Relationships are developed with time, trust, and experience. Claremont's relationship with the Go-Ahead Group is one such example of this.
A History In Transport
Founded almost three decades ago, the Go-Ahead Group has transformed from a small bus operator in North East England to one of the UK’s leading providers of passenger transport.
The Go-Ahead Group’s rail operation is the busiest in the UK, responsible for over 30% of all train passenger journeys. They are also the largest operator of bus services in London. Outside the capital, their regional buses account for about 11% of the UK market.
Employing over 30,000 people who work hard to deliver safe, reliable, and value for money services for their passengers.
Looking To The Future
In 2019, the Go-Ahead Group was looking to migrate their Oracle Payroll, Finance and Procurements systems from one Oracle VM silo to another, as well as replace the old underlying hardware and upgrade to a new version of the technology. The Go-Ahead Group engaged Claremont to consult on the initial design and planning for this project but wanted to undertake the migration and upgrade project themselves using their own in-house Oracle skills.
During the migration process, the Go-Ahead team ran into a performance issue with disk throughput, this was brought about by incompatible architecture using virtual VM disks to present data areas to their environments. Faced with this performance issue, the Go-Ahead Group asked for further guidance from Claremont.
Claremont’s Head of Infrastructure Mike Sowerbutts, advised and designed a mechanism to migrate away from virtual disks to using physical or attached disks, reducing the overhead, and increasing disk throughput, returning performance to acceptable levels.
During the migration project, the client infrastructure lead left the Go-Ahead Group leaving a gap in the technical support team. Claremont’s Mike Sowerbutts was asked to take over as the technical resource on the remaining migrations.
The remaining migrations were all completed successfully, and Mike became an integral trusted extension of the support team ensuring that knowledge was transferred back to the Go-Ahead Group’s in-house team.
“Trust is the glue of life. It’s the most essential ingredient in effective communication. It’s the foundational principle that holds all relationships.”
Stephen Covey
A Collaborative Approach
After the successful migration, Claremont was asked to undertake additional work on the Oracle systems, including conducting an internal audit of Go-Ahead Group’s Oracle licensing to streamline and reduce costs.
Claremont’s specialist consultant has been integrated into the in-house team and has become an extension of their Oracle support, solving Severe category 1 instances, provided out-of-hours support, and restoring finance systems within 20 minutes of going down.
Claremont’s initial approach on this project was predominantly a support role, with the client engaging with us when they had problems, but soon evolved into a working partnership as they gained trust in our expertise and knowledge.
“Claremont have proved to be a superb partner for delivery of projects related to Oracle financial and payroll systems. Claremont is customer-focused and highly available – Mike Sowerbutts’ confident and pragmatic approach gave full confidence he was invested in Go-Ahead’s success”
James Robertson - IT Project Manager
Claremont's managed service team prides itself on its flexibility, ensuring that whatever happens, applications remain stable and consistent for their clients. Our expert Oracle support alongside knowledge transfer proved highly successful.
By working co-operatively with the Go-Ahead Group, anticipating their business needs and listening to their challenges, the Oracle systems are expertly supported and stable.
The relationship has grown with increased reliance on Claremont and evolved into a multi-year managed services contract that was created with flexibility around Go-Ahead Group’s needs and requirements to bolster and support their in-house team.
Choosing the right Managed Services Provider
If you are looking for an Oracle Managed Services Provider that cares as much about its clients as it does about our employees and can back up the talk, then contact us.
And if you would like to find out more about Claremont or have a question, you can email us at info@claremont.co.uk or phone us on +44 (0) 1483 549004.
Mike Sowerbutts, Oracle Infrastructure & Database Administrator Capability Lead at Claremont. With over 20 years of experience in the world of Oracle, Mike has extensive experience in Oracle Database, Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle Linux, Oracle VM WebLogic, and Application Server.