Objective Application Support & Sustainment

Insitec has supported the Objective Records and Document Management System (EDRMS) for Defence for more than two decades. The company’s technical team has been centrally involved in designing progressive system architecture and managing major upgrades to ensure the application continues to meet the performance and security demands of users around the country.

Australia-wide, more than 50 servers required a hardware refresh at both regional locations and core data centres.

>1 million records per day

>85,000 users across Australia

Spans multiple classified networks

The Objective Records and Document Management System (EDRMS) is the largest application in the Department of Defence information technology environment and also the largest instance of the software in operation worldwide. It plays a critical role in the workflow of 85,000 Defence personnel and handles more than one million additional records each day.

Insitec was initially engaged on a short-term contract to provide expert support for the Objective application and to assess and prototype two replicated environments for running the system. Following the study, Insitec was commissioned to roll out the new platform architecture.

Ongoing investment to sustain Objective was minimal, in line with Defence maintenance protocols at the time and, within five years, the application was beginning to demonstrate performance and compliance degradation. Insitec played a key role in refreshing the system while demonstrating the effectiveness of a lifecycle management approach for core IT systems.

2008 – Objective was successfully deployed in a new architectural configuration giving access to 35,000 users around Australia.
2009 – Objective was upgraded from version 6 to 7 in a carefully planned and irreversible transition, that guaranteed continuous operations were maintained.
2011 – Access to Objective was expanded to 85,000 desktop users in a rapid and demanding two-year program. At its peak, more than 80 people were employed in the rollout program.
2015 – Aging infrastructure was impacting Objective performance and Insitec was instrumental in replacing the entire hardware fleet in a compressed nine-month schedule. At the same time, the complete infrastructure stack was uplifted over five generations, from T2 to T7.
2016 – Objective operated continuously as its core data infrastructure was relocated from a distributed to a centralised model. The End User Compute contract was undertaken with partners HP and Accenture.
2017 and beyond – Insitec has continued to provide upgrade and enhancement teams. With Insitec recently providing the technical team for the Objective 11 upgrade.

Insitec has been the core technology team responsible for Objective for two decades. Working with a range of partners, the company has successfully managed major expansion and redevelopment of the system to ensure it caters for growing user numbers, increased speed and escalating data volumes.

Today the Objective system stores a phenomenal one petabyte (1000 terrabytes) of document data and Defence records in a sophisticated centralised architecture underpinned by a whole-of-life sustainment program.

The successful implementation of a new server fleet significantly boosted Objective speed and performance. Users reported that record queries, which previously took more than two hours to process, were returned in under six minutes. This was estimated to save Defence $3.5m a week in lost staff time realising a return on investment in under two weeks.