Maximising Innovation and Reducing Costs for Angel Trains

Angel Trains is one of Britain’s leading train asset management companies with an enviable record as an innovative and large-scale investor in the rail industry. They are committed to providing innovative and sustainable solutions to modernize and improve the UK’s train fleet and spearhead cross-industry collaborations to deliver rolling stock solutions that meet the evolving needs of today’s passengers.

Since 1994, Angel Trains has invested over £5 billion in new rolling stock and refurbishment programs. The company leases to 18 franchised train operators including South Western Railway, Virgin Trains, London North Eastern Railway, Abellio Greater Anglia, and Great Western Railway. Angel Trains currently owns 4,321 vehicles, 34% of the UK’s rolling stock, that carry over 1.6 million passengers across the UK’s rail network.

Angel Trains adopted Oracle BI Applications (OBIA), Oracle Data Integrator (ODI), and Hyperion Planning on-premises to aggregate, manage and report critical business information. The company also uses Oracle E-Business Suite to support its complex financial processes and asset management services. However, the company’s on-premises applications, installed over 7 years ago, were nearing end-of-life support and lacked the features and benefits of modern cloud-based solutions. Angel Trains saw this as an opportunity to migrate to the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and move their business forward. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure offered a significantly lower cost of ownership, eliminated lengthy and costly upgrades and maintenance cycles, and brought immediate value with the latest innovations. Angel Trains wanted to future-proof their systems, benefit from continuous innovation, reduce IT costs and ensure a smooth transition from on-premise to an Oracle Cloud Infrastructure environment.

“Moving our legacy on-prem systems to the cloud meant we no longer have to waste resources on maintenance and upgrades, but can instead focus on providing business value insights using state-of-the-art applications”

Liam Stirling – Head of Information Technology, Angel Trains

Angel Trains’ intricate business model is supported by a similarly complex on-premises IT landscape. They needed a systems-integration partner with a robust cloud migration methodology and implementation framework, proven Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and Oracle technology expertise, and a dependable project and consultant team. Version 1 was chosen by Angel Trains to assist in their migration of Oracle Hyperion Planning, Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE), Oracle Data Integrator, Oracle Database, and Oracle BI Apps to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. Our expert team worked closely with Angel Trains to review and re-architecture their IT system landscape.

Based on this, several systems were migrated “as-is” to preserve existing processes including Hyperion Planning and Oracle BI Applications to EPM and Analytics Cloud. On top of this, data integration between its various environments was supported by Cloudbridge, Oracle Data Integration Platform Cloud, and Oracle Autonomous Database which are all hosted on the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. These migrations were followed by several rounds of stringent testing to ensure solution reliability. The end product was a highly capable solution that fit the modern needs of Angel Trains now and in the future.

This engagement followed Version 1’s Value 2 Cloud methodology, underpinned by our deep and proven experience gained by 1000+ client engagements focused on ERP, EPM, and Analytics globally.

• Hyperion Planning, Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE), and Oracle BI Apps were nearing end-of-life support.
• On-premises system performance and updates lagged behind their modern Oracle Cloud Infrastructure cloud-based equivalents.
• On-premises systems were costly to maintain and lacked flexibility in consumption models compared to the cloud.

Solution

• Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI)
• Oracle EPM Cloud Planning (formerly EPBCS), Oracle Analytics Cloud, Oracle Data Integration, Oracle Database Cloud
• Cloudbridge – Data Integration and Master Data Management
• Version 1’s Value 2 Cloud Methodology

Outcomes

• Migrated core systems “as-is” and upgraded or replaced applications to create a unified cloud-based strategic reporting platform.
• This included migrating Hyperion Planning to Oracle EPM Cloud Planning, OBIEE, and Oracle BI Apps to Oracle Analytics Cloud. Version 1 also migrated Oracle Data Integrator and Data Hub to Oracle Data Integration Platform Cloud and Oracle Database Cloud.
• Replaced QED with the newest version of Cloudbridge – Data Integration and Master Data Management tool.
• Configuration of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) to host the above.