Consultancy - Holiday Extras Speeds transactions 100 percent and grows its business with DB2

“Our partnership with Triton is valuable in a number of ways,” says Carrington. “For example, they provide remote DBA support so we can make sure someone is always on call. Triton provides an exemplary DB2 technical staff, experienced in working with many customers. They bring that knowledge into our discussions, and we have learned so much from them over the years.”

While many travel companies have watched revenues drop during the economic crisis, U.K.-based Holiday Extras has seen just the opposite.

“We’ve grown our direct business despite the fact that outbound consumer travel has decreased by 10 percent in the U.K.,” says Nilan Peiris, chief marketing technology officer of Holiday Extras. Peiris manages the company’s Internet-based services.

What is the key to this success? According to Peiris, it’s the company’s ability to “effectively match travel services to customers and target the most profitable segments of the business.”

Holiday Extras was launched in 1983 when entrepreneur Gerry Pack noticed that there was no easy way for leisure travelers to book a night at an airport hotel. Prices at airport hotels were typically set for business travelers and were often higher than most consumers wanted to pay. Since then, the company has expanded to become the U.K. market leader for travel add-ons with airport hotels, airport parking, airport lounges, rail and coach services, and holiday insurance as its core offerings.

"More than 3 million customers visit our websites every year, and our goal is to make the travel experience hassle free,” says Peiris. “For example, if you’re going to Geneva for two weeks, with an early flight, we might recommend an airport hotel and parking along with travel insurance. If you’re just going for a weekend, we might suggest ‘Meet and Greet’ airport parking instead.”

IBM DB2 provides scalability for business growth
To understand what travel services consumers need as they book their trips and where to focus its marketing dollars, Holiday Extras requires the ability to quickly and effectively mine its data.

“We constantly look at how to slice the data to gain insight that drives action,” says Peiris. “For example, we run our own paid search algorithm that shows when a customer is clicking on different travel ads, which ads should get the recognition for the booking, and how much we should invest in each ad to drive profitable growth. We’ve also built a tool that helps segment organic searches into different groups so we can see which we should invest in. For email, the team constantly compares new email approaches with top-responders to identify the best performing emails.”

IBM® DB2® database software, running on SUSE Linux, provides a crucial role in the reporting and storing of data to support these business activities. Holiday Extras uses DB2 for both its transactional database and its data warehouse. Queries against DB2 comparing consumers’ travel selections year-over-year—including where they go, what they do and what travel services they use—can be run in under three minutes.

About 1.2 terabytes of raw data is stored across three “data stores” including:

  • A web data store that captures every single click and search that consumers execute across the more than 200 travel websites the company runs
  • A customer data store that provides a comprehensive history of every click, travel review, letter and transaction for each customer
  • The transactional data store that processes more than 3 million travel bookings each year

“Holiday Extras implemented DB2 many years ago and we haven’t moved from that decision because it is absolutely fit-for-purpose,” says Peiris. “DB2 has a low cost of ownership and scales well with our business.”

DB2 is supported by only one full-time and one part-time DBA, enabling staff to spend its time on how to best leverage the data. For example, Philip Carrington, a senior database administrator (DBA) with Holiday Extras, recently was able to optimize the company’s email lists, based on what travel services customers buy and when, to help improve its database of customer mailing lists.

“I need to make sure that our databases run every day,” says Carrington. “But because DB2 is so stable and maintenance is so easy, it gives me time to find out what our users need and what I can do with the data.”

“Phil [Carrington] actively looks at our data and is regularly advising us on opportunities,” says Peiris. “If your DBA can look at the data, spot opportunities, and then take action, you can be agile in a way most people only dream of.”

Carrington adds, “DB2 autonomic features, such as self-tuning and design advisor capabilities have helped us reduce database management time and costs. There is more time to focus on providing insight on the data because once the autonomic features are set, they basically take care of the database management tasks.”

To help simplify database development and administration even further, Carrington is currently moving to IBM Data Studio 3.1.

Data compression provides 100 percent performance boost
Reducing total cost of ownership for IT continues to be a goal across businesses today, and Holiday Extras is no exception. Recently, Holiday Extras turned to IBM Business Partner Triton Consulting to help virtualize its IT infrastructure and upgrade to DB2 9.7. Triton Consulting has worked with Holiday Extras for over four years and is a leading provider of information management experts in the U.K. in the field of DB2 consultancy, database and information management.

“Our partnership with Triton is valuable in a number of ways,” says Carrington. “For example, they provide remote DBA support over the weekends so we can make sure someone is always on call. Triton provides an exemplary DB2 technical staff, experienced in working with many customers. They bring that knowledge into our discussions, and we have learned so much from them over the years.”

The move to DB2 9.7 made it possible to take advantage of IBM’s data compression and storage optimization capabilities, reducing the company’s database to one-sixth its original size. These capabilities are helping reduce disk space and storage infrastructure requirements, while boosting performance.

“With DB2 storage compression, queries are, on average, twice as fast; we’re now processing 2 million rows a day of customer data in just 30 minutes, and we’ve vastly improved our batch times,” says Carrington. “Before batch jobs didn’t finish before 10:00 a.m. Now they’re finished before 5:00 a.m.—a 100 percent improvement.”

According to Carrington, this significant improvement was gained with little effort. “It’s very easy to do,” says Carrington. “You start seeing the benefits straight away and you can continue to improve your compression over time as well.”

