USIT has a successful track record in assisting our customers upgrade to the Oracle EBusiness Suite (EBS) R12 technology stack, and sustaining the customer’s custom extensions in the new environment.
USIT successfully upgraded MSC’s Oracle E-Business Suite application Financials from Release 11.5.1 to Release 12 (R12) and helped them achieve a sustainment cost savings in the process through reduce customizations and streamlined business flows. The upgrade challenges included poorly documented customizations within the existing R11.5 environment for both HR and Financials that had been implemented by previous contractors over a number of years. In addition, a DISA-mandated migration to Defense Finance and Accounting Services (DFAS) for MSC payroll had dependencies in the new R12 version, and the upgrade had to be completed before MSC could begin its migration to DFAS. In the middle of it all, MSC (all of Navy) began a migration of all applications to a centralized data center environment at the Navy Enterprise Data Center (NEDC) located in Charleston, SC. Through it all, USIT successfully completed the upgrades to R12 and the migration to DFAS without incident throughout the data center move. We did this by ensuring complete and accurate documentation of as-is and to-be environments, following strict implementation methodologies, fostering excellent communication with stakeholders on our every move, and ensuring tight configuration management throughout the entire process. The R12 migration was completed within 10 months, and the entire upgrade was a complete success, which enabled the mandated migration to DFAS to be completed on time.
In order to successfully upgrade the customer’s environment, USIT leveraged methods, tools, and lessons learned from our other R12 implementations similar in size, scope, and complexity, while following guidelines outlined by Oracle in the Oracle E-Business Suite Managed Cloud Services standards(EBSO). These methods and tools are clearly documented, repeatable and provide a clear understanding of what we are going to do and how it will be done. In addition, we provide knowledgeable and senior level Oracle experts in order to reduce upgrade time, decrease risk, and lower cost.
USIT understands that the ultimate success of any R12 upgrade project is measured by the actual execution of the process within the allotted downtime window with a stable, predictable, and controlled result. USIT has found, based on our R12 upgrade experience, a successful technology upgrade begins with a comprehensive survey of source and target configurations, considering the entire stack from foundation hardware components up through to the functional setup. Detailed plans are formulated for technology infrastructure, application core technology, application functional configuration, and upgrade migration. Multiple test conversions are executed beginning in the Operations Analysis phase to validate technology plans, support functional Conference Room Pilots, and flush out critical issues early in the process. Repeatable validation tests are formulated to quickly verify test conversions and identify defects. Rapid prototyping techniques are applied in the build phase to validate and adjust technical designs to the targeted configuration and support functional validation to ensure smooth User Acceptance Test during the transition phase. The end result is “business as usual” for the customer’s enterprise users and employees who depend on reliable, up-and-running technology infrastructure for critical business processes. We have integrated our Implementation / Migration Methodology, with lessons learned from other R12 upgrades, as well as, incorporating Oracle EBSO approaches for facilitating the delivery of standardized Oracle processes throughout the upgrade implementation Life Cycle.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Geostationary Satellite system (GOES) provides data for real time weather forecasting, severe storm tracking, and meteorological research. Harris Corporation won the $860 Million projects to build the ground and antennae segments for the GOES project. This project demands highly availability and in 2011 Harris chose USIT to help it design a highly available server infrastructure consisting of several clustered environments using Oracle 11gR2 - all centrally administered by Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control 12c. USIT was tasked with designing and building multi petabyte-sized databases for the collection of images relayed by the latest geosynchronous weather satellites.
Since November 2011, USIT database administrative consultants installed and configured well over 100 Oracle (11gR2) databases and worked to insure their fast performance. USIT is working with Harris to incorporate a number of strategies like employing database partitioning and read only tablespaces to ensure these databases perform well. In addition, USIT is helping Harris with Oracle queuing, replication, failover and backup and recovery.
USIT received written recognition by NOAA INCO (infrastructure check out) observers as a for the high availability aspect of the USIT designed database architecture. The government observers in a written letter to Harris and USIT singled out USIT’s work as being the best in class.
USIT provides the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) Alaska Fisheries Science Center (AFSC) with Oracle database administration (DBA) and other Oracle technology services to support AFSC's overall goals and mission.
The Alaska Fisheries Science Center (AFSC) of the NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) generates the scientific information and analysis necessary for the conservation, management, and utilization of the region's living marine resources. AFSC provides this support through the collection of large quantities of data stored, distributed, and analyzed in multi-petabyte Oracle databases.
USIT migrated several AFSC custom LDAP authentication routines imbedded in several APEX applications. USIT staff worked closely with NOAA technical staff to analyze and develop new to improve data performance on the servers. In order to minimize downtime and improve performance, USIT implemented Oracle Data Guard allow quick replication of data to remote locations, reducing the time required to copy the database from the original server to the new ones spread out across the region.
