire career has been centered around things being hosted in the cloud.My first [...0.7s] couple companies I work for both cloud native applications. I spent quite a bit of time at Salesforce and, and then moved on to net suite for a period of time.Um, but since moving over into the JD Edwards ecosystem, my [...0.6s] work has been primarily around getting on premise customers into the public cloud, [...0.8s] whether that the Oracle infrastructure, Amazon Web Services, or Microsoft Azure. Those are the primary three that I've really helped customers migrate over to.But [...0.5s] now I'm here, I am happy to be the only recurring guest. It's certainly a point of pride, and I I, I am actually now looking forward to the jacket, so if I don't get it, I will be disappointed.Haha, well, I can't promise anything. It might just be a pen who's to say. I'm sure we'll get there one day, but let's get right into it. With so many options out there, taking a cloud platform can feel like a [...0.6s] spinning wheel. You know, [...0.6s] what do you think can, or what do you think?So many companies feel stuck or overwhelmed when trying to pick a cloud provider for JD Edwards. Yeah I mean, [...1.5s] really it is not a straightforward, [...0.6s] uh, set of [...1.1s] products, services or even platforms as a whole.It is [...0.5s] very difficult to understand, especially when you dive into each individual cloud platform, what they offer, what they will cost, what will be impacted from a, let's say, through putter latency perspective.Um, so I don't blame any company for being [...0.9s] confused and thinking how do I even approach this? Uh, which, you know, is one reason why I would say us as an organization [...0.6s] are, are in business.I, I think we offer unique insight, and that's why people like myself and Charles Anderson can weigh in on those things and help companies understand objectively where [...1.0s] their workloads fit best from every single standpoint.Yeah, and Charles Anderson obviously a well known player in this space, all knowing being some column into this company, so definitely a great reference there. But what are a few of the most common mistakes or misconceptions you see when companies approach the decision? [...1.2s]Yeah, so I think first and foremost, although I [...0.5s] feel very strongly that this should not be your primary concern is cost. How do you even understand what you will pay in a particular cloud platform?Um you know, there are [...1.1s] certain platforms that are much more straightforward in their cost than others. I think [...0.6s] for talking about an objective comparison here, I think Ocis cost is far more upfront and straightforward.You can go on their website and actually plug in the various sizing criteria, [...0.6s] CPU, memory, and things like that and find out exactly what it's gonna cost you, at least with a, [...0.7s] you know, plus minus [...0.5s] deviation that is [...0.9s] pretty minimal.But [...0.9s] when you jump into a cloud platform as mature and advanced as AWS, [...0.5s] you know, you can run into [...0.9s] three different subsets, [...0.6s] um, EC, two, you know, land [...0.5s] ECS, and then within that you have a million different pricing schemes within each one. Um.So it can be extremely difficult to understand. And that's not even talking about let's say I exceed a certain threshold that I was not supposed to or my data egress is past the acceptable balance for the month that I'm in. Um, it can be extremely daunting for a company.Then, of course, you have everything from the performance or integration of third party applications.All of those things [...0.7s] make up an extremely complicated ecosystem, and it's hard enough to understand that within the context of your own organization, let alone what it's gonna look like within a public cloud platform that you're not as familiar with. [...1.0s] Right?And I will say, you know, coming from Indiana University, we love when people are never daunted, you know, and that's the main thing that we care about is never being daunted.It's working that in, huh yeah, you have to work it in. I mean, come on, [...1.5s] but when cloud decisions go sideways, what kind of problems typically show up first? Yeah, and, and, you know, I'll, I'll kind of talk out of both sides of my mouth here, unfortunately.But [...0.5s] the first thing that I typically see despite this [...0.8s] being my strong opinion that this should never be your primary concern is the first thing I see it hit is a company's pocketbook.Um you know, if you don't fully understand the restrictions that a particular cloud platform may have, and I mentioned a few of them earlier, one of them being data egress.If, if you are a company that your ingress egress is higher than average, you may actually get hit with pretty significant fees. Or let's say on a particular