Forfás

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Forfás

The Challenge

Forfás is the national board responsible for providing policy advice to government on enterprise, trade, science, technology and innovation in Ireland. Forfás’ Business Intelligence System (BIS) Environment comprises of a number of Oracle based components. Forfás is self sufficient in the day-to-day management of this critical application. However, there are times when Forfás requires the flexibility to draw support from additional, experienced Oracle resources.

In seeking a solution to this problem Forfás decided that Fujitsu had the capacity to support Forfás in terms of meeting both their current and future business needs.

The Solution

Day-to-day BIS Application support is preformed by Forfás’ own IT department. However, occasionally Forfás require additional resources in supporting their BIS Application environment. To acquire these services Forfás employed Fujitsu to draw up a support agreement giving Forfás access to these extra resources. Forfás’ support agreement with Fujitsu allows them to maximise the service delivered in an efficient and cost effective way.

The core features of the support agreement allows Forfás to call on Fujitsu’s pool of Oracle technical and application specialists on an ‘as needed’ basis. Forfás can use this support for a wide range of activities ranging from advice and guidance on future direction, technical Oracle consultancy, developer and Database Administration assistance, to system design and analysis.

The Benefits

This BIS application support agreement provided by Fujitsu to Forfás provides the following benefits:

• Flexibility: Fujitsu’s support agreement provides a flexible resourcing model which gives Forfás access to an extensive pool of skilled resources.
• Accuracy: Under the support agreement with Fujitsu, Forfás have the ability to accurately match any support to actual requirements at any given time.
• Guidance: Fujitsu’s support agreement provides Forfás with access to the most current advice and guidance by means of Fujitsu’s resource base along with our strong alliance with Oracle.
• Reporting: Fujitsu will provide regular reporting to support best use by Forfás of their support agreement.

The Implementation

The new infrastructure was implemented over a twelve-month period. Fujitsu Services was contracted to maintain and support it for three years, working closely with partners including Sun Microsystems, EMC, Compaq & Microsoft to deliver a reliable and robust solution in a phased development from July 2001 to August 2002. This followed a successful pilot implementation in Clare & Wexford, followed by the creation of a "model office" solution that facilitated testing and training of all local authority staff. The project is on budget and ahead of schedule.

The Expertise

Forfás’ two major requirements were, firstly the security of access to the right level of technical and application expertise. Secondly, flexibility in how this support might be delivered. As an Oracle certified partner, Fujitsu has a large pool of Oracle specialist practitioners. This enables us to provide the complex range of skills required by Forfás. Fujitsu’s partnership with Oracle allows Forfás access to the most current advice and guidance that they may need.

Fujitsu brings a partnership approach to all its support engagements and as such can offer a wide range of support models tailored to the particular client needs. In this way Fujitsu were able to agree the model that best matched Forfás’ requirements.