Porting DWH to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure

Technology Reply has participated in a cloud adoption project for the migration of all DWHs in the Analytics area of a leading Italian insurance group to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

Context

In the world of Financial Services, in the current era of digital transformation, a Cloud Adoption strategy has become an integral part of various organizational initiatives and objectives, ensuring that cloud adoption is synergistically integrated into existing business operations and processes. The project developed by Technology Reply aims to guide a major Italian insurance company in initiating a cloud adoption process by defining and implementing the migration strategy of its DWHs to an Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) specifically designed and implemented.

Use Cases

The project was initiated following a study conducted by Reply, which defined a technological approach to "migrate" specific application areas of the current on-prem DWH to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). The cloud porting project consists of two main streams:
  • Preliminary Migration of the ETL OWB "Oracle Warehouse Builder" flows (not supported by OCI) to ODI (Oracle Data Integrator) technology with the goal of eliminating the technical debt accumulated over the years in terms of both ETL software (a platform no longer supported by Oracle) and database version (unable to upgrade the database from version 11g to version 19c).
  • Porting specific application areas of the current on-prem DWH to OCI with the goal of bringing along a series of technological innovations and benefits such as cost reduction and overall performance improvement.

Solution

Reply proposed a cloud porting activity for the Analytics area Data Warehouses by suggesting the technological approach to "migrate" specific application areas from the current on-prem DWH to OCI. Each migration can be logically viewed as the iterative execution of the following project phases:

This phase involves collecting the necessary information to start the migration. During this phase, the scope of intervention and the involved technological ecosystem (DB ODI APEX PL/SQL VPD SAP BO QlikView/QlikSense, etc.) are identified, as well as internal and external software dependencies (touchpoints), definition of test cases for components impacted by the porting, and drafting a detailed plan and service engagement to support the activities.

This is the core phase of the migration strategy involving the porting of all identified software components to OCI and the migration of historical data for each application. During this phase, the structural creation and configuration of the target environments, porting of all identified software to OCI, application of any necessary adjustments/rework, creation and configuration of user environments, and the initial load of historical data are carried out

This phase involves executing appropriate tests and subsequent go-live of the application in OCI. During this phase, Unit Tests, No Regression Tests, and Performance Tests are conducted, analysis of necessary hardware resources for correct performance/cost balance, support for factories in executing E2E Integration Tests, and scheduling starts in OCI on the new cloud environments

This is the final phase necessary for the recovery and release of on-prem resources. This phase involves supporting the progressive or big-bang deletion of on-premise ODI flows and any other technologies migrated to OCI, as well as unused on-premise DB objects

Expected benefits

Some of the main expected benefits are here described:

The cloud allows resources to be quickly scaled according to needs, enabling more efficient IT resource management without over-investing in infrastructure.

Operational costs can be reduced by moving to the cloud, eliminating the need for investments in hardware and on-premise infrastructure maintenance. With the pay-as-you-go model, you only pay for the resources actually used.

Using cloud services, new products and services can be developed and launched more quickly. The ability to experiment with new technologies and quickly adapt to market needs is a significant competitive advantage

The cloud offers advanced solutions for data storage and analysis. These tools can be used to gain deep insights into customers, improve risk assessment, and optimize decision-making processes.

Reliable cloud providers offer robust security and compliance mechanisms that can help companies protect sensitive customer data and meet industry regulations.

Cloud technologies can support the use of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning tools to enhance customer experience and personalization.

Adopting cloud solutions can help companies become more agile and efficient while maintaining high standards of security and compliance, offering numerous benefits that can improve operational efficiency, data management, and the ability to innovate. The adoption of the new architecture must also be accompanied by a revision of the organizational model, allowing all business areas to operate according to well-defined data governance rules (e.g., data/KPI/algorithm/model ownership) and to find the right balance between a structured approach and time to market, for instance by adopting a DevOps-oriented approach.