Under its Oracle Database and Application Server System Support and Maintenance contract, U.S. Information Technologies Corporation (USIT) provides a full range of sustainment support services to the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) Defense Supply Center Richmond (DSCR). Based in Richmond, VA, DSCR manages supply, storage and distribution operations and supports more than 1,300 major weapon systems as the military's primary source for more than 1.3 million repair parts and operating supply items
DSCR has traditionally purchased servers for singular purposes. Through the use of technologies such as Solaris Zones or other virtual machine offerings, the number of physical servers can be reduced along with the amount of time required to administer them. This type of solution is ideal for continuity of operations (COOP) and disaster recovery (DR) exercises as well as ongoing migration initiatives. Virtualization allows for more efficient utilization of server resources and the flexibility to react quickly to changing business requirements. USIT has reduced the number of servers—we have taken production servers down from 8 to 2, and test servers down from 4 to 2. USIT has made the environment more fault tolerant, increasing system uptime and availability.
During USIT’s successful upgrade of MSC to the Oracle EBusiness Suite (EBS) R12 technology stack, USIT took great care to complete a thorough analysis of the new functionality available with COTS Oracle EBS R12. Our Oracle experts determined that much of the new functionality was able to be implemented in place of existing customizations that were part of MSC’s Oracle 11i implementation. As a result, USIT was able to reduce the total number of MSC custom Oracle EBS RICE objects by approximately 34% going from 11i to R12. This significantly reduces the cost and complexity going forward to sustain and patch MSC’s EBS Environment.
Under its Oracle Database and Application Server System Support and Maintenance contract, U.S. Information Technologies Corporation (USIT) provides a full range of sustainment support services to the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) Defense Supply Center Richmond (DSCR). Based in Richmond, VA, DSCR manages supply, storage and distribution operations and supports more than 1,300 major weapon systems as the military's primary source for more than 1.3 million repair parts and operating supply items
DSCR owned the full Oracle Enterprise Manager (OEM) application but was not taking advantage of all of its powerful features. USIT recommended extending the functionality of OEM at DSCR. Integration of OEM provides performance statistics and monitoring of database/application server parameters, log files, space allocation, database locks, runaway processes, and monitoring of all Oracle components. Upon contract start, USIT was receiving an average of 30-40 tickets per week. The number of tickets has been reduced to an average of 9 per week since USIT implemented OEM. Performance problems are identified earlier, downed systems are identified earlier, response time has improved, visibility has increased, and uptime has improved.
Under its Oracle Database and Application Server System Support and Maintenance contract, U.S. Information Technologies Corporation (USIT) provides a full range of sustainment support services to the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) Defense Supply Center Richmond (DSCR). Based in Richmond, VA, DSCR manages supply, storage and distribution operations and supports more than 1,300 major weapon systems as the military's primary source for more than 1.3 million repair parts and operating supply items
Like many organizations, DSCR’s requirement for disk space grows exponentially every year. These data assets must be backed up regularly in order to protect it. Data de-duplication works by reducing the volume of redundant data commonly present with database backups. This reduces the amount of time required to perform backups and introduces the WAN as an option for disaster recovery and COOP. With shrinking backup windows and requirements for fast recovery, it is an important technology to consider.
Under its Oracle Database and Application Server System Support and Maintenance contract, U.S. Information Technologies Corporation (USIT) provides a full range of sustainment support services to the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) Defense Supply Center Richmond (DSCR). Based in Richmond, VA, DSCR manages supply, storage and distribution operations and supports more than 1,300 major weapon systems as the military's primary source for more than 1.3 million repair parts and operating supply items
Upon contract start, USIT was challenged to implement a smooth patch update processes. There was no consolidated asset inventory and trying to identify all of the systems that required patches proved difficult. USIT immediately created a full asset inventory and, through the server virtualization project, leveraged fault tolerance and redundant servers, which made rolling software updates possible. USIT can now perform database patch updates during business hours without disruption to system and business operations. The time required to perform patch updates has been decreased by 50% with no outages reported.
The Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) deployed the Account Management and Provisioning System (AMPS) to replace the DLA Enterprise System Account Management (DESAM). Team USIT designed AMPS to provide a robust, stable, and scalable infrastructure, to eliminate manual processes, streamline operations, and provide a path for future expansion of Identity Management to the entire DLA enterprise.
AMPS is an automated Single Sign-On (SSO) system built on Oracle Identity Management technology, that provides user account creation, account management, and account provisioning in target systems. Team USIT fully deployed AMPS to in January 2007 supporting over 70,000 DLA and DoD users.
In 2012, due to overwhelming Success of the USIT solution, USIT re-implemented AMPS for the Defense Finance Accounting Service agency (DFAS), reusing the roadmap developed during the DLA implementation and adding 86+ DFAS systems under AMPS management for account creation, account management, and account provisioning.
