Suffolk County Council Case Study

HIGHLIGHTS

In 2017, Claremont was instructed to provide swift Oracle Managed Services for a public sector organisation which was struggling to maintain essential systems.
Within weeks, Claremont’s team ensured an uninterrupted transition to a new Managed Service and took-on the technical DBA support of essential systems, such as Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) and the Education Management System.
Four years later, Claremont is still managing essential services. Within the last year, our project has simplified an over-engineered and complicated architecture, unpicking layers of complexity and upgrading out-of-date technology. This solution has proved to be more cost-effective to the council.

"It’s an absolute credit to Claremont’s ethos that support has continued in such a professional way."

Mike Jackaman
IT Business Manager, Suffolk County Council

Suffolk County Council is a long-term user of Oracle technology, with established and mature databases supporting many of its critical systems.

BACKGROUND

Suffolk County Council (SCC) is the administrative authority for the county of Suffolk, in East England. The council provides support and services to approximately 750,000 residents in areas such as education, care, culture, leisure, public safety and transport.

Suffolk County Council is a long-term user of Oracle technology, with established and mature databases supporting many of its critical systems. In the last ten years, the public sector has been subject to demanding budget cuts and Suffolk County Council has been faced with significant challenges to maintain support for critical services to the local community.

In 2017, it was clear that under-supported systems required a Managed Services approach and technical support from an experienced external provider.

THE BUSINESS CHALLENGES

Suffolk County Council’s Oracle infrastructure was extremely complex requiring specialised support. Along with Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS), over 50 Oracle databases underpinned critical applications. These not only supported Finance and HR, they also supported nearly 5,000 students of the University of Suffolk and Highways Management. Maintaining a highly qualiﬁed in-house IT team continued to present challenges, resulting in the Council making the key decision to outsource the support needed from an experienced Oracle specialist who could work with critical live environments and provide a stable Managed Service soluti on.

THE SOLUTION

Claremont was recommended to Suffolk County Council and the relationship delivered both short and long-term beneﬁts. During the ﬁrst few weeks, Claremont took a ﬂexible approach to the engagement and

transition process, fast-tracking certain aspects to ensure instant support under challenging circumstances. Understanding the urgent nature of the project, the team swiftly and efficiently provided the necessary technical support to maintain continuity of critical databases.

A phased “ramp-up” and pragmatic approach meant that Claremont and the Council’s staff could work together and ensure essential services, supporting the people of Suﬀolk, remained uninterrupted. Throughout the following year, an experienced team of Oracle Database Administrators (DBAs) began to analyse the existing Oracle infrastructure and identify ways in which it might perform even more efficiently.

During the onboarding period in 2017, SCC also had an urgent requirement to undertake a full database version upgrade across all Oracle systems. Claremont successfully worked with the council enabling them to manage and complete the upgrade, a project which had to run in parallel to onboarding.

THE BUSINESS BENEFITS

The public sector has to respond to constant change. Therefore, any long-term partnership with a service provider has to be ﬂexible and add value. For the last two years, Claremont’s team of DBAs have continued to support the Council’s critical systems through the Managed Service, attaining over 99% compliance with the service level agreements (SLA), which also included an SLA for incident resolution.

Within the last year, a project has also simpliﬁed the over- engineered and complicated Oracle architecture, unpicking layers of complexity and upgrading out-of-date technology. One of the key aspects of this project involved migrating approximately 50 databases, both live and test environments, oﬀ Oracle RAC (Real Application Clusters) and onto single node instances.

While Oracle RAC has its place in ensuring high availability, it had become unnecessarily complex for SCC and needed to be simplified. As a result, Claremont provided Suffolk County Council with a more efficient and cost-effective Oracle infrastructure, while also enhancing flexibility and scalability.

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