The Irish Cattle Breeding Federation is a non-profit organization leading Ireland’s collaborative agricultural initiative which seeks to minimize agriculture’s environmental impact and maximize resource utilization across the entire ecosystem so the next generation of cattle is more economically sustainable and climate friendly than the last. Founded 25 years ago, ICBF architected and manages a centralized cattle breeding database for all of Ireland delivering data driven AgTech services to Irish farmers, dairy and beef cattle industries, and the wider agri-food industry. 
We discussed with Karl O’Connell, CIO at ICBF, how they’re using data, analytics, and Oracle technologies to empower farmers and associated industries. Karl kicked off our conversation, saying “Oracle provides the technology pillar of our corporate vision; the Oracle Database and Exadata Cloud are at the core of everything we do and all the data-driven agricultural services ICBF delivers.”
While the Oracle Database has been central to ICBF from the beginning, their Exadata journey began with Exadata Database Machine and later moved to Exadata Cloud@Customer for production and Exadata Database Service on dedicated infrastructure in Oracle’s public cloud for disaster recovery.
Performance bottlenecks led ICBF to Exadata Database Machine
As with most organizations, ICBF’s data was growing exponentially in both volume and velocity, causing performance issues. Their legacy systems simply couldn’t keep up; some analytical queries were running for weeks. Even worse, the performance bottlenecks were forcing ICBF to prioritize which services could be delivered and how often; effectively, forcing them to throttle their service offerings and hampering growth.
After considerable investigation and testing, ICBF determined that the root cause of their performance issues was their Oracle Database platform’s inability to manage and query such large amounts of data. Faced with this challenge, ICBF migrated from a HP-UX platform to Exadata Database Machine X5 with a quarter-rack system for production and another for disaster recovery (DR) and dev/test environments. Exadata eliminated their performance and scalability bottlenecks, enabling them to deliver services as fast and frequently as developers and data scientists could provide.
“We learned the hard way that without Exadata, we can’t deliver the performance needed to accomplish our goals! Exadata, Smart Scan, and all the technology that comes with Exadata was a huge advantage for us.”
Karl O’Connell, CIO at ICBF
Hardware refresh cycle and data center downsizing lead ICBF to Exadata Cloud
Fast forward to 2020 during the height of the COVID pandemic, ICBF began reviewing their existing data center strategy and ultimately chose to relocate their primary datacenter and close their DR data center. The timing of this transition coincided with their Exadata X5 refresh cycle, enabling ICBF to holistically re-evaluate their on-premises database infrastructure strategy along with all of the costs of proceeding with status quo or moving to cloud. Karl summarized their decision, saying, “Exadata Cloud@Customer was a really neat solution, giving us cloud advantages in our data center.”
ICBF chose to migrate from a traditional on-premises Exadata to public and private cloud deployments, with production and dev/test environments on Exadata Cloud@Customer X8M in their new data center and DR on Exadata Database Service X9M in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). Lower costs and less downtime were the key advantages they experienced using cloud deployments, with Karl saying, “Moving from Exadata X5 to Exadata Cloud@Customer X8M eliminated the quarterly patch process for our team and gave us the ability to lower costs by scaling OCPUs up or down on-demand, plus the performance benefits of a newer Exadata generation.”
In addition, Karl mentioned a few side benefits of moving to Exadata cloud, which weren’t part of their initial proof-of-value analysis:
- Reduced their organization’s carbon footprint by eliminating one of their two data centers.
- Jump-started their ability to address new regulatory requirements by encrypting all data to better safeguard against potential cyber-attacks.
Data encryption at its source is a requirement for all Oracle Database services across Oracle’s Distributed Cloud offerings, including public, hybrid, and multicloud environments. When ICBF migrated to Exadata cloud, they began encrypting all Oracle Database data using Oracle Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) technology, which was included in their Exadata cloud subscriptions at no additional cost.
Among the many Exadata platform advantages, full compatibility across deployments was highlighted by ICBF, as key in providing the flexibility and investment protection needed to efficiently adapt as business requirements change. With ICBF’s choice to use both Exadata Cloud@Customer and Exadata Database Service in OCI, 100% compatibility was key for their DR strategy and roadmap. Figure 2 depicts how ICBF is using this flexibility to their advantage:
Exadata Cloud helps ICBF meet 24/7 availability requirements
The cost of downtime has dramatically risen over the last decade for both private-sector and public-sector organizations. ICBF’s availability needs are not unique but the consequences of downtime are unusual as Karl explained, “Our services need to be available 24/7 and any downtime has an instant national impact. Exadata Cloud ensures our customers can continue to operate.”
At first glance, one may wonder why it’s an issue if ICBF’s AgTech services go offline for a few minutes or an hour during off-peak times. However, as Karl explained any downtime was an issue, “In the past, we scheduled planned downtime on weekends during the night and months in advance thinking farmers would not be online at 3:00 am. We learned that indeed they are! For us, downtime means critical data-driven decisions are unavailable. Exadata cloud keeps our services available 24/7 resulting in better customer experiences, employee experiences, and profitability for our stakeholders who are also our customers.”
ICBF’s data-driven services are helping the environment
ICBF is an integral part of Ireland’s farming and cattle industries which represents a significant proportion of the Irish economy. In addition, ICBF’s work is integral in meeting Ireland’s near and longer-term environmental commitments. Karl explains, “In the last 15 years, genetic gain in cattle breeding has reduced 10% of the carbon footprint on the dairy side of the house and we expect by 2030 to contribute 10% towards Ireland’s greenhouse gas reduction targets. As part of Ireland’s National food vision initiative, our goal is to be the first country in the world to genotype the entire national herd with comprehensive traceability from a DNA perspective. Without Exadata, we could never strive to achieve this.”
Agricultural sustainability is a global endeavor with many countries, organizations, and AgTech industries working toward a more environmentally friendly future. Are or could others replicate ICBF’s data-driven approach to generate similar quantifiable successes?
Karl responded, saying, “A number of other countries and cattle industries have contacted us, and we were very happy to openly share our insights. Oracle Exadata delivers the performance needed to do the level of DNA and genotyping analysis we do on millions of animals from birth throughout their life.”
When one thinks about sustainability, clean energy such as electric cars or solar panels comes to mind, greenhouse gases from agriculture and farming is arguably a more daunting challenge as we all need to eat. While some have indeed become vegetarians due to the climate impact of farming, most are not ready to make that sacrifice. Ireland and ICBF are making real advances to transform farming into a more climate friendly industry and, perhaps, a guilt-free zone for enjoying a steak now and again.