Parks Victoria’s enterprise architecture and application support manager Willem Popp
Parks Victoria is also now interested in looking at options for public cloud computing, but so far “the private cloud has worked well for us”.
With the private cloud established, Parks Victoria intends to host Web services and other in-house applications to increase its utilisation. “We will use [Oracle] BI for all reporting and are looking to expand [the cloud] with a big Web implementation,” Popp says.
“We are going down the Web 2.0 path and building a Web content system [Parks Victoria recently won funding from the state’s Department of Innovation] and will integrate with public social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.”
At this stage Popp is uncertain whether the Web application will be hosted in-house or externally. “The content system will be a mash-up with existing technologies out there,” he says. “We use TRIM as a CMS in-house, but if I can leverage Oracle more I will.”
Regarding licensing costs for infrastructure and applications, Popp says more licenses were required “as it was a bigger footprint”.
“If you want to buy a Rolls Royce you pay Rolls Royce prices,” he says. “We got a good discount out of them though, as government departments get 50 per cent off anyway.”
“Virtualisation was scary, but it’s paid off now and I think we will keep expanding.”
How it adds up
Parks Victoria Parks Victoria is the central authority in Victoria for management of natural areas across the state with a jurisdiction of nearly 4 million hectares. Parks Victoria’s IT department supports operations in 120 sites (with some 1100 employees) and uses upwards of 50 business systems, ranging from CRM to geographic information.
How Parks Victoria saved: By implementing virtualisation technology to build a private cloud for its Oracle e-business suite upgrade, Parks Victoria cut $400,000 from its budget and was able to hire another DBA. Virtual server infrastructure is now being leveraged for other applications.
Tools used: Virtualisation from Oracle (Oracle VM, which is based on Xen) for Linux server virtualisation and server hardware from Dell.
Time frame: The e-business suite upgrade and infrastructure refresh project took two years and was completed in November 2009.
1. Don’t be shy to adopt emerging technologies:
Originally uncertain about the robustness of virtualisation for hosting e-business applications, Parks Victoria tested the water and is now enjoying a greater level of flexibility with its infrastructure. Virtualisation software vendors also provide management tools that ease the transition, so take advantage of them when available.
2. Keep your cloud options open:
CIOs can leverage private and public cloud computing services as both generally use similar virtualisation technology. With its internal, private cloud, Parks Victoria is experiencing a new level of operational efficiency, but it is keeping its options open and may use a public cloud to host new applications.
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