Challenges

• Improve Oracle Database estate visibility and management—across 3,650 databases ranging up to version 11g—to provide more reliable services to other internal departments across the business
• Provide reliable and innovative communication services such as mobile workforce management and unified communications for business customers and travel apps and mobile internet for consumers on a global scale
• Improve IT management reporting to ensure that any database configuration problems are flagged and resolved before they become major issues and begin to affect customer experience
• Improve system availability and stability to ensure that the business-critical applications running on Oracle Databases including billing, online Web services, and retail are always available to support front-line services, including business and consumer mobile communications services and applications
• Speed problem resolution to provide a more efficient business support service by enabling faster access to the knowledge provided by Oracle’s 18,000 customer support specialists

Solutions

• Worked with Oracle Support to carry out a pilot across 108 Oracle database environments to prove the benefits of adopting the configuration-driven proactive support services available in My Oracle Support and tightly integrated into Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c
• Proved that the pan-European implementation of Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c and Oracle’s proactive support services will enable just 85 DBAs across Europe to manage the company's 3,650 Oracle Databases in a more proactive and effective way, ensuring more stable service by fixing issues before they start to adversely affect mobile communications services
• Developed a comprehensive plan to implement a broader rollout of these proactive support services across the entire Vodafone EMEA database estate
• Identified 120 business-critical services across Vodafone in Europe, including billing, online customer services, and online shopping, and developed a clear plan to ensure the critical databases running these services are managed proactively and given top priority
• Mitigated business risk and improved system stability by acting upon the best practice advice given by My Oracle Support health checks and patch recommendations
• Implemented a detailed roadmap for upgrading databases across Vodafone with a clearer visual understanding of the estate provided by My Oracle Support inventory reports and upgrade plans
• Improved management and scheduling with patch plans and deployment procedures to reduce database patch and upgrade time by 50% to 60%
• Reduced time to upload necessary configuration details when creating a service request from up to two hours to just 15 minutes and improved overall response times on queries by at least 50% by associating configurations to a service request
• Provided a visual reference to changes made by DBAs across the entire database estate for the first time, helping to diagnose any problems caused by configuration changes immediately with the help of configuration history, and configuration change capabilities
• Implemented an automated and structured approach to all upgrades and removed many manual processes, such as manually identifying which one-off patches are required by using upgrade plans and upgrade plan validation with automated checking and processing—reducing risk by fixing problems before and after the upgrade
• Reduced the maintenance planning phase which previously took between four hours and three days by 50% to 60% through the use of patch plans to organize overall project and patch plan validation to provide automated checking and processing
• Reduced the overall time that DBAs spend on administrative tasks to free them up to concentrate on business-generating activities, such as designing improved IT solutions that contribute directly to business value and innovation

Why Oracle

“The proactive support services embedded in My Oracle Support, and tightly integrated into Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c, are invaluable,” said Peter O’Brien, manager of technology and infrastructure services, Oracle Competence Centre, Vodafone Group plc. “They provide free, practical advice and guidance that helps us proactively assess and maintain the stability of our Oracle Databases.”

Implementation Process

Vodafone's Oracle Competence Centre team completed a successful pilot in embracing and adopting Oracle proactive support services. Vodafone partnered closely with Oracle Support to conduct the pilot in the third quarter of 2011.

The scope of the pilot included 108 Oracle Database environments, 16 of which were Oracle Real Application Clusters environments. The core pilot team included two personnel from Vodafone and two from Oracle Support. Vodafone dedicated a few hours per week—an investment quickly recouped—through faster service request logging, as well as enhanced configuration and change management capabilities. Oracle Support and Vodafone carried out the engagement primarily through phone and Web conferences, with one site visit to Vodafone’s Irish Data Center by Oracle Support personnel.

Vodafone installed and configured a new instance of Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c and provisioned the necessary agents on the target hosts. Vodafone used the Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Harvester to yield configuration information from the repository and transmit it back to Oracle for display and use within My Oracle Support.

Vodafone will take the knowledge gained from this successful pilot to roll out these proactive support services across the entire Vodafone EMEA region.

One of the key lessons Vodafone learned is that for IT Operations staff to truly adopt and benefit from Oracle’s proactive support services and capabilities, they need to be embedded and integrated into existing IT management processes. Today, Vodafone has a clear plan in place to deliver on that objective.

Vodafone will initially focus on embedding Oracle’s proactive support services into its existing IT change management processes and procedures, thereby streamlining and automating previously manual and error prone tasks and activities. This will free up much needed DBA time and energy to focus on other business generating activities.

Resources

• Vodafone Albania Builds World-Class CRM Platform on Single-Vendor Software and Hardware Stack, Cuts Server Requirements by 50%
• Vodafone Group deploys Oracle Siebel CRM across entire enterprise