Ingres Open Source Solutions Help Slash Costs for Department of Education and Training in Western Australia

Ingres Corporation, the leading open source database management company and
pioneer of the New Economics of IT, announced today that The Department of
Education and Training in Western Australia (WA DET) is harnessing the power of
Ingres Database to build a range of complex applications to manage
administrative activities and programs delivered by 11 colleges and 8,000 staff
throughout the state. The systems also collectively manage in excess of 1
million student records, with 120,000 students processed through the state`s
training systems annually. 

WA DET wanted a reliable and secure solution that would scale with large peak
volumes. Database and application servers from across the state are now
centralized into a single data center with five physical servers running 11
Ingres databases and 31 supporting server instances. WA DET consolidated its
back-end computing environment onto a centralized datacenter, running Red Hat
and Ingres, to eliminate costly support contracts from previous proprietary
hardware and software vendors. 

"It was proprietary across the board, and we paid handsomely for whatever
support we got," said Anthony Nocciolino, manager for learning technologies with
WA DET. "As we have made the transition away from heavily policy-driven systems
to more customer-focused systems, we recognized that we needed agility that we
could not get in a proprietary environment. So we chose open source and Ingres."


"The open standards design of Ingres and Linux have provided a totally
transparent, reliable platform that will grow with WA DET`s requirements," said
Jason Leonidis, vice president of sales and services, Ingres Australia and New
Zealand. "Consistency in Ingres application interfaces also means there have
been no interruptions to end-user services during the migration." 

WA DET`s new environment was built on commodity servers running Red Hat
Enterprise Linux and Ingres Database, theleading independent open source
database that helps organizations develop and manage business critical
applications at an affordable cost. Minimal change on the front end ensured
continuity of service throughout the migration project, which was an essential
requirement in such a high-use environment. No immediate changes were required
to .NET-developed applications as data was channeled through the Ingres .NET
Connector. These applications processed enrolment, resource management,
timetabling, student fees, assessments, results, web course catalogues, and
more. 

WA DET`s technical staff was also supported by Ingres Database specialists
throughout the course of the migration, ensuring a smooth transition to the open
source platform. 

"We knew the new environment would provide a huge gain in performance as a
byproduct, but our main goal was simply to move away from proprietary solutions
and centralize our infrastructure," said Darren Pointer, coordinator of
technology systems, WA DET. "Ingres has always provided very good service, and
provided solid and consistent support throughout the project. In the end, it has
given us a stable environment, which is essential given that our enrolment and
other core systems all run off this platform." 

Since introducing the new open-systems servers and shifting to Ingres Database,
WA DET has introduced a range of systems that improve self-service capabilities
for students and staff. Microsoft CRM and SharePoint have both been implemented
in the new environment and linked to Ingres Database to further streamline the
delivery of training across Western Australia. 

About Government of Western Australia, Department of Education and Training

The Department of Education and Training aims to provide all Western Australians
with lifelong training and employment opportunities. It is also responsible for
planning the long term development of the State's training system to meet the
current and future needs of industry, the community and regional areas. For more
information visit www.det.wa.edu.au/training. 

About Ingres Corporation

Ingres is the leading open source database management company. We are the
world`s second largest open source company and the pioneer of the New Economics
of IT, providing open source solutions at dramatically reduced cost than
proprietary software vendors. As a leader in the New Economics of IT, Ingres
delivers low cost and accelerated innovation to more than 10,000 customers
worldwide. 

Ingres is a registered trademark of Ingres Corporation. All other trademarks,
trade names, service marks, and logos referenced herein belong to their
respective companies. 

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