NHS Digital - OBIEE Upgrade

The Project

In May 2020, Rittman Mead and NHS Digital discussed options for an upgrade of their OBIEE (Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition) platform from version 11g.

NHS Digital required an experienced partner to deliver the upgrade, alongside training to better leverage the platform. The old OBIEE 11g environment was slowly becoming redundant and could not match their growing requirements. It was also due for end of life support.

Rittman Mead is an Oracle partner that works closely with Oracle’s product development team on all its Data & Analytics offerings. This gives Rittman Mead the edge when helping customers with the latest versions, features and suitable migration and upgrade paths.

The Solution

Rittman Mead worked closely with NHS Digital to discuss their options for the upgrade. Due to specific configurations, Rittman Mead suggested testing against two candidate target versions for the upgrade to ensure a smooth transition for a production cut-over and no issues with compatibility.

Rittman Mead suggested an out-of-place upgrade to OBIEE 12c. This approach was optimal as it meant that NHS Digital would benefit from a new clean implementation of OBIEE 12c with supporting documentation that was previously missing from their 11g implementation.

The clean implementation meant that old configurations, hacks and potential bad practices didn’t get carried forward, making the platform easier to manage and maintain in the future. This approach also gave Rittman Mead the ability to run the current platform and new platform in parallel to perform regression testing before the cutover. NHS Digital would also be able to ensure that they were happy with the new platform and configurations before cutting over from 11g.

Benefits Achieved

• Discover new insights and make faster, more informed decisions.
• Agile visual analytics and self-service discovery.
• No hacks or bad practices carried over to the new environments.