Department of Education and Training in Western Australia Makes the Grade with Actian and Red Hat
Company Size
1,000+
Country
- Australia
Product
- Actian Ingres database
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux
- Microsoft CRM
- Microsoft SharePoint
Tech Stack
- .NET
- Ingres .NET Connector
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Cost Savings
- Customer Satisfaction
- Productivity Improvements
Technology Category
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - API Integration & Management
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing
Applicable Industries
- Education
Applicable Functions
- Business Operation
- Human Resources
Use Cases
- Process Control & Optimization
- Remote Collaboration
Services
- Software Design & Engineering Services
- System Integration
About The Customer
The Department of Education and Training in Western Australia (WA DET) is a government department responsible for managing a range of administrative activities to support programs that are delivered by 11 colleges and 8,000 staff throughout the state. The systems collectively manage in excess of 1 million student records with 120,000 students processed through the state’s training systems annually. The department was facing challenges with its back-end computing environment, which was spread across regional locations, each managing their own back-end environments. This imposed an expensive support burden on WA DET staff and vendor support engineers.
The Challenge
The Department of Education and Training in Western Australia (WA DET) was facing a challenge with its back-end computing environment. The department managed a range of administrative activities to support programs delivered by 11 colleges and 8,000 staff throughout the state. The systems collectively managed over 1 million student records with 120,000 students processed through the state’s training systems annually. However, regional locations had to manage their own back-end environments, which imposed an expensive support burden on WA DET staff and vendor support engineers. Proprietary Unix server environments, often built on a variety of hardware models of differing ages, had to be managed remotely, along with the complex applications they were running. With many DET colleges hundreds of kilometers apart, it had become too expensive and cumbersome to maintain this computing environment.
The Solution
The department began an initiative to centralize and consolidate its back-end computing environment around a central data center using the Linux and Ingres platforms. WA DET’s developers and technical staff selected Ingres Database to migrate away from the existing proprietary environment. This was built on commodity servers running Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Ingres. Minimal change on the front end ensured continuity of service throughout the project, which was an essential requirement in such a high-use environment. No immediate changes were required to .NET-developed applications as data was channeled through the Ingres .NET Connector. These applications processed enrollment, resource management, timetabling, student fees, assessments, results, Web course catalogues and more. WA DET’s technical staff were supported by Ingres database specialists throughout the course of the migration, ensuring a smooth transition to the open source platform.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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