Migration to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) for the Department of Education Victoria
- Industry Education, Government
- Capability Cloud, Enterprise Solutions
- Customer Department of Education Victoria
The Department of Education and Training Victoria holds a crucial role in the governance and execution of education policies and initiatives within the state. Its key responsibilities encompass the supervision of government schools, provision of assistance to non-government schools and early childhood services, as well as the delivery and regulation of learning and development services.
Opportunity
Since 2016, NRI has overseen the management of the Department of Education Victoria’s Private Cloud solution which hosts a range of Oracle applications including Oracle Peoplesoft, Oracle Financials, and Ariba. The Department’s Peoplesoft applications encompass Core HCM, Payroll, Recruitment Online, and Enterprise Learning Management. This system is utilised for payment and support for more than 100,000 employees, including public servants, teachers, contractors, and other educational staff.
The Department and NRI recognised that the Department’s existing Private Cloud infrastructure solution was nearing its end-of-life and was impacted by a number of constraints, including rigid cost structures that hindered the Department’s ability to achieve a reduced Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).
To resolve these constraints and provide the Department with a platform that would support insights, greater performance, and growth, a decision was reached to migrate the Oracle platform to an Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) public cloud solution. The primary objectives of the migration were to realise:
Scalability
The Department’s Oracle applications deployed on the Private Cloud solution were constrained by the infrastructure architecture and hardware boundaries. By migrating to OCI, the Department would benefit from a highly scalable infrastructure that could accommodate growing user needs and demands. It would also provide flexible compute and storage options, allowing resources to be easily scaled up or down based on requirements.
Evergreen features
The Private Cloud Infrastructure lacked the new evergreen features which are now available in modern public cloud solutions. By transitioning to OCI, the Department would be able to take advantage of the evergreen features and innovations available within the public cloud environment. With OCI continually introducing new services, tools, and capabilities, the Department would be able to introduce innovation faster, integrate more easily with other systems, and leverage analytics for insights and reporting.
Security and compliance
The Department required a best-in-class secure infrastructure platform that adheres to security design, controls, and governance at all levels. OCI is designed with robust security measures which adhere to State Government Security policies and standards, whilst also employing advanced security technologies (such as encryption, identity and access management, and threat detection) to ensure data protection and stay ahead of emerging security threats.
Oracle software optimisation
The Department required an infrastructure platform designed to run Oracle software efficiently. It was crucial for the platform to align with the Department’s investment in Oracle licencing, and it was imperative to have a fully compliant and supported platform in place. OCI is specifically optimised to run Oracle software efficiently. It provides a fully compliant and supported platform for Oracle applications, including Oracle Peoplesoft and the Oracle Database.
Solution
The move to OCI involved the migration of the Department’s Oracle Peoplesoft applications to the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure platform. This migration process included data transfer, application reconfiguration, migration of customisations, and deployment in OCI’s secure and scalable cloud regions. Here’s a snapshot of the migration process:
Building infrastructure on OCI
First, we established the necessary compute and network infrastructure on OCI to support the applications. This involved creating cloud landing zones, virtual machines, storage, and networking components, ensuring a solid foundation for the migration.
Building production environments in OCI
Next, we set up the application’s production environments in OCI, carefully configuring them to match the requirements of the existing infrastructure and to align with future capacity demands. This step involved replicating configurations and settings to ensure a smooth transition.
Data migration using Oracle Zero Downtime Migration (ZDM)
Utilising Oracle’s Zero Downtime Migration (ZDM) tool to perform a seamless migration of data from the private cloud to Oracle Database Cloud Services (DBCS) in OCI. ZDM facilitated minimal downtime and ensured the databases were appropriately converted for the OCI environment.
Integration and acceptance testing
Following the data migration, NRI and the Department conducted thorough integration and acceptance testing within the OCI production environments. This comprehensive testing phase validated the applications’ integrity, performance, functionality, and security in the new cloud environment.
Cutover to Live production environment
During the cutover phase, we employed ZDM once again to migrate the latest production data from the Private Cloud to OCI. This data was meticulously verified with the Department, and subsequently, the applications were made Live to DE users within a short timeframe.
Outcomes
The migration of the Peoplesoft application and databases to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) has resulted in significant benefits for the Department.
Achievement of overall business objectives
The migration project successfully established the new OCI platform as a replacement for the end-of-life Private Cloud platform. The transition was executed without impacting operations, and the production cutover was professionally handled by NRI within a short period of time, with minimal post go-live issues.
Higher availability
The PeopleSoft application on OCI offers a higher level of availability compared to the previous Private Cloud platform. This is supported by comprehensive service level agreements (SLAs) provided by Oracle for OCI services, ensuring a more reliable and stable application environment.
Improved performance
The migration of the PeopleSoft application to OCI has resulted in significant improved performance compared to its previous platform. This is evident in the consistent adherence to Batch SLA since the transition, along with significant efficiency gains in key daily processes. For instance, one of the most important calculation batch processes has experienced a substantial reduction in processing time from 460 minutes to 240 minutes. These enhancements collectively contribute to an enhanced user experience, reflecting our commitment to operational excellence.
Scalability and agility
The provisioning time for new Peoplesoft environments on OCI has significantly reduced from over a week to 2 days. This improvement is attributed to NRI’s DevOps tooling, such as Ansible, and the cloud-native features of OCI. The increased scalability and agility enable the Department to quickly respond to changing demands and allocate resources efficiently.
Data Insight and Reduced Risks
The migration to OCI provides improved access to insights on resource consumption and integrated tools for better management of consumption, scalable capacity, and performance. Additionally, the OCI foundation opens up opportunities to further enhance application operation and performance through additional OCI tools and capabilities, such as Oracle’s Observability and Monitoring tools. This enhances visibility and reduces risks associated with resource management.
Security
The NRI’s OCI solution has been designed with a robust security emphasis to safeguard the Department’s Peoplesoft applications and data. This security solution is in complete alignment with the Department’s Security Policies and Data Classifications. It incorporates various technical controls, making use of OCI Shared Security Services, Oracle’s IaaS and PaaS security features, Penetration Testing, and Encryption Key Management to enhance protection.
Disaster Recovery
The Peoplesoft and Database OCI solution includes disaster recovery capabilities, allowing NRI to recover the Peoplesoft application within the secondary cloud region within the required 24-hour recovery SLA in the event of a disaster. This ensures the continuity and resilience of critical systems.
Overall, the migration to OCI has allowed the Department to achieve its primary objective, improve performance, increase availability, enhance scalability and agility, gain data insights, strengthen security, and reduce costs. These benefits contribute to a more efficient, reliable, and cost-effective PeopleSoft application environment on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.
The transition to OCI has provided valuable data insights, strengthened security measures, and lowered costs, whilst providing a more modernised platform. These advantages collectively create a more efficient, dependable, and future-ready PeopleSoft application environment on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.
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