Worldline: Transforming public transport and building for the future on the UK’s railways
About Worldline
Worldline is a global leader in secure payments and trusted transactions. We are at the forefront of the digital revolution that is shaping new ways of paying, living, doing business and building relationships that pass on trust along the entire payments value chain, enabling sustainable economic growth.
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Contact usWorldline scaled sustainably with the cutting-edge Bare Metal Solution for Oracle from Google Cloud to modernize its Integrale Control platform, which provides real-time information on train operations in the UK.
Google Cloud results
- Application performance is now more stable and predictable
- Potential for message loss has been eliminated
- Streamlined operations have embedded resilience
- Improved agility and integration with other Google Cloud services
Cloud solutions driving stabilization of the system
Railways have come a long way in the 200 years since they became a feature of life in Victorian Britain, as have the challenges faced by train operators working in today's fast-paced public transport sector. Like other industries, rail has had to become more digitally focused in order to manage the increasing amounts of data involved in running the railways. Integrale Control is a digital platform created by Worldline, a global leader in secure payments and trusted transactions. The platform provides real-time command, control and communication information (C3I) for UK train operators. Integrale Control enables train operation managers to have a single source of truth in order to make faster decisions on the country's rail network and prevent unnecessary passenger delays when unexpected events occur.
"The family had outgrown the house and we knew we needed a bigger property. This process of transformation and transition away from our on-premise infrastructure to the cloud required specific technical capabilities that we knew Google Cloud was uniquely positioned to provide."
—James Bain, CEO, WorldlineIntegrale Control was originally built and deployed using on-premise infrastructure, but as the platform began to be used by more operators, Worldline knew that scalability and agility would struggle. The company turned to Google Cloud to help scale up Integrale Control to meet this increase in demand by processing higher volumes of data at faster speeds, while reducing costs, improving performance, and bolstering security. "The family had outgrown the house and we knew we needed a bigger property," explains James Bain, CEO, Worldline. "This process of transformation and transition away from our on-premises infrastructure to the cloud required specific technical capabilities that we knew Google Cloud was uniquely positioned to provide."
Technical know-how was not the only reason Worldline chose to work with Google Cloud. Innovations at Worldline come against a backdrop of transformation in governmental policies in the UK that place railways at the heart of environmentally friendly public transport. "Sustainability is a key part of our three-year strategy cycles, and we look to do all we can as a company to minimize our impact on the planet," Bain adds. "It's fundamental for us that the companies we work with are on a similar journey. Working with Google Cloud, particularly taking advantage of its cleaner data centers, was really important to us. And we also do a lot of work around DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion), so this was another area where our approaches had to align."
Evolving beyond the limitations of existing infrastructure
Worldline began working with Google Cloud in November 2020 to plan out the project, design the workflow of its new architecture, and migrate the Integrale Control platform over to the cloud. One of the main reasons Worldline chose Google Cloud over other providers was Bare Metal Solution for Oracle. This enabled the company to easily move its Oracle workloads across to Google Cloud. "This project would have been impossible without Bare Metal Solution for Oracle," says Adrian Hepworth, CTO, Worldline. "Integrale Control is a high performance application, taking real-time feeds from live services, so our database needed to be as responsive as possible 100% of the time. With this solution, we're able to deliver the performance and consistency we need."
Adrian Hepworth adds that since moving to Google Cloud, Worldline has benefited from improvements in performance stability, simplification of support operations and enhancements to the resilience and flexibility of the system.
"This project would have been impossible without Bare Metal Solution for Oracle. Integrale Control is a high performance application, taking real-time feeds from live services, so our database needed to be as responsive as possible 100% of the time. With this solution, we're able to deliver the performance and consistency we need."
—Adrian Hepworth, CTO, Worldline"The performance of the application is now more stable and predictable compared to the previous on-premises solution," he says. "We have observed that application-tier CPU usage in particular is more consistent with fewer spikes, resulting in a better customer experience."
Streamlining its operating model has also helped Worldline to bring operations activity closer to its application team. In addition to resilience benefits gained from deploying the solution to Google's three UK zones (compared to Worldline's previous dual data center solution), the resilience of the solution has been further enhanced by the use of the high performance cross-zone storage replication, provided by NetApp, that has eliminated the potential for message loss between Worldline's primary and standby MQ nodes.
Bolstering security for a growing software platform
Security is another key concern for Integrale Control, particularly given its involvement in the delivery of such critical and high-profile public transport services. Worldline uses Google Cloud Armor to protect a number of services, including Integrale Control from cyberattacks. One of the key attractions of using Google Cloud for security was its simplicity and flexibility.
"Our work with Google Cloud has been exciting, progressive, and transformational. Our key markets align well in the B2B space, so it's a natural fit. This project has shown how well our cultural, commercial, and capability needs have been met."
—James Bain, CEO, Worldline"If you're trying to keep your family of applications safe inside your home, it's a whole lot harder and a lot more work to keep 50 doors secure," adds Hepworth. "Google Cloud Armor allows us to have just one front door that we need to protect. While each service we add may increase our attack surface, this approach simplifies what we have to manage and maintain, and provides a single point of contact for our client-facing services."
Anticipating the role of Google Cloud in future success
Worldline has transformed Integrale Control, making it more secure and scalable. This project has shown Worldline the true potential of Google Cloud, and how it may help the company gain an edge in the future.
"We are now well-positioned to further develop the product via integration with cloud services and can easily scale the system in response to increases in traffic driven both by existing customers and by the planned on-boarding of new customers," says Hepworth.
Tell us your challenge. We're here to help.
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About Worldline
Worldline is a global leader in secure payments and trusted transactions. We are at the forefront of the digital revolution that is shaping new ways of paying, living, doing business and building relationships that pass on trust along the entire payments value chain, enabling sustainable economic growth.