Catholic Education South Australia (CESA) is a large organization that provides education to over 45,000 students in a Catholic context. The organisation has over 6,000 staff and operates two primary schools, six secondary schools, and seven combined schools.
The IT Infrastructure Challenge and the need for Data-driven IT solutions
CESA needed to ensure that its information and communications technology (ICT) systems were up-to-date and efficient to provide the proper levels of support for its schools. So operational efficiency in education was paramount. The organisation’s Chief Information Officer (CIO), Phil Proctor, was tasked with ensuring the strategic alignment between the school and ICT to ensure that students have what they need when they need it to develop and grow as students.
One of the challenges that CESA faced was improving its disaster recovery resilience. The organization needed to ensure that its systems were available instantly and at all times. CESA had to undertake a major consolidation and rationalisation of its database infrastructure to achieve this.
Consolidation and rationalisation for database infrastructure optimization
CESA worked with Blue Crystal to define key areas of work, and Blue Crystal delivered on time and on budget, working with our team to achieve the required outcomes. As database management specialists, Blue Crystal used its Primesize Data Insights service to help CESA achieve an Oracle and Microsoft stack optimization and get the equipment to the right size across two data centres.
Primesize gathered statistical data across CESA’s IT environments, and provided a complete picture of their system’s performance, whilst making recommendations on best practices for this next IT move. This accurate and data-driven insight is a must when seeking a successful transformation to a future state: on-premise, cloud or hybrid. From this, Blue Crystal Solutions was able to enable CESA seamlessly transfer information between two sites with minimal downtime.
Disaster recovery enhancement and resilience
As a result of Blue Crystal Solutions’ work, CESA improved its disaster recovery resilience and ensured that its systems were available instantly and at all times. The organization also reduced its costs and improved its efficiency.
Watch our interview with Phil Proctor, CIO, below.
