After nearly 30 years running JD Edwards on IBM i, Little Rapids Corporation faced a question familiar to many long-time JD Edwards customers: Why change an environment that still works? The answer wasn’t dissatisfaction with the technology. It was the growing realization that stability alone doesn’t eliminate risk.

At INFOCUS 2026, Heather Phillips, Vice President of Information Systems at Little Rapids Corporation, shared how the Wisconsin-based manufacturer migrated JD Edwards to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), navigating legacy integrations, tight deadlines, database compatibility challenges, and an unexpected post-migration outage. Her experience demonstrated how infrastructure modernization can strengthen business continuity while freeing IT resources to pursue innovation.

When a Stable IBM i Environment Becomes a Business Risk

Little Rapids is a family-owned manufacturer with approximately 450 employees across three Wisconsin locations. Its operations include disposable medical and beauty products, along with paper-based packaging solutions designed to replace plastic. Manufacturing runs around the clock, making JD Edwards availability critical.

The company implemented JD Edwards in 1996 and consistently maintained its environment through application upgrades and technology enhancements. Despite running an older application release, it continued adopting newer tools capabilities, including Orchestrator and API integrations.

However, three underlying risks challenged the assumption that staying on IBM i was the safest option.

First, specialized infrastructure knowledge had become concentrated in one employee following the retirement of the original IBM administrator. Second, although disaster recovery procedures existed, the team had never fully tested whether recovery could happen quickly enough. Third, maintaining the existing platform raised concerns about accommodating future AI and integration initiatives.

A three-hour outage reinforced those concerns. Only one employee could resolve the problem, and fortunately, he was available.

For an operation where four hours of downtime could trigger manufacturing shutdown procedures, that dependency represented significant exposure. Phillips recognized that the risk of remaining unchanged had begun to outweigh the perceived risk of migration.

Planning Beyond the JD Edwards Database

The migration required considerably more than moving JD Edwards and converting DB2 to Oracle Database. Decades of supporting applications, custom programs, and integrations also depended on the IBM i environment.

Little Rapids inventoried approximately 275 RPG and CL programs, evaluating whether each should be retired, rebuilt, replaced, or redirected.

Some processes were obsolete, including remnants of an earlier UKG implementation. Others became opportunities to modernize through JD Edwards Orchestrator, including banking integrations, retirement-plan interfaces, and production scheduling processes.

Three areas required replacement solutions: EDI, label printing, and data integration with Databricks. Additional applications, including Vertex, Avalara AvaTax, and scheduling tools, needed their connections redirected to OCI.

Phillips identified one major planning lesson: Start reviewing legacy dependencies well before the actual cloud migration. Handling application replacements alongside database conversion created unnecessary complexity and competing demands on limited resources.

Managing Three Projects Against One Deadline

Little Rapids spent approximately a year evaluating and planning the migration before beginning infrastructure construction in January. The company selected Redfaire to manage the OCI environment and database conversion, while SPS Commerce supported the EDI transition.

The cutover date was April 29, strategically aligned with scheduled manufacturing downtime and an IBM server lease expiring in May.

The business permitted an eight-hour window, from 5 p.m. until 1 a.m., with little flexibility.

This created three concurrent workstreams: the JD Edwards infrastructure migration, the EDI conversion, and the remaining legacy application transitions.

The EDI project proved especially challenging. SPS Commerce needed to establish trading partner mappings while Little Rapids developed substantial JD Edwards orchestrations to process incoming transactions.

Testing also revealed a critical expectation gap. Little Rapids anticipated detailed, field-by-field transaction comparisons, but the validation performed was less comprehensive. That difference contributed to rework and issues after go-live.

Phillips emphasized the importance of defining precisely what testing and validation mean before work begins, particularly when multiple partners share responsibility.

Technical Lessons from DB2-to-Oracle Conversion

Database performance presented another unexpected challenge.

During testing, several JD Edwards processes experienced performance degradation. Phillips explained that DB2 had been automatically creating indexes that compensated for inefficient application queries. Those optimizations weren’t automatically reproduced in Oracle Database.

Rather than rewriting large numbers of custom programs, the team extracted information about the indexes DB2 had created and provided it to the Oracle DBA, who recreated them in Oracle.

Most performance problems disappeared. Only a few particularly inefficient reports and applications required code changes.

A separate compatibility issue emerged when the team discovered that Fivetran, selected to replicate JD Edwards data into Databricks, supported Oracle Database 19c but not the newer Oracle AI Database 26ai version planned for deployment.

With approximately two weeks remaining, Little Rapids faced a choice: pursue an unproven workaround or move to 19c.

The team chose 19c, protecting the cutover date without sacrificing any immediate business requirements. An upgrade to 26ai remains a future consideration when a specific AI use case justifies it.

The lesson was clear: Validate every vendor’s supported database versions and technical requirements before committing to an architecture.

A Successful Cutover—and an Unexpected Outage

Four database cutover rehearsals progressively reduced execution time from 14 hours to nine, seven, and approximately five and a half hours.

On April 29, the team stopped the legacy JD Edwards environment, completed the incremental migration, and performed critical transaction testing. Users returned to work shortly after 1 a.m. on April 30.

There was no data loss, no delayed orders, and no unplanned production impact during the transition. For employees, JD Edwards looked and functioned essentially as it had before.

However, four days later, the new environment experienced a seven-hour outage.

Although unprecedented for Little Rapids, the incident demonstrated an important difference in its operating model. Instead of depending on one internal specialist, the company had an entire managed services team available to investigate and restore service.

The outage was disruptive, but the business recovered without losing data or orders. Phillips acknowledged that cloud migration doesn’t eliminate incidents; it changes the resources and capabilities available to address them.

Turning Infrastructure Modernization Into Business Innovation

The benefits of moving JD Edwards to OCI extend beyond infrastructure management.

Little Rapids now uses proactive monitoring to identify issues with its Application Interface Services (AIS) servers before users experience significant disruptions. Alerts can trigger intervention when memory consumption increases, allowing orchestrations to shift to another AIS server.

Managed services have also transferred responsibilities such as Vertex updates away from internal IT staff.

Most importantly, employees previously occupied with infrastructure maintenance can focus on business initiatives.

One technology manager helped develop a custom AI application that captures experienced paper mill employees’ troubleshooting knowledge, enabling newer associates to ask questions and receive practical guidance. Another resource is working to identify causes of manufacturing downtime and support transportation cost reduction.

The employee previously responsible for IBM i administration has also transitioned into a data analytics and insights management role, helping the business derive more value from its information.

These outcomes directly support Little Rapids’ four IT priorities: business partnership, data insights, AI-enabled productivity, and a resilient technology foundation.

What JD Edwards Customers Should Take Away

Phillips’ experience offers a practical roadmap for organizations considering a JD Edwards migration from IBM i to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

Begin with a complete inventory of legacy applications and integrations, and address dependencies early. Confirm vendor compatibility before selecting database versions, establish explicit testing expectations, and rehearse the entire cutover—including service restarts and downstream integrations.

Equally important, define the managed services operating model before implementation partners transition out of the project. Internal teams must understand which responsibilities remain theirs and which should move to external specialists.

For Little Rapids, the greatest accomplishment wasn’t simply moving a 30-year-old ERP environment to the cloud. It was reducing operational dependencies, improving recovery capabilities, and creating room for meaningful business innovation.

As Phillips demonstrated, the strongest reason to modernize JD Edwards infrastructure may not be what the technology can do differently today, but what it enables the organization to accomplish tomorrow.

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