Conduent streamlines transaction processing, avoids hours of downtime with Oracle Database@Azure

Driving superior performance, availability, and service excellence

Delivering exceptional outcomes is routine for American IT services provider Conduent. Established in 2017, the company disburses around $100 billion in government payments and facilitates 2.3 billion customer service interactions annually. Additionally, it processes nearly 13 million roadway tolling transactions daily and supports millions of employees through HR services each year.

This immense daily volume demands exceptionally reliable and high-performing technology to support back-end transaction platforms and business systems. Conduent has traditionally met this need with Oracle Exadata Cloud@Customer, an Oracle database and optimized hardware solution, in its on-premises datacenters. However, Conduent faced challenges running legacy Oracle databases in the cloud, struggling to match the performance and availability of its on-premises systems. With a focus on optimization, it aimed to meet and exceed the performance and availability needs of its high-visibility, high-traffic clients and solutions.

Conduent’s move to introduce its roadway tolling clients to Azure was pivotal in processing extremely high transaction volumes, with one system handling 7 million billing transactions daily. “During our initial assessment of the Oracle database environment within Azure, we discovered our objectives were not being achieved, so we leveraged our relationships with Microsoft and Oracle Cloud Engineering to tackle the issue,” says Ralph Lech, Vice President of Infrastructure Engineering at Conduent. “These collaborations have been instrumental in enabling us to identify and implement solutions that enhance our client offerings and meet the critical non-functional requirements needed to service our clients.”

Microsoft and Oracle invited Conduent to become an early adopter of Oracle Database@Azure for its roadside tollway offering. Conduent accepted, leaning on its extensive engineering experience with Oracle Exadata Cloud@Customer and Azure cloud solutions. This collaboration resulted in a hybrid cloud solution in Azure, delivering a best-in-class hybrid cloud architecture combining Oracle and Azure services without the typical latency or integration risks associated with traditional multicloud hybrid architectures. Through joint efforts between Conduent, Microsoft, and Oracle engineering, Conduent successfully integrated Oracle Database@Azure into its Azure roadside tolling solution and completed the necessary engineering validations for both functional and non-functional requirements within weeks.

Retaining benefits, eliminating downtime

As an early adopter of Oracle Exadata Cloud@Customer in its on-premises datacenters, Conduent was already well versed when transitioning to Oracle Database@Azure. This familiarity allowed Conduent to quickly implement and apply its best practices to Oracle Database@Azure environments. By colocating Oracle’s optimized database infrastructure within Azure, Conduent enhanced availability while maintaining the scalability and performance achieved with optimized technology for running Oracle database workloads. “We’ve transitioned from building Oracle environments from scratch to a cloud-based approach that joins the strengths of both Oracle and Azure capabilities within the Azure platform,” says Lech. “We can now deploy a templated database configuration that ensures consistent and repeatable performance with just a few clicks, eliminating the need for a full infrastructure build-out.”

Standard planned maintenance like patching, which historically required downtime, has significantly improved and is now being performed with minimal to no interruptions. “Without affecting availability, we can independently patch nodes and scale out more seamlessly than any other solution,” adds Lech. “Oracle Database@Azure offers rolling patches applied within the Exadata Dedicated Infrastructure, similar to other platform-based service offerings. This approach enhances availability and minimizes downtime. Additionally, we benefit from the timely elasticity of Exadata Dedicated Infrastructure, enabling us to scale up or down based on near real-time needs.”

Minimizing latency, enhancing the customer experience, and shaping the future

Conduent’s solution has rapidly grown beyond its initial use case, now influencing multiple product roadmaps. New and additional cloud offerings are regularly integrated into Oracle on Azure, signifying ongoing advancements in service availability and performance. “Our existing on-premises platforms using Exadata Cloud@Customer solutions can now be migrated to Oracle Database@Azure where required without compromising performance or scalability,” says Lech. These enhancements have also empowered Conduent to launch new solutions and services that transform client operations and enhance efficiency both internally and externally.

Valued by both the business and its clients, Conduent can now process more transactions per second in the cloud thanks to Oracle Database@Azure and its high-availability, multiple-node architecture. “Since the Exadata infrastructure is optimized and fine-tuned for Oracle database processing, we can optimize transaction times,” says Lech. “And by colocating Oracle Exadata Infrastructure within Azure on the same virtual network, we eliminate latency, significantly enhancing the customer experience. Instead of traversing a WAN or network connections between cloud environments, we are eliminating points of failure and improving stability as everything is now housed within the same regional Azure datacenter.”

Since migrating to Oracle Database@Azure, Conduent has better realized its business goals and overcome challenges, leading it to deliver exceptional outcomes for its clients more efficiently and effectively. “Overall, we’re providing scalability, performance, and availability to address the large transactional volumes we support for our clients today and tomorrow,” says Lech. Conduent has also optimized its financials by adopting a consumption-based licensing model, paving the way for innovation and business process solutions. This includes its recently announced Azure OpenAI Service pilots, which bring the power of generative AI to global clients, starting with optimizing healthcare claims management, customer service, and fraud detection.

This successful technology journey ultimately underscores Conduent’s commitment to shared success with clients. “Our engineering teams consistently prioritize scalability to meet our clients’ needs, looking beyond financials and contracts,” says Lech. “Our infrastructure investments are future-focused, enhancing our ability to scale environments to meet current and future client needs. This approach enables us to deliver best-in-class solutions, highlighting the value of our work with Oracle and Microsoft.”