month you have a lot of incoming or outbound traffic, you may actually get [...0.7s] a pretty hefty Bill at the end of that month.Uh, so understanding what sort of restrictions and then [...1.0s] when it comes to things like higher performance needs, those companies could potentially hit you with a, an overage fee that might [...0.9s] make your eyes water by the end of the month.Um, [...0.7s] the second one is usually around security. So, you know, [...0.7s] when it comes to [...1.1s] public cloud platforms, they all tout a shared responsibility model and some companies don't always understand where the clouds responsibility on security ends and theirs begins.So there can be gaps and that can take the form of things like, you know, misconfigured access controls or maybe exposed data. Um. And that can be [...0.8s] a huge concern for company. So it's really, really important for them to understand where that shared responsibility model ends. Um.The next we would see is typically performance. You know, if not configured correctly, you can experience stuff like latency, [...0.6s] I don't know, misconfigured low balancers under provision services, and that can affect performance.So the last thing you want is for your end users when you migrate to a public cloud to start to say, wow, you know, this is very slow and I, I can't run the reports that I need to run, right? You know, this takes [...0.8s] 15 seconds longer than it took before.Really the goal of any organization should be that there end users don't know the difference [...0.5s] between their on prem setup and a public cloud migration. Uh. And then the last that I'll typically run into is, is stuff with integrations. You know, integration failures can be a huge deal with an organization. Um.Sometimes companies have legacy applications that they don't know how well they'll play in the cloud, or maybe they don't realize how systems are gonna get kind of talk to each other in the public clouds.They're hit with unexpected surprises and those are very unwelcome surprises when it comes to integration of third party applications that are pivotal to a businesses everyday sort of functions [...1.5s] sees.I never really thought of it like that, obviously the pocketbook, everybody really thinks about that, but [...0.6s] going a little bit past it, I mean, jeez, there's, there's a lot of mistakes.There's a lot of [...0.5s] reasons why people would really be scared to move to the cloud or move to a certain [...0.6s] provider. Um, so thank you for [...0.8s] breaking that down a little bit, but to break down something else for our listeners, it's not just about brand names. Each cloud has its own strength.So when you're evaluating AWS, [...0.5s] Azure, and Oracle Cloud, what are the key technical or even strategic criteria you look for?Yeah, well, uh, Nate, I could [...0.8s] dive into this [...0.6s] and talk about it for hours on end, but I know this is a limited amount of time we have on this podcast, so I'll keep it fairly simple.Uh you know, first and foremost, as a company, and, and like you mentioned earlier, [...0.6s] you need to understand and assess your own internal workloads.Some workloads just perform better or make more sense in one cloud platform over another. And that can be because of the pricing model, it can be because of the ecosystem capabilities of that particular platform.It can even get down to things like the architecture of those specific workloads or maybe compliance for needs that you have as an organization. So if we're talking at a high level here, [...1.1s] OCI in short is optimized for running Oracle database, you know, it's optimized for running Oracle workloads.It also has really, really advantageous data egress [...0.5s] policies. I believe they're 10 terabytes per month for free versus the other two which is 100 gigs per month. Um, but, you know, Windows [...0.6s] works really well or dot network lows. They have a deeder deeper native support on Azure.So, you know, [...0.9s] when you're looking at those, you're looking at your, your workloads.As a company, you need to assess. Okay, I am a heavily licensed Microsoft shop that should play into your decision making when you're looking at a public cloud. Um, [...0.8s] it's also worth noting that Windows has a really strong hybrid cloud offering.Uh, things like Azure Arc, you know, those are really advantageous for a company that wants to approach it either in phases which would require a hybrid cloud approach, or they will be hybrid forever because of security and compliance needs.Um, [...0.5s] AWS, everyone knows it has the largest and most mature ecosystem on the public cloud market.Their third party integration capabilities are extremely strong. Um, they also really, really good from the app development perspective. So like things like land or I think Dynamo DP, you know, container