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The Oracle team is being led by executive sponsor, John Abel, who joined the project six months ago. Although the Oracle relationship is being managed by IBM and licenses have been procured as part of the IBM deal, Abel was keen to point out how integrated the three teams have been which has ultimately led to a successful go-live, on time and on budget. He said, “The best endorsement I can give is that it’s very hard to see where the Oracle, IBM and HS2 teams start and finish. All parties involved have worked collaboratively as one team focussed on delivering a first-class solution and Oracle is delighted that its technology is underpinning such a prestigious project. HS2 is utilising the full power of the Oracle ERP Cloud suite, coupled with our PaaS offering and Oracle Cage (Government Cloud).”
The implementation journey The implementation partner for the project is IBM Services, led by executive partner, Jamie Cole. IBM won both the build and managed services contracts through a tendering process 134
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“IBM brought something that we were lacking – a vision for the solution and knowledge of the product – and they got us on track quickly” and provides ongoing support for the solution. Cole said, “IBM Services is delighted to have partnered HS2 on such a high profile and important project. The Oracle solution will serve HS2 into the future and we are very pleased to have played a major role in its success.” Commenting on the tribulations of the ERP journey, Gayler outlined several key areas where IBM has added significant value. “IBM brought something that we were lacking – a vision for the solution and knowledge of the product – and they got us on track quickly. They also manage the relationship with Oracle. They speak the same language
as the vendor and having our trusted partner dealing with Oracle has freed us up to concentrate on other tasks and duties”, said Gayler. Given the complexity of the project and the scrutiny under-which HS2 operates, it is remarkable that a relatively small team has brought the project together so quickly and efficiently. As far as cloud ERP projects go, the headline architecture for this project was relatively straightforward. It was SaaS to SaaS - and although I can’t imagine there has been too many other similar projects, the fact that the legacy systems were cloud-native and the target system was as well, has meant that many of the big bumps often felt along the ERP journey have been avoided. Gayler commented: “Like any ERP roll-out, we’ve faced challenges. But I have to say, although we expected more challenges during the hypercare period, the implementation across the business has gone well. The fact this is a SaaS service seems to have been a big factor. The user uptake rate – particularly in the first two weeks – exceeded expectations.”
