Northumbrian Water Limited (NWL) provides water and sewerage services in the north-east and south-east of England. Every day, it supplies 1.1 billion liters of water to more than two million properties, which are home to nearly 4.4 million people.

Whenever any of these customers needs to contact NWL – perhaps to view a bill or report a water supply problem – the system facilitating the communication is Oracle Utilities Customer Care & Billing (CCB). The smooth running of CCB is critical to NWL’s ability to offer high-quality customer experiences, and to meet its regulatory requirements. The business also runs a number of bespoke applications built on Oracle middleware and databases, which support other important parts of its operations

Strategic cloud migration

All of these applications, and their supporting Oracle software, were previously hosted in a high-availability private cloud, as part of a managed service. This included the backup and recovery solution. NWL wanted to migrate these critical workloads to Oracle Cloud.

Alistair Purvis, Project Manager at NWL, explains: “We already have a high level of Oracle in-house expertise. However, as this was one of our first uses of Oracle Cloud, we wanted to have an experienced partner alongside us that could provide specific skills to slot into our delivery teams at appropriate times.  

“In particular, we needed a robust backup and disaster-recovery solution for Oracle CC&B to support our business continuity plans. Having this in place was essential if we were to be able to migrate these applications to the cloud. Other areas we were looking for support in were Oracle Utilities Analytics, Oracle GoldenGate, Oracle Forms and Reports, and Oracle Fusion Middleware.

“What immediately stood out about Cintra was their openness to work collaboratively with us, providing very specific skills to augment our own team. This was a significant departure from the way we had done previous cloud transformations in other parts of our business, where a supplier would take sole responsibility for end-to-end delivery.”

Technologies:

• Oracle Utilities Customer Care & Billing

• Oracle Utilities Analytics

• Oracle Cloud Infrastructure

• Oracle Database

• Oracle WebLogic

• Oracle Fusion

• Oracle Application Development Framework

• Oracle Coherence

• Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition

• Oracle GoldenGate

• Terraform

• Ansible

• Oracle Utilities Customer Care & Billing

• Oracle Utilities Analytics

• Oracle Cloud Infrastructure

• Oracle Database

• Oracle WebLogic

• Oracle Fusion

• Oracle Application Development Framework

• Oracle Coherence

• Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition

• Oracle GoldenGate

• Terraform

• Ansible

The Cintra approach: The right skills at the right times

Throughout the overall cloud migration program, we provided a range of expertise to support NWL at different points. And while much of the schedule was known at the start, we also responded quickly to emerging needs when required, providing specific skills at short notice.

Backup and recovery design validation

Our first task was to review NWL’s backup and recovery requirements for Oracle CC&B and Oracle Utilities Analytics. We then validated NWL’s backup architecture designs against Cintra’s proven blueprints, amending the designs where necessary to ensure NWL would meet its business continuity requirements in Oracle Cloud in the most efficient way, and guard against cyberthreats such as ransomware. We also aligned them with recommendations from the UK government’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC).

Implementing a robust backup solution in Oracle Cloud

With the designs agreed, our team then wrote the database and operating system (OS) backup scripts and worked with NWL to rigorously test the disaster recovery capabilities.

Laying the foundations for two high-availability applications

Separately, to ensure two of NWL’s critical, high-availability bespoke applications could be run from Oracle Cloud with confidence, we provided Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle Forms and Reports expertise. Our people installed and configured these products across both production and non-production environments, and put together comprehensive documentation to enable NWL to manage the environments in-house. 

In addition, we were involved in the migration of other applications and databases. As part of this, we set up and tested Oracle GoldenGate in the cloud, and assisted NWL with the subsequent migration.

Confidence to go live, on-schedule

Having access to the right skills at the right times throughout the migration program enabled the NWL team to complete the work on-schedule. More importantly, our independent validation of the backup and recovery solution for its key Oracle CC&B application gave NWL the confidence that it could meet its business continuity requirements in the cloud. This meant its management was happy to proceed with go-live. 

Mark Watson, Cloud Solutions Architect at NWL, says: “Being in the cloud has brought numerous advantages to our business and our customers. We’ve seen improved user experiences and a more-than-50% reduction in hosting costs. We’re also enjoying much greater business agility by running from the cloud.”

Refreshing approach

Watson adds: “Having Cintra’s expertise available on-demand was an important factor in the success of our cloud transformation. As well as helping us keep delivery on-track at key times, Cintra’s expertise in cloud-based disaster recovery capabilities meant we could confidently say to our management team that we could meet our business continuity requirements, including in the face of ransomware and other cyberattacks.

“What was really refreshing about this project was the personable, flexible, boutique approach that Cintra took. As a business they were really in tune with what our organization wants to do. Moreover, they provided good access to the right people at the right times, from technical expertise to account management. 

“In fact, Cintra’s collaborative approach of augmenting our own expertise with very specific skills, was key in us reshaping the way we’ll be delivering future cloud transformations. Where we’d previously followed a conventional approach of a vendor taking full responsibility for end-to-end delivery, the greater flexibility we enjoyed on this phase of the migration was noticeable. As a result, we’ve reshaped our procurement framework to make this collaborative, augmentation-based approach the standard way in which we deliver cloud migrations with our partners.”