Background
Filter articles
A modern enterprise platform for the Ministry of Education
Catalyst delivers a modern enterprise platform for the Ministry’s learner progress and assessment systems.
In December 2023, the Ministry of Education (MoE) made a strategic decision to migrate its Progress and Consistency Tool (PaCT) and Te Waharoa Ararau applications to Catalyst Cloud, fully managed by Catalyst.
The move was driven by the need to address an impending end-of-support for CentOS 7, the operating system running both applications. Additionally, they wanted a more flexible, cost-efficient, and secure infrastructure.
Catalyst has been a trusted partner of the Ministry for over a decade, building both PaCT and Te Waharoa Ararau, though the hosting and support had been split across different vendors. These systems are used by educators and administrators nationwide to track student progress and assessment. Therefore, the Ministry required a stable and secure platform to ensure continuous functionality and performance.
Opportunity
The existing infrastructure was becoming increasingly costly and inefficient to maintain, leading to the decision to consolidate both application and infrastructure support under Catalyst. With nearly 2,000 Ministry employees relying on these systems, the move to Catalyst Cloud and the Kubernetes-based Cove platform promised:
- greater flexibility
- improved performance
- minimal service interruption during the transition.
Catalyst was tasked with migrating the applications from a traditional Virtual Machine (VM)-based architecture to a modern, containerised environment. This involved:
- extensive data migration
- replatforming
- testing to ensure the solution was performant, secure, and met the Ministry's high standards for system performance and security.
Solution
Catalyst worked closely with the Ministry’s Lead Architect and Business Representative, adopting a "one team" approach to ensure seamless collaboration. The project began with a comprehensive design phase, where Catalyst's subject matter experts captured all technical and functional requirements to align with the Ministry’s long-term goals.
The migration to Catalyst’s Cove platform provided the Ministry with a cutting-edge, Kubernetes-based infrastructure capable of auto-scaling, push-button deployments, and built-in redundancy. This platform not only ensured high availability but also enabled automated security monitoring, patching, and vulnerability scanning to meet the Ministry’s strict security requirements.
Key features of the solution included:
- Automated provisioning of environments: New test environments could be spun up quickly and accurately, reflecting the production environment for effective testing.
- Push-button deployments: The shift from manual, error-prone deployments to automated, push-button processes reduced risk and ensured smooth rollouts.
- Security and compliance: Catalyst Cloud, which is fully NZ-owned and operated, provided the Ministry with a data-sovereign platform certified to ISO 27001 and ISO 27017 standards. The infrastructure was designed to ensure security at every level, with Catalyst handling the heavy lifting of security automation and compliance.
- Enhanced system performance: The Cove platform’s auto-scaling and redundancy features allowed the Ministry to manage traffic peaks without worrying about downtime or service degradation.
- Māori Data Governance: keeping the data under Aotearoa New Zealand jurisdictional boundaries aligns to Pou 2: Data infrastructure of the Māori Data Governance Model from Te Kāhui Raraunga.
Results
The project was completed with minimal service interruption during go-live, and the move to Catalyst Cloud and the Cove platform has significantly improved the Ministry’s ability to manage and maintain critical systems. Key benefits include:
- Flexibility and efficiency: Automated environment provisioning makes testing and rolling out new features easier and more cost-effective.
- Seamless deployments: Catalyst handles all deployments, reducing risk, complexity, and downtime.
- Enhanced security: With Catalyst Cloud’s certifications and automated security, the Ministry meets high standards with minimal internal effort.
- Consolidated service: Catalyst manages both applications and infrastructure, streamlining operations so the Ministry can focus on education.
Major improvements in performance, scalability, and user experience
Since the migration, the Ministry has seen major improvements in performance, scalability, and user experience. The resilient, containerised architecture ensures new features and updates are deployed quickly and efficiently.
Automated provisioning of environments now accurately mirrors production, ensuring reliable testing, early issue detection, and timely bug fixes. Cove paves the way for cost-effective expansion for the Ministry by supporting a wide range of systems and technologies on the same platform.
Catalyst also manages peak loads through Cove’s auto-scaling, ensuring smooth handling of traffic fluctuations and predictable costs by adjusting resources based on demand.
Catalyst continues to support the Ministry’s growth and evolving needs with fully managed services, ensuring PaCT and Te Waharoa Ararau remain high-performing tools for educators across New Zealand.
A solid foundation for future scalability
Significant benefits to the Ministry
"The migration of these critical systems to [the Cove platform on] Catalyst Cloud has delivered significant benefits to the Ministry, and provides us with a solid foundation for future scalability.
Care of student data
We take the security and privacy of information we hold about students very seriously and we undertook extensive due diligence of Catalyst Cloud’s capabilities in that regard before migrating any data into their environment.
The migration process has been seamless to our user community
The migration process itself has been seamless to our user community and we look forward to continuing to work with Catalyst as we continue to adapt and evolve systems to meet the requirements of educators and students.”
– Stuart Wakefield, Chief Digital Officer
Contact us
For more information on how Catalyst can help you modernise your infrastructure and improve your system performance, contact our team. Learn more about Catalyst Cloud on their website.
