Career Launcher cuts costs 25% by moving from AWS to OCI
India’s leading provider of in-center and online learning services enhances students’ experience by moving from AWS to OCI with Autonomous Database
“With Oracle Autonomous Database, our student customers are experiencing a higher-quality user experience. Previously, my IT team had to work through the night during peak demand periods. Now, I do not have any more sleepless nights and my IT team also has a better work-life balance.”
Business challenges
Career Launcher, part of CL Educate, is Asia's leading education services company, offering vocational and management education, study abroad admission consulting, and exam preparation services for advanced degrees and certifications. Founded in 1995, the company experienced ongoing rapid growth for its in-center and online learning programs and services. However, that growth was increasingly straining the company’s IT infrastructure.
One of the company’s popular applications offers online training and mock exams for students preparing for MBA, LAW, CUET, and various entrance examinations. The application was hosted by AWS on a Java-based Application Server, with Oracle Database 12c Standard Edition as the database. After several new exams were added to the testing calendar, the number of simultaneous exams saw a sharp increase. Career Launcher’s support team started to receive complaints from students whose submissions were delayed or did not go through, which meant that students had to retake exams. IT staff determined that the problems were being caused by database connection resets triggered by the number of concurrent connections. As a result, IT staff needed to stay on the clock 24 hours a day during mock test days.
The negative impacts of these problems on both employees and customers prompted Career Launcher to explore other cloud providers. The company sought a more resilient platform, improved performance, lower Total Cost of Ownership, and better technical support from a cloud provider.
Career Launcher’s move to OCI eliminated performance issues that created negative experiences for customers during peak usage periods.
Why Career Launcher chose Oracle
Career Launcher’s selection team evaluated multiple options, including migrating to open source databases. The IT staff worked with Oracle’s support team to set up a pilot project on a new environment on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), using Oracle Autonomous Database for transaction processing for a group of students submitting mock exams for the Common Admission Test (CAT). The students in this case were hoping to be admitted as MBA candidates within the Indian Institutes of Management (IIM). The stakes were high, as CAT is India’s most prestigious national-level entrance examination. The pilot showed that Autonomous Database for transaction processing running on OCI provided the flexibility, performance, robustness, and ease of use required to surpass the expectations of both students and internal IT staff. Subsequently, along with considerations of long-term objectives and continued business growth, the team selected Oracle to support the application.
Results
After Career Launcher decided to move ahead with Oracle, Oracle Cloud Lift Services determined a strategy to ensure seamless migration with minimum downtime and performed the production migration for two databases. The team successfully completed the migration to Oracle Autonomous Database for transaction processing within the downtime window and assisted Career Launcher with integrating Autonomous Database with OCI.
Career Launcher built on the success of the pilot project. In addition to solving the database reset problem, database maintenance costs decreased while the company also gained the elasticity and performance to autoscale for fluctuating demands, which are becoming more frequent as the company grows.
Infrastructure costs are now 25% lower compared to AWS. Reliability and performance of the core customer-facing business application also improved. Perhaps most importantly, there are fewer complaints from customers during the peak load period. Also, Career Launcher’s management is getting more sleep, confident in the company’s ability to deliver a prime experience to customers, and IT staff have re-established work-life balance.
About the customer
Led by a team of highly qualified professionals with a passion for excellence in education, Career Launcher has been focusing on shaping the lives and careers of students during the 25 years of its existence.