tooling, all of those things are best in class services.So when you're, when you're a company looking at what you should, [...1.5s] what you should do from a public cloud perspective, it is very important to look inward.First assess your own internal ecosystem, your own internal workloads, and then say, okay, well, [...0.5s] you know, these fit better with this particular platform, but these may fit better with a different. And [...1.2s] in those cases, you can even look into potentially hosting on two different platforms.I know Oracle and Windows have an extremely strong partnership that they've developed over the past few years, so those things are also possible. [...1.0s] But, [...0.7s] you know, it's a really complicated discussion for you to have with your own internal staff, your team.And it's, it's something you should never take light. You should really consider it before you make a move. And it should never be because you want to quote unquote, just modern. It also should never be just because you wanna save money. So there it's a multifaceted approach. [...1.1s]Yeah, no, no matter what direction you go, gotta make sure that aligns up with what you really need. The end of the day, that's all we can really say for our customers is to make sure that they're making the right move for them.But how do these platforms stack up in areas like ERP, workload optimizations, cost transparency, data transfer fees, and even support for automation or AI?Yeah, so, you know, all, uh, I, I covered a little bit of it already, but I'll, I'll talk about it in a little more detail from data transfer fees. You know, [...0.8s] this is no bias, we're making an objective comparison.The key winner in that argument is Oracle cloud infrastructure with their data egress fees. You know, [...0.8s] you will just be much better off from an ingress egress perspective. They also, I believe, have if it's in the same availability domain.So let's say those [...1.1s] egress transactions are happening in Ashburn, Virginia and only in Ashburn or, I don't know, only in San Jose. There is no cost tied to that.So [...0.8s] it's very clear that Oracle has made very [...0.7s] strong pricing concessions in order to steal market share away from the other two who are the bigger players in the space and frankly, uh, don't have to make the same concessions.Um, so, you know, it's not always the best fit to go to OCI, but if you're looking at it from a pricing standpoint, OCI typically has much more advantageous pricing.Also from the compute and storage side of things, it's much, much cheaper to go to OCI. Um, [...0.8s] but, you know, [...0.7s] from a, [...0.6s] from a workload optimization perspective, you know, a lot of it also has to do with the database that you're running on.Database plays a huge role within [...0.5s] whether you should [...0.5s] migrate to a specific cloud platform or not. You know, whether you're on Oracle database, equal server database or maybe you're running JD Edwards on like IBM TV two that will also play a huge factor in where you should go, if anywhere at all. Um.So [...0.7s] from that standpoint, Oracle is kind of the clear winner from a data in, in grassy dress sort of perspective.Um, from a cost transparency perspective, I would also say and not to sound biased, but Oracle is more transparent from that perspective, although [...1.3s] it's not for lack of effort that AWS is, is not transparent.It's just they have the most complex offering. How, you know, how can you be as simple as an OCI when, [...0.7s] you know, even from the start you have to choose between [...0.6s] ECS, EC two and Lambda, and then all those things have completely different pricing structures within them.Um, so, you know, although AWS may be less transparent, they do have a more broad and complex offering.So, you know, there are given takes on each side, [...0.5s] right, exactly. And at the end of the day, [...0.7s] I, I know you, you wanna seem not as biased, and you're not seem seemed biased at all. Don't worry about that, but we're just, we're just trying to give the actual facts and the actual information.And at the end of the day, like [...0.6s] if it is more complex, it's not that it's less transparent. It just might be a little bit harder to really find what you're looking for in terms of costs, in terms of data transfer fees, in terms of automation. Um.So [...0.6s] more straightforward you can be, I mean, and more straightforward a company is just gonna be easier for the common person to really understand what they're gonna get from some of these cloud offerings. But what's different [...1.2s] when JD Edwards is in the mix versus other enterprise systems?Yeah, that's another one that I'm gonna have to try to keep [...0.9s] fairly [...1.3s] concise in short, because [...0.7s] Gabe Edwards is a, it's a very [...0.5s] mature