An Investment In Knowledge Always Pays The Best Interest

A long-term user of Oracle technology with established and large databases,  King’s utilizes Oracle technology to support various business systems enabling university operations. Systems include Oracle E-Business Suite Human Resources (HR) and Payroll and the Strategic Information Technology Systems (SITS), with the latter being used to manage and improve every aspect of the student journey.

SITS is a key system for King’s used for purposes of recruitment, admissions, retention, student experience, student payments and grades:  staff use this system to collect, collate, analyse, share and act on information to deliver the best experience for every student. 

In 2015 Claremont began supporting King’s College London by providing valuable insight into their  Oracle estate and delivering best practice in technology estate management. The University was previously working with sub-optimal, ageing and expensive hardware in need of an upgrade and keen to work with an experienced technology partner to assist with data migration and best practice. 

Claremont immediately addressed the business challenges posed by the ageing technology: ensuring platform stability and establishing  a fixed price Managed Services contract comprising 2nd and 3rd line support for all the Oracle databases. Claremont also provided 3rd line functional and technical support for Oracle HR and Payroll and assisted with adhoc queries and offered flexible access to development services. These were delivered through call-off time or as projects (T&M or fixed price). 
These managed services focused on delivery of quality, excellent and proactive service to King’s, working as a true partnership between Claremont and King’s technical teams. These services are delivered by UK staff and overseen by a Service Manager who delivers monthly and presents review reports with King’s technical teams. The monthly review covers preventative maintenance and highlights problems before they happen. These services are backed-up with unrivalled SLAs for resolution of Incidents. 

In 2017 Claremont assisted the King’s team with the upgrade and migration of databases from Solaris to Linux servers running Oracle VM using a staggered approach, migrating one database at a time to ensure system stability.  Linux is a tier one platform for Oracle yet runs on lower cost hardware, thus delivering cost savings compared to the old Solaris hardware. Additionally, running on a hard-partitioned Oracle VM platform delivers the operational flexibility expected of virtualisation, while ensuring compliance with Oracle’s licensing rules. 

In addition to provision of operational support on its servers, Claremont continues to act in an advisory role with regards to the streamlining of Oracle licensing to ensure that costs are reduced and at the same time maintaining compliance with Oracle licensing. Claremont supported King’s re-licensing their Oracle database estate, which has delivered significant cost savings. Assistance is also provided to King’s on an adhoc basis covering database upgrades, server maintenance, data migration and data extracts as well as advising the university on disaster recovery plans.

The team at King’s is now supported by a whole team of Claremont’s highly experienced Database Administrators and Oracle payroll specialists.

Unlike other Managed Services Providers, Claremont offers our clients a resolution service level agreement (SLA). In the past year, King’s has raised 68 system faults, which have all been resolved by Claremont well within the agreed service levels. A key example of this is with Priority 1 faults. Claremont has a contractual resolution time of 4 hours and on average these faults have been resolved in just over one and a half hours, ensuring that we maintain our philosophy of going the extra mile and guaranteeing a great service to our clients.

King’s College London has benefitted from an ongoing and trusted relationship with Claremont. The relationship has meant that recruitment and retention of in-house Oracle specialists was not required, thus saving costs and benefitting from a specialist partner who can anticipate and advise on problems before they arise, ensuring systems are secure, uninterrupted and performing optimally.