State Agency Reduces Oracle Licensing Costs by $450K Annually

Oracle License Assessment and AWS Database Migration Provide Performance and Scalability

The combination of services provided by state agencies range from informational to life-altering, and this large Midwest government agency is no different. As part of a digital transformation initiative to support critical applications and provide better online access to constituents, the agency looked to TekStream for a solution. Migrating their on-premises Oracle databases to the cloud would immediately reduce licensing costs and improve performance. The complexity of the state’s 18 Oracle databases totaling 70TB of data called for a partner who has the depth of Oracle and AWS experience TekStream brings to the table.

Technologies Involved

AWS
AWS

Challenges

Oracle environment with 18 databases and 70TB of data was a complex on-premises anchor.

Expenses extended from the physical assets to Oracle licensing, infrastructure, security, power and database management needed to maintain the environment.

Performance was limited by the inability to expand capacity as needed by the agency.

Manual processes for maintenance, patching, backups and failover open the state to risk associated with mistakes and unintentional oversight.

Solution Provided

TekStream initiated the engagement with a comprehensive Oracle License Assessment (OLA), thoroughly analyzing the massive and complex Oracle environment to identify optimization opportunities. The OLA uncovered unused and underutilized Oracle components and editions that could be eliminated, resulting in significant cost reductions. Additional engagement benchmarks include:

  • License usage and compliance assessment augment fiscal commitment efficiencies
  • Identified optimization of licenses by dropping unused options, editions and metrics
  • Evaluation of each database to determine fit for BYOL or SE2 licensing on Amazon RDS
  • Designed and sized Amazon RDS instances for peak usage with buffer based on TekStream methodology
  • Leveraged TekStream’s proven database migration process and tools to outline the end-to-end migration approach
  • Migrate databases to Amazon RDS with minimal downtime using a combination of Amazon DMS (Database Migration Service) and native Oracle methods

The Oracle License Assessment uncovered a potential 5-year savings of more than $2.7 Million.

Key Successes

The results of TekStream’s in-depth Oracle license assessment, strategic migration planning and flawless execution would be transformative for the agency’s Oracle footprint. Licensing and support costs were estimated at more than $350K in the first year, with $450K in additional savings annually after. With optimized AWS environments, the agency would also gain significant performance, scalability and availability improvements through RDS managed services. Additional metrics include:

  • Near zero downtime migration with Amazon DMS.
  • Eliminated infrastructure management expenses estimated at over $100K annually.
  • Accelerate innovation by converting database management time to other department initiatives
  • Establish foundation to migrate additional workloads to the cloud

Conclusion

With TekStream’s in-depth Oracle expertise, the agency gained insight into Oracle license optimization. Combined with TekStream’s database migration capabilities and the AWS cloud, the agency sighted substantially reduced licensing costs while finding opportunity for improved performance, availability and innovation velocity. Reviewing the migration results, they could envision resources turning to investment in new technologies and initiatives like AI/ML and other state services for better constituent service now and into the future.