ERP system and it's been in the market for a really long time.And [...0.7s] with that comes really deep industry specific functionality. You know, it also comes with [...1.3s] high customizations.There are companies that have customized their JD Edwards to where it does not look anything like a modern JD Edwards environment. Um, [...0.6s] and that can cause [...0.5s] a lot of potential problems if you are then trying to migrate to the cloud.I, you know, a big strategy I've seen a lot lately is because of the high customized nature of some people's JD Edwards environment. They choose to go back to vanilla. And that is a really [...0.7s] cool, interesting and strong approach to a cloud migration as well.Um, because, you know, whereas a lot of companies have those customizations that help them get their everyday jobs done, the newer versions or the newer editions tools releases of JD Edwards have things like [...0.6s] Udos or Udos, I don't want to upset anyone, [...1.2s] or orchestrations. [...1.0s]Orchestrations can take, you know, 45 click processes down to three click processes. And there are a lot of people at [...0.8s] ERP Suites that know a lot [...0.5s] of, you know, [...0.7s] first hand use cases where they've done those things.Whereas [...0.8s] before that, there was a, there were spider webs of custom configurations that would usually do that for an organization.So [...1.1s] it's interesting to see how JD Edwards has evolved. And of course, that has a huge impact on what public cloud platform you would choose, if any at all. If it's a hybrid approach, if it's two separate clouds.So, [...0.8s] you know, those things are, are [...0.7s] huge considerations when you're talking about your JD Edwards in the cloud, but also [...0.6s] the database.And I mentioned this a little bit earlier, but the database that you currently run [...0.9s] has a huge impact on [...0.5s] what you would do. I mean, it can cause you to have to replatform in some cases, um, which, you know, is a much more complicated process.Um, so whether you're on Oracle Database, which obviously would run [...0.6s] better in the Oracle Cloud or Sequel Server database, which, you know, [...0.8s] actually it's based on the Oracle and Microsoft partnership, does run pretty well in the Oracle cloud as well, but, um you know, [...0.5s] traditionally would work better in, in Microsoft Azure. And then you have IBM DB two which would require a total reply form.So, [...0.6s] you know, if you're running off of an IBM box, [...0.9s] you know, that is something that you would absolutely have to do. So it's [...0.6s] whether you're running on one versus the other totally changes your approach [...0.9s] exactly.Cloud is in one size fits all and it really changes depending on what you're running, what you're looking for.And so that we said earlier, you have to look in for, you have to figure out what you want to accomplish, what you're running, what your real goals are [...0.6s] before you can make a decision like this.We also had Mo on the pod not too long ago talk about automations. He is definitely one of those people that knows orchestrations more than anyone else, um, at least in this industry.But, yeah, speaking of industry, let's talk about how industry contacts shapes [...0.7s] cloud strategy. So what trends are you seen in cloud adoption by industry, like say [...0.6s] manufacturing versus, like healthcare versus retail?Yeah, that's actually a great question. Um you know, [...0.5s] I have to say I, I do quite a bit of market research, but a lot of what I talk about is, is based on my personal experience.Um, [...0.7s] we'll start with, let's say financial services. So from financial services, I kind of see medium to high adoption. They're a bit cautious within that industry. Uh, I'm seeing a lot of hybrid deployments because of, of course, a lot of those financial institutions have, uh, regulations that they are, uh you know, very concerned with on a day to day basis.So, you know, they will in some cases keep their, um you know, core financial systems on premise, but let's say move some other applications into the cloud or other workloads into the clone.Um, [...0.6s] let's see healthcare, it's kind of medium, uh, again cautious similar to financial services, medium mainly due to the telehealth praise. You know, a lot of people are, [...0.6s] you know, using apps now to get, [...0.6s] uh, prescriptions, so they have to then have cloud based infrastructure to some degree.But then of course, they're cautious because Hippo compliances is pretty stringent. Um, data privacy within the healthcare space is very stringent. You need to make sure that that poor [...0.5s] data does not ever get risk [...0.6s] to be exposed [...0.6s] to any potential malicious actors. Um.If we're talking about manufacturing, which, you know, if we're talking JD