Qubix | Success Story

Financial Transformation

Industry

Financial Services
Employees

30,000
HQ

Tokyo, Japan
Website

www.mizuhobank.com
Product & Services used

ORACLE DATABASE, ORACLE EPM CLOUD, ORACLE BI APPS, ORACLE BI ENTERPRISE EDITION, ORACLE DATA INTEGRATOR, ORACLE DRM, ORACLE PROFITABILITY AND COST Management, EBS 12.2 TECHNOLOGY, QUBIX CLOUDBRIDGE

Mizuho upgrades its Oracle technology to remain supported, reduce operational risk and take advantage of the latest patches and features.

Mizuho Bank is a leading global bank with one of the largest customer bases in Japan, being one of the three so-called Japanese "megabanks", and an extensive international network covering financial and business centres around the world. They pride themselves on their "customer first" principle as a centrepiece in servicing both their individual and corporate customers, with the goal of becoming their most trusted bank.

Mizuho Bank is the integrated retail and corporate banking unit of Mizuho Financial Group, one of the largest financial services companies in Japan, providing financial products and services to a wide range of clients, including individuals, small and medium-sized enterprises, large corporations, financial institutions and public sector entities.

In 2021, Mizuho had reached a point where a number of components of their Oracle landscape were very close to the "end of life" and moving into sustaining support. These included:

Oracle Database (12c)
Oracle Business Intelligence Applications (11.1.1.8.1)
Oracle Hyperion EPM (11.1.2.4)

In the case of Oracle Hyperion EPM, the migration to the EPM Cloud Suite was the strategic longer-term option. Mizuho has acquired the Oracle EPM Enterprise Cloud Suite, replacing their on-premises EPM footprint which went out of premier support in December 2021. This migration provided considerable business benefits and resulted in significant IT hardware and software maintenance cost savings.

Another headache for Mizuho was the approaching end of extended support for:

Operating system (Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) version 6)
Database (Oracle Database version 12c)

This was causing problems from the continuity point of view and raised serious questions and issues during internal and external audits. Qubix has upgraded both the OS and the database, resulting in:

Supported components within the technology platform and reduced operational risk
Simpler and less intrusive path to the Fusion Applications and associated technology
Significant benefits provided by performance and stability improvements

Mizuho also requested their Oracle Financials, EPM, BI and Database on-premise support to be compliant at least until August 2025.

Qubix has upgraded the following Oracle components for Mizuho:

Oracle Database
Oracle BI for Applications
Oracle BI Enterprise Edition
Oracle Data Integrator
EPM Planning (to EPM Cloud Enterprise Suite)
EPM Profitability and Cost Management
EPM Data Relationship Management
EBS 12.2 Technology Only Upgrade

The bank now has a supported platform across the complete Oracle Stack, with full Oracle support till 2025.

"Qubix…you are turning into one of our favourite consultancy firms!”

Simon Norris
Managing Director, Deputy CIO & Head of Corporate Systems

Challenges

Upgrade of out of support Oracle BI Applications 8.1 to 10.3, bringing the client into full premier support
Customisations in Oracle Data Integrator (ODI) - full understanding of the customisations in Oracle Business Applications (OBIA) was critical to the delivery of the upgrade since 15% of all customisations were created manually
Enterprise Performance Management Architect (EPMA) was decommissioned in EPM 11.2
Metadata realignment was required
Documentation on existing setups, which is the key to successful and timely delivery, was non-existent
CPU Patching was not up to date, so ensuring the latest patch sets are applied.
Understanding the clients IT policies/ procedures - especially in a tech upgrade project, big blockers or delays can be caused due to security access to servers and databases
Several OCI-based systems didn't have adequate security and on occasion, Qubix has had to take rectification steps (sometimes urgent) to reduce the risk profile on these systems.
Ensuring the right security protocols for access were in place (configuring IDCS with active directory)
Engaging customer’s experts for domain-oriented tasks. Tasks like data validations require a sound understanding of the business domain. As a technology partner, Qubix can provide technical expertise but not domain expertise. It was imperative to set the right expectations from the beginning and ensure Mizuho's domain experts enrollment in the project team

Solution

Upgrade of a number of components of Mizuho's Oracle landscape, operating system and database
Replacement of on-premises SaaS Planning solution with cloud-based planning and budgeting and business analytics solution, thus future proofing the solution indefinitely
Metadata realignment through Oracle's Data Relationship Module (DRM) across the Hyperion stack
Since Enterprise Performance Management Architect (EPMA) was extensively used by Mizuho, Qubix designed a workaround using Cloudbridge - our own solution for data orchestration
HPCM Applications Automation moved to 11.2.6

Results

Supported platform across the complete Oracle Stack, with full Oracle support till 2025
Reduced operational risk
Simpler and less intrusive path to the Fusion Applications and associated technology
Significant benefits provided by performance and stability improvements
Better transparency of integration processes
Oracle's Data Relationship Module (DRM) is now used as the golden source of metadata across the Oracle Stack
Ownership of Go Live Cutover for the Upgraded Stack
Log4j patching security advisory released by Oracle implemented within the project timescales