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Client success story

Revitalising OSCAR: How Salute Transformed Performance and Testing

HM Treasury is the government’s economic and finance ministry, maintaining control over public spending, setting the direction of the UK’s economic policy.

About the project

OSCAR, a critical cross-government tool operated by His Majesty Treasury (HMT) had remained in its original build configuration for five years, missing opportunities to improve performance and standardise its underlying technology architecture. A deep-dive technical review of the infrastructure revealed significant optimisation opportunities, particularly in the compute infrastructure. It was also discovered that the testing and staging environments weren’t true mirrors of production. This inconsistency limited HMT’s ability to deliver consistent system improvements and hampered user acceptance testing (UAT). The HMT team knew that without changes, these challenges would continue to grow, hindering OSCAR’s efficiency and eroding confidence in the tool.

HMT partnered with Salute to overhaul OSCAR’s infrastructure and put the system on a path to stable performance. Salute’s first step was a rightsizing initiative, ensuring that each environment had the appropriate server resources. We standardised the database and application servers across all environments (PRODUCTION, TEST, and STAGING) using uniform Relational Database Service (RDS) instances. This alignment eliminated the configuration disparities that had previously led to unexpected issues during deployments.

By addressing the root causes of inefficiencies and performance bottlenecks, Salute has effectively future-proofed OSCAR for continued growth and efficiency. What began as a challenge of outdated infrastructure and unreliable testing has now become a success story of optimisation and confidence—a testament to how the right technical solutions can revitalise a mission-critical government tool.

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Salute implemented an Integrated Management System (IMS)

Maintaining and operating the hosted environment

Optimised license, maximising value and efficiency

Standardised the database and application servers across all environments using uniform RDS (Relational Database Service)

Introduced enhanced monitoring tools and dashboards

Continued service desk support and management

“Working alongside Salute on this critical infrastructure project was fundamental to improving the service offered to our end-users. We had identified significant disparity between the lower and production environments, so this was also key to providing our recently appointed Application Development and Data Services supplier with an accurate and performant environment to develop and test future work. Salute provided knowledgeable and collaborative resource, quickly identifying opportunities and discussing them with us to agree a way forward. We are now maximising our licence spend which ensures we achieve value for money and improves performance for users.”
Martin Beale
Head of Service Management & Engagement - His Majesty’s Treasury

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