Federal Agency for Information and Telecommunications Improves Performance and Availability of Critical Applications, Automates Upgrades and Patches
 
 

Federal Agency for Information and Telecommunications Improves Performance and Availability of Critical Applications, Automates Upgrades and Patches

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Federal Agency for Information and Telecommunications, known as Bundesamt für Informatik und Telekommunikation (BIT), provides IT and telecommunications services to the Swiss federal administration. BIT seeks to streamline internal business processes, manage IT solution implementation, and offer support to ensure that government IT resources are used securely, cost-effectively, and efficiently. The organization provides services in four, strategic IT areas—consulting, solutions, infrastructure, and education—and it focuses on aligning its services to government needs as they evolve. BIT implements e-government and online applications, builds administrative computer centers to manage data scanning, office automation, e-mail, and printing, and it delivers IT training and seminars to ensure technology is used properly by government employees.

As the IT service provider for the Swiss states, BIT must operate efficiently and guarantee a low total cost of ownership (TCO) for its systems and IT infrastructure, as it receives tax payer funds. In addition, it must ensure high availability of all systems because it maintains many business-critical applications for the government and its citizens.

To address these challenges, BIT selected Oracle WebLogic Server Standard Edition and implemented an automated operating concept to deploy patches, upgrades, and new software versions, thereby reducing TCO for its infrastructure. Oracle WebLogic Server’s standards-based architecture enabled Oracle partner rudolph ag to efficiently develop the new tool for automating patches and upgrades.

 
 

 
 

Challenges

  • Guarantee lean processes and a low IT TCO to optimize use of tax payer funds, while ensuring high performing, stable, and highly available IT systems for the Swiss government and its citizens
  • Manage hundreds of Java-based applications necessary for federal administration—such as applications that coordinate Swiss Customs or the Swiss population census—on approximately 1,200 public servers efficiently and inexpensively
  • Reduce the cost of Oracle WebLogic Server version upgrades and accelerate the process
  • Automate required administrative tasks in a complex application environment, which includes seven versions of Oracle WebLogic servers
  • Guarantee high availability and performance, as well as timely updates for business-critical applications—such as the electronic declaration system for Swiss Customs—which have to be available 24/7 for thousands of users
  • Minimize the time required for manual security updates to hundreds of servers, including large-scale, quarterly updates to Oracle WebLogic Server, which runs on hundreds of host servers

Solutions

Oracle Product and Services

  • Met Swiss government requirements for high performance and high availability of its business-critical applications with Oracle WebLogic Server
  • Achieved very low TCO through automated implementations and upgrades
  • Reduced the time required to deploy 150 applications across several hundred servers, from multiple days per server to 30 minutes per server, with the help of the new automated operating concept and tool developed by Oracle partner rudolph ag
  • Improved IT team productivity, enabling the seven staff members managing the systems, platforms, and applications running on Oracle WebLogic Server to spend time focusing on other priorities, such as special applications for Swiss federal agencies
  • Ensured, by dispersing customs’ applications across 35 servers, that all customs declarations for national and foreign transportation vehicles can be handled quickly at any given time to avoid unnecessary border delays
  • Upgraded the Swiss customs’ electronic declarations system to Oracle WebLogic Server using the new operating concept in record time, reducing the effort per server from three to five days down to less than 30 minutes
  • Reduced costs through significant time savings as a result of the accelerated implementation process for Oracle WebLogic Server
  • Decreased annual administrative effort for approximately 100 servers from 2,400 hours to 50 hours

Why Oracle

BIT selected Oracle WebLogic Server for its reliability and broad functionality. In addition, Oracle provides long-term continuity and professional support during the implementation process and beyond.

Business-critical processes and sophisticated applications require modern, comprehensive IT solutions. Oracle WebLogic Server met the requirements perfectly, in terms of stability, availability, and performance.

Partner

Oracle partner rudolph ag applied its comprehensive knowledge and years of experience with Oracle WebLogic Server to BIT’s project. It planned, implemented, tested, and documented the new IT infrastructure concept at BIT. The project went live in June 2011. Since then, rudolph has provided 24 installation packages for various Oracle WebLogic Server versions and applied required patches.

Oracle partner rudolph provided BIT with extensive knowledge during its Oracle WebLogic Sever deployment, and delivered excellent service to the organization. Additionally, rudolph ag supports and understands the business interests and needs of BIT, ensuring that projects run as efficiently as possible. 

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