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IFFCO Boosts IT Performance and Innovates Agriculture with Oracle Cloud
Technology Category
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Backup & Recovery
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing
Applicable Industries
- Agriculture
- E-Commerce
Applicable Functions
- Procurement
- Product Research & Development
Use Cases
- Construction Management
- Infrastructure Inspection
Services
- Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
- System Integration
The Challenge
Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative Ltd. (IFFCO), the world’s largest manufacturer and marketer of fertilizers in the cooperative sector, was facing several challenges in its quest to innovate and improve the livelihood of farmers in India. The organization had recently launched a new product, nano urea, which brought new demands to IFFCO’s cloud computing needs. The organization needed a reliable cloud vendor to support the processes of 6–7 new manufacturing plants during the upcoming year, enhancing its production capability 300–350 million bottles of nano urea to meet increasing demand. IFFCO’s cloud adoption was driven by a need to innovate. The organization wanted capabilities for a dynamic business that can adapt to the changing needs of the market while growing fast. However, it was inhibited by rigid on-premises data center deployments and the overhead of maintaining legacy systems. IFFCO wanted to apply the elasticity and availability of cloud for improving overall performance of applications at lowest possible operational overhead. Lastly, IFFCO needed to provide the benefits of its technology to all its stakeholders, including employees, members, transporters, and farmers, some of whom have limited literacy. To accommodate all stakeholders, IFFCO wanted to add a voice interface to its applications.
The Customer
Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative Ltd. (IFFCO)
About The Customer
Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative Ltd. (IFFCO) is the world’s largest manufacturer and marketer of fertilizers in the cooperative sector. It serves over 35,000 cooperatives and 55 million farmers across India. IFFCO has five manufacturing plants in India and 19 joints ventures within India and overseas. It has been using Oracle products for decades and using Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) more recently to modernize its IT estate. IFFCO is committed to bringing innovative ideas to market to improve the livelihood of farmers in India. It recently launched a first of its kind nano urea, a portable 500 ml bottled product that replaces 45 kg urea bags, improving crop yields by 8–10%, reducing pesticide and chemical fertilizer use, and mitigating soil erosion.
The Solution
IFFCO has worked with Oracle for more than two decades on its critical applications and databases that enable business activities. All custom applications are deployed on Windows Server 2012 VMs comprising five WebLogic Servers and nine .NET Servers. In addition, IFFCO used IBM AIX P8 machines for running corporate, marketing, and ERP applications. The organization has 100+ applications running on OCI, including Oracle E-Business Suite. IFFCO has replaced on-premises infrastructure with OCI, which provides better availability, security and scalability. IFFCO uses several Oracle products for its business operations, including Oracle E-Business Suite, eVikas CRM, and several other custom applications for procurement, supply chain management, and HR management. The deployment consists of two OCI regions in India: Mumbai and Hyderabad. The cloud deployment is in a hub-and-spoke model. The Mumbai region acts as the hub for all other plant infrastructure. The Mumbai region hub is connected to on-premises infrastructure using FastConnect, which provides low-latency data transfers over a dedicated and secure network path.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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