Windesheim Customer Story

In 2021, Windesheim, in collaboration with MCX, performed an upgrade to Oracle EBS Release 12.2 on its own infrastructure. In 2024, the university decided to use the Oracle EBS production environment solely as an archive database and to host it in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) due to lower costs, better performance, improved security, and reduced management burden.

Business challenges

Windesheim is one of the largest Dutch universities of applied sciences and has campuses in Zwolle and Almere. This university is known for its practice-oriented education and strong ties with the business community.

Windesheim uses the Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) to manage various business processes, including finance, projects, HR, and purchasing/inventory management. In 2021, in collaboration with MCX, they performed an upgrade to Oracle EBS Release 12.2 on their own infrastructure (on-premise). In 2024, Windesheim's existing infrastructure landscape was due for replacement, and they decided to deploy the production Oracle EBS environment solely as an archive database.

Why choose Oracle?

During the investigation into a replacement of the infrastructure landscape, the total cost of ownership (TCO) was carefully considered. Due to lower investments in physical hardware and maintenance costs, it was decided to move the Oracle EBS archive database to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). As a result, Windesheim benefits from lower costs, better performance, improved security, and reduced management burden, leading to a decrease in the total cost of ownership.

Result

Because we have been supporting the university of applied sciences for years with the technical management of the Oracle landscape and possess the necessary expertise and certifications for OCI, Windesheim asked us to set up the OCI landscape and carry out the migration of the Oracle EBS archive database to OCI. We did this with a smooth transition, minimal downtime, and an infrastructure that meets Windesheim's requirements.

Single Sign-On (SSO) is used to log in to the OCI console. The Identity Provider Windesheim uses for this is Entra ID (formerly known as Azure Active Directory). This is a cloud-based solution from Microsoft for identity and access management. Entra ID offers a secure and efficient way to manage users, grant access to applications, and protect data within the cloud environment. Users are automatically assigned within Windesheim via Entra ID.

By building the Oracle Cloud tenant entirely from scratch, a landing zone for both the logical and technical architecture was implemented that is certified by the Center for Internet Security (CIS). Segmentation was achieved by applying a hub-spoke implementation in Virtual Cloud Networks (VCNs) and using the appropriate security lists. Within the Windesheim Oracle Cloud tenant, various compartments have been configured, each with a specific purpose.

For Windesheim, these three compartments have been defined:

1. Shared Resources

This compartment contains resources that are shared by multiple systems or applications within Windesheim, such as storage volumes, virtual networks, and other generic infrastructure components.

2. Network components

In this compartment, all network-related resources are managed, such as virtual private networks (VPNs), subnets, and network security groups. It ensures that the network infrastructure remains well separated from other resources, which is an advantage for security and scalability.



 3. Databases

This compartment is specifically intended for database instances and related storage, such as the Oracle EBS archive database. By placing the database in a separate compartment, Windesheim can optimally manage data access and security.

This structure makes it possible to efficiently organize resources, restrict access to sensitive data and components, and easily manage and monitor various parts of the cloud infrastructure.

To host the Oracle EBS archive database, the Oracle Base Database Service within the Oracle Cloud was chosen. This choice offers a powerful and flexible solution for hosting databases in the cloud.

Platform-as-a-Service solution

The Oracle Base Database Service is a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solution specifically designed for running databases. This service offers the benefits of full database management capabilities without the need for infrastructure management. Below is a list of the benefits:

1. Management and maintenance

Oracle manages the underlying infrastructure, patches, updates, and backups, so that Windesheim can focus on managing the data and applications themselves.

2. Scaling

The service offers automatic scaling of database capacity based on demand, ensuring optimal performance and cost control.

3. Reliability and high availability

Oracle Base Database Service offers built-in redundancy and recovery options, guaranteeing high database availability even in the event of failures.

4. Security
The service includes advanced security measures such as encryption of data at rest and in transit, as well as integration with Oracle Cloud's Identity and Access Management (IAM) for access control.

5. Cost efficiency

By using Oracle Cloud's optimized PaaS environment, the costs of infrastructure management, hardware, and licensing have been significantly reduced.

By hosting the Oracle-EBS database on the Oracle Base Database Service, Windesheim can benefit from a robust, scalable, and secure cloud environment optimized for running the Oracle EBS archive database.Nieuwe alinea

Execution

A DB system was created within the Oracle Base Database Service to house the Oracle EBS archive database. For the migration, a database link was established over the internet between the OCI archive database and the on-premise EBS database. Because Windesheim has a stable and fast internet connection, a separate OCI connection was not necessary.

To ensure consistency, the Oracle EBS application was temporarily suspended and the source EBS database was placed in read-only mode. Subsequently, a new pluggable database was created within the Oracle EBS archive database, which was automatically populated with the Oracle EBS data via the database link. After the migration, encryption was applied to all created tablespaces, in accordance with the security requirements within OCI.

The OCI DB system containing the Oracle EBS archive database has been updated with the latest available Critical Patch Updates and a backup has been created. As this is a consultation environment, the Oracle EBS archive database has also been placed in read-only mode.

To control costs, the DB system has been disabled with Windesheim's approval. If necessary, it can easily be re-enabled. MCX has documented the procedure and transferred it to Windesheim. Finally, Windesheim has phased out the original EBS database.

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