HealthShare NSW Chooses Oracle

Oracle Engineered Systems, including Exadata Database Machine and  Exalogic Elastic Cloud, were chosen as the hardware infrastructure due to performance and the ability to process payroll data in around a quarter of the time presently possible with legacy hardware.

The decision to deploy Oracle Engineered Systems follows HealthShare NSW’s rollout of Oracle E-Business Suite, running on Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle Database, to support the payroll and HR requirements of NSW Health’s 140,000 staff.

HealthShare NSW will deploy Oracle Engineered Systems comprising Exadata Database Machine and Exalogic Elastic cloud as part of a hardware refresh to meet new processing requirements, increase service center efficiency, reduce operational costs and support the work of NSW Health clinicians.

Key criteria for the new infrastructure included increased performance and scalability, standardization and the ability to provision for future growth. HealthShare NSW identified a direct connection between the ability to reduce data processing times and increased efficiency of service center operations and associated costs; faster processing drives costs down.

Oracle Engineered Systems were chosen for their demonstrated ability to deliver a 6-8 times performance improvement over the current platform. During a Proof of Concept (POC), HealthShare NSW found that Oracle Exadata was able to perform a given process twice as fast as its nearest competitor.

HealthShare NSW’s decision to put in place an optimized technology platform was driven not only by a natural hardware refresh cycle, but also by system consolidation requirements and data centre reform initiatives to save IT costs and improve service levels.

HealthShare NSW also intends to improve agility, cut costs, and improve service levels by utilizing the Exadata platform as the foundation for an Oracle Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS) solution. The solution provides a database reducing HealthShare NSW’s dependence on the need for specialized database administration skills.

The platform refresh follows the rollout of a corporate IT program by HealthShare NSW to consolidate its ERP requirements to support HR and payroll services, as well as financial and procurement functions. HealthShare has rolled out Oracle E-Business Suite, incorporating Oracle Human Capital Management, to more than 129,000 NSW Health staff, with another 11,000 staff to be incorporated as part of the final phase.

Oracle E-Business Suite Human Capital Management (HCM) has enabled HealthShare NSW to architect a global foundation for HR data and improved business processes. Oracle E-Business Suite HCM delivers a set of human resources functionality that helps enable increased productivity, accelerate business performance and lower TCO.

The applications are underpinned by Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c, which helps enable HealthShare NSW to provision the solution quickly, thus orchestrating deployment and supporting integration into Oracle E-Business Suite.

The Corporate IT Program requirements also called for a new state-wide identity management system. HealthShare NSW selected Oracle Identity Management to enable single sign-on for all NSW Health staff.

In addition, elements of Oracle’s middleware portfolio will be used to help streamline the deployment, provisioning and ongoing management of HealthShare NSW’s enterprise applications. Oracle SOA Suite in conjunction with Oracle WebLogic Server will help HealthShare NSW simplify its current and future application integration requirements enabling it to reduce risk around application deployment, speed time to market and respond to business requirements.

Oracle’s Sun ZFS Storage Appliance plays a critical role in delivering application and database data across all Healthshare NSW data centers, providing HealthShare NSW enterprise storage capabilities with Oracle integration, performance, efficiency, simplified management and low TCO. Integrated with Oracle Exalogic and Oracle Exadata engineered systems, the ZFS Storage Appliance uses IB to perform high speed application and database backups and restores.

The Oracle Engineered Systems platform will be established in the new Whole of Government data centers with applications migration planned for late 2013, and production status planned in 2014.

“This initiative will provide a significant increase in capacity for NSW Health to support Australia’s largest corporate program in Government,” commented HealthShare NSW CIO, Greg Wells.

“NSW Health with HealthShare NSW seeks to provide high-quality future state shared services to support the delivery of patient care within the state’s health system. This project, which includes the implementation of the most efficient technologies, is in keeping with the department’s sustainable business solution approach and helps to ensure ongoing improvement, increasing levels of efficiency and greater savings for NSW Health,” said Mike Rillstone, chief executive, HealthShare NSW.

“NSW Health’s shared services initiative, driven by HealthShare NSW, is a fantastic demonstration of the transformative power of cutting edge enterprise technology. Whether through data centre consolidation initiatives or through the deployment of Oracle Engineered Systems, today’s technology enables businesses to operate more efficiently and deliver enhanced levels or service to their customers and stakeholders,” said Ian White, country SVP, MD, Oracle.