ANR brings EBS expertise to FAA for EBS Upgrade and Database Upgrade

 

Client Information and Requirements:

Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is a USA Federal Government Agency responsible for maintaining Air Traffic safety and maintaining flight standards.

FAA’s Technology Division supported Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) 11.5.10.2 (11i) and managed Financials for 20 other US Federal Agencies within the EBS system. FAA’s goal was to upgrade the database to 11.2.0.2 version from 10.2.0.5 and upgrade Oracle EBS to Release 12 (12.1.3) version. While upgrading the database and EBS systems, FAA also wanted to replace the old database and Apps tier servers with newer models.

FAA’s Oracle EBS infrastructure is one of the biggest and most complex Oracle systems in use. Their infrastructure consisted of a 4 Node Oracle Real Application Cluster (RAC) with an 8 Node Apps Tier for load balancing and high availability. The database size was about 10 TB and some of the main EBS modules used were General Ledger (GL), Accounts Payable (AP), Accounts Receivable (AR) and Federal Financials.

ANR’s Solution and Services:

ANR Consulting Group, Inc. (ANR) was one of the teams helping FAA with the database and EBS upgrade project. This upgrade project was a 2 plus year project with about 80 plus team members.

ANR was instrumental in planning and assisting FAA in performing the database upgrade from 10.2.0.3 to 11.2.0.2 version. Project Managers with FAA found ANR’s role to be very helpful and valuable in this upgrade. ANR committed team members to assist in creating a strategy and roadmap for EBS and Database upgrade as well as in migrating from old servers to new infrastructure.

The first phase of the project involved analyzing the current Oracle software system, gather business requirements, understand database growth trend and any new reporting requirement, capacity planning to accommodate future data growth and identify areas that needed improvement. Documentation of customizations in place and how they will be impacted with the upgrade were also part of ANR’s services.

After gaining understanding of the current system, gaps and issues were identified between the existing system and proposed upgrade version. A comprehensive test plan was developed to ensure quality assurance during the software upgrade. End-user training plans and detailed documentation were created to ensure smooth transition to upgraded system. Technical support was provided for ongoing operations while simultaneously working on upgrade project.

More than 40,000 existing reports, interfaces and customizations were analyzed and modified on as needed basis. New solutions were proposed and developed which included new interfaces and customizations to improve existing processes.

ANR’s Achievements:

• ANR’s team was able to follow Oracle best practices and created a robust test plan.
• ANR was able to navigate through the complexities of the project and earn customer’s confidence.
• ANR helped identify customizations that could be replaced with new functionalities in EBS R12 which helped FAA reduce number of customizations significantly.