Transports publics fribourgeois Ensures Reliable Public Transportation Services with Engineered Database

Infrastructure

Fribourg, located just 17 miles from the Swiss capital Berne, is an important economic, administrative, and

educational center on the cultural border between German and French Switzerland. Transports publics

fribourgeois (TPF) SA, which is majority-owned by the canton of Fribourg, operates a 940-kilometer

public transportation network within the metropolitan area and its adjacent rural areas. Six transport

companies cover the Fribourg and the Broye regions in the canton of Vaud’s TPF’s Frimobil fare network,

where the same basic fare structure applies to all travel across the region. In 2012, the organization

transported almost 28 million passengers by road and rail.

Oracle Customer: Transports

publics fribourgeois (TPF) SA

Location: Fribourg, Switzerland

Industry: Travel and

Transportation

Employees: 700

Annual Revenue: $100 to $500

Million

Challenges

Ensure high availability of database applications—such as

route planning, vehicle management, and staff allocation—

to enable efficient and cost-effective public transportation

Protect database applications from unforeseen downtime

through hardware redundancy between production and test

environments to avoid negative impact on public

transportation—for examples, due to vehicle delays,

customer complaints, or even legal liability

Establish efficient database support to ensure that potential

issues with business-critical applications are solved

rapidly, before they become apparent to customers

Optimize use of public budgets by deploying a cost-

effective, integrated database application platform that a

small team of in-house specialists can administer

A word from Transports publics fribourgeois (TPF) SA

“Our high-availability solution, based on Oracle Database

Appliance will support future business growth, as it provides real

capacity on demand, excellent hardware and software integration, a

complete monitoring interface with plug-ins for various services,

and outstanding overall performance. It is a key tool for us, because

it enables everything, from on-time public transportation and

payroll, to cost-effective service growth.” – Grégoire Ramuz, IT

Manager, Transports publics fribourgeois (TPF) SA

Solutions

Deployed two Oracle Database Appliances—each equipped with four, active, central processing units (CPUs)—in clustered mode

connected via Oracle Active Data Guard—to deliver outstanding performance for the company’s core applications, which ensure every

resource planning aspect, from bus and train scheduling, to staff allocation and payroll

Improved logistics and service to customers—for example, by increasing public transport frequency during anticipated rush hours—with

high availability of core applications

Ensured cost-effective operation and maintenance of Oracle Database Appliance through a fully integrated system of software, servers,

storage, and networking with built-in diagnostics and automatic service request logs, enabling the organization to operate its IT

environment with only six employees

Created the foundation for seamless public service growth with Oracle Database Appliance’s ability to scale up to 20 CPUs on demand by

simply entering a software license key, eliminating the need for hardware upgrades during the entire lifecycle with a pay-as-you-grow

licensing model

Used Oracle Active Data Guard to establish robust disaster recovery using fully redundant systems that redirect client connections

automatically to the standby system, ensuring 24/7 operations in the case of a production system failure

Used Oracle Real Application Clusters to minimize downtime by using rolling maintenance procedures that validate patches on test

environments before applying them to the production system, with complete transparency for system administrators

Enabled faster database application development and testing with 96 gigabytes of random access memory on each cluster node—a key

requirement because public transportation is expected to grow in the booming Fribourg region

Increased backup capabilities and file sharing between applications by simply connecting Oracle Database Appliance to externally

networked, file-system-based storage systems

Used Oracle’s best practices as deployment instructions to configure Oracle Database Appliance with few commands, deploying the

solution, including definitions of Internet Protocol addresses, within three hours

Used the solution’s comprehensive monitoring interface with plug-ins for various third-party service management tools to monitoring the

platform in-house, providing more stringent control over data quality

Why Oracle

“Oracle Database Appliance provides the high availability and performance required for our public transportation system and allows us to scale

easily to meet changing business requirements. This way, we limit total cost of ownership, which is an important factor for an organization that

depends on public budgets,” said Grégoire Ramuz, IT manager, Transports publics fribourgeois (TPF) SA.

Implementation Process

“Trivadis’ experts designed the solution according to our requirements and budgets and deployed it on schedule in December 2012. Even though

we monitor the appliance with in-house resources and are pretty self-sufficient, we rely on a certified Oracle partner when it comes to business-

critical deployments,” Ramuz said.

Partner

“Trivadis’ experts designed the solution according to our requirements and budgets and deployed it on schedule in

December 2012. Even though we monitor the appliance with in-house resources and are pretty self-sufficient, we rely on

a certified Oracle partner when it comes to business-critical deployments,” Ramuz said

Oracle Trivadis