Department of Education Victoria enhances workforce management with Oracle OCI migration
- Industry Education, Government
- Capability Oracle, 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.
In 2022, the Department of Education and Training Victoria made a significant impact on education with more than 1,014,200 students enrolled in school education programs, and over 328,000 individuals pursuing training, skills, and higher education opportunities facilitated by the Department. To support the education system effectively, the Department employs a substantial workforce. As of June 2023, there were over 72,000 full-time equivalent (FTE) staff members working in government schools. This includes teachers, principals, support staff, and administrators who collectively contribute to the efficient functioning of the education system in Victoria.
A brief history
Since 2015, NRI has managed the Department’s on-premise Private Cloud that is used to host a set of Oracle applications which includes Oracle E-Business Suite application, Oracle Peoplesoft, and Ariba. The Department’s Oracle E-Business Suite application incorporates Oracle Financials, Payroll, Recruitment Online and Enterprise Learning Management; and is used to pay and support over 100,000 employees including public servants, teachers, contractors, and other educational staff members.
Opportunity
The Department and NRI recognised that the Department’s current Private Cloud infrastructure was nearing its end-of-life and had several limitations, including:
Infrastructure limitations
The existing on-premise applications were constrained by the infrastructure architecture and hardware boundaries.
Lack of evergreen features
The Private Cloud Infrastructure lacked the new evergreen features which are now available in modern public cloud solutions.
Inflexible cost structures
The cost structures associated with the Private Cloud Infrastructure were too rigid, hindering the Department’s ability to achieve a reduced Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).
Robust security requirements
The Department required a secure infrastructure platform that adheres to best-in-class security design, controls, and governance at all levels. The platforms needed to align with State Government Security policies and stay ahead of emerging security threats through proactive management and maintenance.
Oracle licencing
The Department needed an infrastructure platform that is specifically designed to run Oracle software efficiently, ensuring excellent performance and availability. It was crucial for the platform to align with Oracle licensing requirements, and it was imperative to have a fully compliant and supported platform in place.
Following a thorough walk-through of not only how a move to the Oracle cloud platform could resolve the issues described above, but of the additional opportunities that could be unlocked, the decision was made to invest in the migration to cloud.
Solution
NRI commenced the project to migrate the Department’s Oracle E-Business Suite application to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). Below, we have summarised the migration process:
Building infrastructure on OCI
NRI established the necessary compute and network infrastructure on OCI to support the application. This involved creating cloud landing zones, virtual machines, storage, and networking components, ensuring a solid foundation for the migration.
Migration approach
Oracle eBusiness Cloud Manager was used for the migration of Department’s Oracle E-Business Suite application to OCI. This approach was intended to leverage the existing Oracle migration tool to reduce the overall migration time, reduce risk and automate several build steps.
Building production environments in OCI
NRI set up the application’s production environments in OCI, carefully configuring them to match the requirements of the existing infrastructure and align with future capacity demands. This step involved replicating configurations and settings to ensure a smooth transition.
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.
Despite these challenges, NRI successfully completed the migration on-time, ensuring that the Oracle E-Business Suite application and their supporting functions were fully operational within OCI as integrated production applications. The Oracle E-Business Suite Production instance went live in October 2022.
Outcomes
The migration of the Oracle E-Business Suite application and databases to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) has resulted in significant benefits for the Department. Some of these benefits include:
Achievement of the primary objective
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 delivered in a short period of time, with minimal post go-live issues.
Improved performance
The Oracle E-Business Suite application on OCI is delivering improved performance compared to the previous platform.
Higher availability
The Oracle E-Business Suite 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.
Scalability and agility
The provisioning time for new Oracle E-Business Suite environments on OCI has significantly reduced.
Data insights 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 Oracle E-Business Suite and Database OCI solution includes disaster recovery capabilities, allowing NRI to recover the Oracle E-Business Suite application within the secondary cloud region.
The migration to OCI has allowed the Department to achieve multiple headline improvements. These improvements each contributing to a more efficient, reliable, and cost-effective Oracle E-Business Suite environment on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.
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