Transcript of a discussion on how hyperconverged infrastructure and microservices help municipalities in Norway gain an efficient common pool for storing and sharing sensitive healthcare data.

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How Containers and Microservices
Help Local Governments in Norway
Provide a Common Platform for
Safe Public Data Distribution
Transcript of a discussion on how hyperconverged infrastructure and microservices help
municipalities in Norway gain an efficient common pool for storing and sharing sensitive
healthcare data.
Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Get the mobile app. Download the
transcript. Sponsor: Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
Dana Gardner: Hello, and welcome to the next edition of the BriefingsDirect Voice of
the Customer podcast series. I’m Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor
Solutions, your host and moderator for this ongoing discussion on digital transformation
success stories. Stay with us now to learn how agile businesses are fending off
disruption -- in favor of innovation.
Our next public sector digital transformation success story examines how local
governments in Norway benefit from a common platform approach for safe and efficient
public data distribution. We’ll now learn how Norway’s 18 counties are gaining a
common shared pool for data on young people’s health and other sensitive information
thanks to streamlined benefits of hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI), containers and
microservices.
Here to help us discover the benefits of a modern
platform for smarter government data sharing is Frode
Sjovatsen, Head of Development for FINT Project in
Norway. Welcome, Frode.
Frode Sjovatsen: Thank you.
Gardner: What is driving interest in having a common
platform for public information in your country?
Sjovatsen: We need interactions between the
government and the community to be more efficient. So
we needed to build the infrastructure that supports automatic solutions for citizens.
That’s the main driver.
Sjovatsen

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Gardner: What problems do you need to overcome in order to create a more common
approach?
Common API at the core
Sjovatsen: One of the biggest issues is [our users] buy business applications such as
human resources for school administrators to use and everyone is happy. They have a
nice user interface on the data. But when we need to use that data across all the other
processes -- that’s where the problem is. And that’s what the FINT project is all about.
[Due to apps heterogeneity] we then need to have developers create application
programming interfaces (APIs), and it costs a lot of money, and it is of variable quality.
What we’re doing now is creating a common API that’s horizontal -- for all of those
business applications. It gives us the ability to use our data much more efficiently.
Gardner: Please describe for us what the FINT project is and why this is so important
for public health.
Sjovatsen: It’s all about taking the power
back, regarding the information we’ve
handed the vendors. There is an initiative in
Norway where the government talks about
getting control of all the information. And the
thought behind the FINT project is that we
need to get ahold of all the information,
describe it, define it, and then make it
available via APIs -- both for public use and
also for internal use.
Gardner: What sort of information are we dealing with here? Why is it important for the
general public health?
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Sjovatsen: It’s all kinds of information. For example, it’s school information, such as
about how the everyday processes run, the schedules, the grades, and so on. All of that
data is necessary to create good services, for the teachers and students. We also want
to make that data available so that we can build new innovations from businesses that
want to create new and better solutions for us.
Gardner: When you were tasked with creating this platform, why did you seek an API-
driven, microservices-based architecture? What did you look for to maintain simplicity
and cost efficiency in the underlying architecture and systems?
The thought behind the FINT project
is that we need to get ahold of all
the information, describe it, define it,
and then make it available via APIs
-- both for public use and also for
internal use.

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Agility, scalability, and speed
Sjovatsen: We needed something that was agile so that we can roll out updates
continuously. We also needed a way to roll back quickly, if something fails.
The reason we are running this on one of the county council’s datacenters is we wanted
to separate it from their other production environments. We need to be able to scale
these services quickly. When we talked to Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), the
solution they suggested was using HCI.
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Gardner: Where are you in the deployment and what have been some of the benefits
of such a hyperconverged approach?
Sjovatsen: We are in the late stage of testing and we’re going into production in early
2018. At the moment, we’re looking into using HPE SimpliVity.
Container comfort
Gardner: Containers are an important part of moving toward automation and simplicity
for many people these days. Is that another technology that you are comfortable with
and, if so, why?
Sjovatsen: Yes, definitely. We are very
comfortable with that. The biggest reason is
that when we use containers, we isolate the
application; the whole container is the
application and we are able to test the code
before it goes into production. That’s one of the
main drivers.
The second reason is that it’s easy to roll out and it’s easy to roll back. We also have
developers in and out of the project, and containers make it easy for them to quickly get
in to the environment they are working on. It’s not that much work if they need to install
on another computer to get a working environment running.
Gardner: A lot of IT organizations are trying to reduce the amount of money and time
they spend on maintaining existing applications, so they can put more emphasis into
creating new applications. How do containers, microservices and API-driven services
help you flip from an emphasis on maintenance to an emphasis on innovation?
When we use containers, we
isolate the application; the whole
container is the application and
we are able to test the code
before it goes into production.

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Sjovatsen: The container approach is very close to the DevOps environment, so the
time from code to production is very small compared to what we did before when we had
some operations guys installing the stuff on servers. Now, we have a very rapid way to
go from code to production.
Gardner: With the success of the FINT Project, would you consider extending this to
other types of data and applications in other public sector activities or processes? If your
success here continues, is this a model that you think has extensibility into other public
sector applications?
Unlocking the potential
Sjovatsen: Yes, definitely. At the moment, there are 18 county councils in this project.
We are just beginning to introduce this to all of the 400 municipalities. So that’s the next
step. Those are the same data sets that we want to share or extend. But there are also
initiatives with central registers in Norway and we will add value to those using our
approach in the next year or so.
Gardner: That could have some very beneficial impacts, very good payoffs.
Sjovatsen: Yes, it could. There are
other uses. For example, in Oslo we
have made an API extend over the
locks on many doors. So, we can now
have one API to open multiple locking
systems. So that’s another way to use
this approach.
Gardner: It shows the wide applicability of this. Any advice, Frode, for other
organizations that are examining more of a container, DevOps, and API-driven
architecture approach? What might you tell them as they consider taking this journey?
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Sjovatsen: I definitely recommend it -- it’s simple and agile. The main thing with
containers is to separate the storage from the applications. That’s probably what we
worked on the most to make it scalable. We wrote the application so it’s scalable, and
we separated the data from the presentation layer.
Gardner: I’m afraid we’ll have to leave it there. We’ve been exploring how local
governments in Norway are benefiting from a common platform approach to public data
distribution. And we have learned about the benefits of using containers to create and
integrate more applications in a cost-effective manner.
In Oslo we have made an API extend
over the locks on many doors. So, we
can now have one API to open multiple
locking systems.

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So please join me in thanking our guest, Frode Sjovatsen, Head of Development for the
FINT Project in Norway.
Sjovatsen: Thank you for having me.
Gardner: And a big thank you to our audience as well for joining us for this
BriefingsDirect Voice of the Customer digital transformation success story. I’m Dana
Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your host for this ongoing series of
Hewlett Packard Enterprise-sponsored interviews.
Thanks again for listening. Please pass this content along to your IT community, and do
come back next time.
Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Get the mobile app. Download the
transcript. Sponsor: Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
Transcript of a discussion on how hyperconverged infrastructure and microservices help
municipalities in Norway gain an efficient common pool for storing and sharing sensitive
healthcare data. Copyright Interarbor Solutions, LLC, 2005-2018. All rights reserved.
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