Edwards, we're talking manufacturing, uh yeah, it's growing really quickly and that's mainly due to the need for stuff like internet of things and predictive maintenance for those big machines that are manufacturing those tiny little widgets that are being put in a box and sent to you. Um.Some of the supply chain optimization [...0.5s] solutions in the public cloud are also really strong. So [...0.5s] a lot of manufacturing companies are looking to gain that little edge versus their competition. And, you know, [...0.8s] not in all, but in some cases manufacturing companies also were operating on thinner margins.So if they can get a little bit more out of, out of those [...0.8s] profit margin and they can, they can, [...0.6s] you know, eat out a little bit more based on a little more efficiency, they're looking into that because they're doing it at massive scale [...1.8s] for talking stuff like retail and e commerce. You know, [...0.8s] retail and e commerce is [...0.6s] highly cloud native.So, you know, [...1.3s] most of the e commerce systems are cloud native at this stage in development. Um. There are also really [...0.5s] strong needs from e commerce companies [...0.5s] based on seasonal body habits.You know, Black Friday, [...0.6s] your company is gonna get [...0.8s] 50 times the revenue and therefore need 50 times the infrastructure capability on that particular day or week. Um. Then I guess we're talking, [...0.8s] let's say, like technology and SAS, obviously that is gonna be very highly cloud native.So those companies, their cloud adoption is, is and has always been [...0.9s] of kind of a high [...0.5s] leading sort of nature. Of course, really appreciate your insight there. But how do you things like regulatory compliance, legacy, infrastructure, even hybrid needs factor into cloud selection?Yeah. So I guess if we're talking about, um, [...0.9s] a hybrid sort of [...0.8s] conversation that you and your company are having internally, [...0.6s] um, there are a lot of different reasons why that might be the case. I've talked already about maybe some government compliance concerns, but, you know there are others.Let's say you don't wanna go all in on public lab, but you still wanna modernize to some degree. And maybe that's because you don't have the budget to go, you know full on into the public cloud at this stage.Um, or maybe you want [...0.9s] the flexibility of certain [...0.5s] public cloud [...0.6s] services and products for certain workloads, uh, but you still want the control and then the performance of your own permanent structure. You may wanna look into a hybrid cloud sort of setup.And, you know there is a lot of [...0.6s] consideration that goes into that as well. I mean if you can imagine everything that we talked about so far, imagine you're not even just dealing with one specific public cloud provider, you're dealing with two or you're dealing with your on prem infrastructure and a public cloud provider.There's a lot that goes into that, so there's a lot that you really need to consider there. Um, [...0.5s] but then, you know of course, as I mentioned a little bit earlier, [...0.5s] you know you're in healthcare, you're in finance, or you have government contracts or affiliations with your organization.You know that may be another big reason why you wanna keep some of those, let's say core financial systems on premise and then migrate maybe analytics or customer applications over into the cloud.So, you know it is a very complicated discussion. It's really good to have it early and often, and it's good to understand why that might be, [...0.6s] um, something that could hinder or help your ability to go into the public cloud.You know it's good to have someone in your organization or even someone outside of your organization that can help you look more deeply into that from an internal perspective, [...0.7s] right?Oh, I really do appreciate you coming on stew. I mean a lot of this stuff even sends me for a loop with, especially when you're talking about cloud. I mean that's, that's a little bit of the out of the realm for me, but if you're listening to this and thinking we need to revisit our cloud strategy, now's a great time to do it. Head over to ERP.Streets. Com and take the free cloud assessment. They'll help you figure out which provider lines best with your business and ERP goals. Or just reach out, [...0.5s] stew and the rest of the ERP Suites team would love to help you get it right the first time.But that's a wrap for this episode of not your Grandpa's JD Edwards. Huge shout out to stew [...0.6s] for joining us and sharing so many insights. If this helped clarify your cloud thinking, subscribe, leave a review and share with your leadership team or it group until next time. Ask smart questions, challenge the status quo, and keep pushing JD Edwards into the future. [...3.9s]