Supermarket Grupo R Carvalho moves data center to Oracle Cloud
The major Brazilian supermarket chain moves all its critical apps to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, cutting report times 80% and slashing IT overtime.
“We had to take a 32-year history, built on outdated servers, and we managed to move all that to the cloud. It was our big leap in technology. The partnership with Oracle was perfect.”
Business challenges
Centered in Teresina in northeast Brazil, Grupo R Carvalho is one of the region’s largest supermarket chains, formed in 2019 from a division of Grupo Carvalho. The new group has expanded from 22 stores to 29, with major growth ambitions.
One of its biggest challenges was to modernize an outdated on-premises data center. For example, the company had two large servers running very similar applications, yet one ran at 30% capacity and the other at 90%. “I had no way to allocate this resource from one to the other,” says IT Manager Julio Pires, who has nearly three decades of retail experience. Performance also was declining, and the company’s leadership knew they needed to move to cloud infrastructure.
The speed that the company gained with this change to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure was extraordinary. We have grown from there to here, making us really stand out as a big company in the market.
Why Grupo R Carvalho Chose Oracle
Grupo R Carvalho chose Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) based on the trust gained in a previous partnership to implement Oracle databases, and because of Oracle’s reputation in the market for stability and scalability. In three months, the team was able to assemble and test the system, and go into production.
Results
Grupo R Carvalho now has 100% of its IT systems, including critical environments such as sales, ERP, invoices, and billing, running on Oracle Database Cloud Service and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. “I had a report that ran around 42 minutes. It now runs around 6 to 7 minutes,” Pires says. “The gain was extraordinary.”
Adding a server to the data center used to take 30 to 60 days; now the IT team does it in 3 to 5 days.
The company cut by 70% to 80% the overtime needed to maintain servers. This also improved quality of life for the team’s technology professionals, eliminating the need for weekend shifts. With this new dynamic, Grupo R Carvalho gained another essential factor for any company: time. The IT team now focuses more on business challenges than on the technology operation itself.
OCI also helps the organization improve data security while offering greater control over the system. “I have it in my hand,” Pires says. “In one click of my mouse, I can do everything.”
In terms of reliability, Grupo R Carvalho has been running its systems on OCI for almost two years without any technology issues hindering production or operations. This was despite the move coming at a time of significant growth, with sales up 30%.
“The switch to the cloud has enabled us to make technology a point of support for all of the company's decisions,” Pires says.