The Province of Groningen Improves IT Decisions and Reduces Costs Following a Detailed License Review
 
 

The Province of Groningen Improves IT Decisions and Reduces Costs Following a Detailed License Review

  • Oracle Customer:  Province of Groningen
    Location:  Groningen, The Netherlands
    Industry:  Public Sector
    Employees:  1,000
    Annual Revenue:  $100 to $500 Million

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The Province of Groningen is the northernmost of 12 provinces in the Netherlands. With a population of 574,000 people living in 25 municipalities, the region is less-densely populated than other parts of the country. The province uses almost 80% of its land for agricultural purposes.

Oracle technology serves as the foundation for the province’s main back office, and thus it is a critical part of the organization’s infrastructure. The province uses Oracle Database Standard Edition and Oracle Database Enterprise Edition to run a number of critical functions—including financial systems, facilities management, and mapping and other geographic applications.

The organization had a goal to reduce costs across the enterprise by 25% between 2009 and 2015, and it required a detailed audit of all back office systems to determine opportunities for cost savings. As important, while streamlining and consolidating IT systems across the organization to reduce costs, the Province of Groningen needed to continue to maintain excellent services for the local population.

 
 

 
 

Challenges

A word from Province of Groningen

  • “We required a solid foundation to make more informed decisions from licensing and IT infrastructure perspectives. By working with Oracle License Management Services and the collaborative review process it entailed, we gained vital knowledge that will improve IT decision-making in the future.” – Marja Doedens, Team Manager, Service and Operations, Province of Groningen

  • Standardize and simplify IT infrastructure for greater control of IT systems and improved efficiency across the organization to reduce operational costs
  • Ensure reliability and availability of critical back-office systems running on Oracle Database—such as finance, facilities management, and mapping—to enable employees to provide more efficient and effective front-office services to citizens
  • Increased operational visibility into IT systems at an enterprise level to optimize back office license use and eliminate unneeded costs
  • Improve IT decision-making to ensure purchased systems and applications support efficient, effective services to the local population—such as those for transportation, education, and housing—while keeping costs under control
  • Increase internal organizational knowledge of Oracle solution processes, contracts, and licensing rules to assist with future IT decision-making

Solutions

Oracle Product and Services

  • Worked with Oracle License Management Services to execute a thorough, collaborative review of current Oracle product and application licenses to improve knowledge and reduce costs
  • Increased knowledge of Oracle licensing processes to improve IT purchasing decisions and better ensure that IT systems support effective services to the local population—such as waste collection, library services, and road maintenance
  • Developed a monitoring process to ensure all licensing requirements for IT products and applications were administered correctly, helping to optimize licensing costs going forward and assisting with cutting overall costs by 25% by 2015
  • Gained a better understanding of virtual Oracle licensing processes for more informed decisions regarding virtualization use within the organization’s IT infrastructure
  • Improved accuracy across the organization to reassure IT management that all product licensing is correct and up-to-date, and that appropriate processes are in place to support ongoing compliance via the collaborative effort with Oracle License Management Services
  • Eliminated the need to hire a costly external consultant to review IT licensing information, contributing to the overall organizational goal of cost savings