Consultancy - SAP Core Banking on DB2 z/OS

In April 2008 Triton began providing consultancy services for a major UK financial services firm, as part of a large SAP Core Banking implementation project. The project was the first of its kind in the UK, aiming to replace the organisation's outdated IT infrastructure with a more robust, scalable and flexible banking system that would enable it to more rapidly develop and deliver innovative financial products in a competitive market.


DB2 for z/OS data sharing was chosen as the back-end database infrastructure to support the SAP application, due to its unmatched availability and scalability characteristics. Triton was initially engaged to work alongside the SAP architects and assist in the technical design of the various DB2 development, test and production environments necessary to support such an ambitious and complex project. Triton consultants were also involved in advising other key areas of the programme architecture, such as security and audit.
Once the overall system landscape was agreed, Triton performed the detailed technical design for the DB2 environment, defining the exact subsystem configuration required to adhere to SAP's general recommendations while also supporting the specific needs of the programme. Triton consultants were then used to rapidly and accurately build, test and deliver the necessary DB2 data sharing groups according to the detailed technical design. This involved the creation of over 60 DB2 subsystems , each one set up exactly according to the pre-defined design criteria.


Once the programme was fully operational, Triton provided ongoing database administration and systems programming support, ensuring that all systems were running optimally and performing environment backup/restore operations as necessary to assist the development and test process. Triton was also instrumental in the ongoing performance tuning of the DB2 environments, monitoring system and application performance and making changes to DB2 system configuration parameters, buffer pools, tablespaces and indexes as necessary to resolve any issues identified. Throughout this process, detailed documentation was produced and skills transfer was provided to the organisation's own technical specialists to allow them to become fully self-sufficient in supporting and administering the system in the future.

Find out more about DB2 & SAP Core Banking

Greenpeace Nordic - Consultancy on Demand

Greenpeace Nordic are part of the worldwide environmental organisation, Greenpeace. With offices in Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Norway Greenpeace Nordic have 150,000 supporters across the region.

Keeping the IT infrastructure available and efficient is a tough challenge. Greenpeace Nordic needed to gain some extra support for the management and maintenance of their critical DB2 database.

The Solution
The best solution for Greenpeace Nordic was to take out Triton's Consultancy on Demand package. This allowed them to purchase a bundle of consultancy hours, meaning that whenever they experienced an issue or needed some advice Triton would be on hand to help.

What work was carried out under Consultancy on Demand?
Initially, Triton carried out a database healthcheck to uncover any underlying issues with the database set-up.
Under the Consultancy on Demand contract Triton has worked on a number of issues for Greenpeace Nordic, including:

• Back-up and recovery
• Housekeeping including REORG of tables and indexes
• Performance issues including slow running SQL queries
• Migration from DB2 V8 32-bit to DB2 V8 64-bit

In the near future Greenpeace Nordic will be moving to the latest version, DB2 9.7 using hours from their Consultancy on Demand contract.

With Consultancy on Demand, Greenpeace Nordic has been able to benefit from expert DB2 consultancy at affordable rates, when they most require it. This is a flexible way for them to bring in extra expertise on a short-term basis. The Consultancy on Demand contract lasts for 12 months and more hours can be purchased as necessary.

Geography is no boundary
By using Triton's secure, remote connectivity we can work on issues that Greenpeace Nordic are experiencing in Stockholm, Denmark or any of their other offices from our Managed Services centre in the UK.

For more information about Consultancy on Demand packages click here or call us on 0870 2411 550.

CMOD Upgrade Consultancy

Triton Consulting have been working with an international financial services organisation that utilise the IBM Content Manager on Demand solution.  The solution is used for multiple purposes throughout the organisation; from normal accountancy reporting to customer letters and account statements archive.

The challenge was to simplify end-user access and reduce time utilised installing full clients on each user PC, assist in mapping custom fonts for their new CMOD applications and to improve system performance 

The Solution
Triton were involved in upgrading the CMOD system so that the organisation was able to benefit from the enhanced features available to them, this included:

 

  •  Upgrading their current CMOD system to the latest levels
  • Improving system performance by tuning the DB2 9 database
  • Deploying a Web Based CMOD client (WEBI_ to help the customer to simpligy end-user access by reducing the time utilised installing full clients on each user PC
  • Assisting in mapping customer fonts for their new CMOD applications

 

The outcome

By utilising the "Advanced Function Printing" data archive capabilities of the OnDemand system, the organisation is able to offer it's customers their statements incorporating statistical data in the form of graphics. This helps the customer to better understand the market behaviour of their investments.

The OnDemand system also provides the organisation with the capability to integrate this data directly from the archive to the bank's web based customer portal.  This provides the customer with a 24/7 accessible portal to access their account information online and execute normal banking transactions like money transfers.  This greatly simplifies the service to the customer who can access their statements and accounts wherever they are in the world.

In addition to the increased customer srvice levels, the OnDemand system allows the organisation to run a "paper free" environment for it's customer statements.  This cuts paper and printing costs considerable whilst also adding to their green credentials.

Keeping up-to-date with the latest version of CMOD has allowed the bank to benefit from the new features such as increased security levels and additional functionality which has improved end-user experience. 

 


 

Bertrams Books - Improving customer service through database optimisation

Bertrams is a large wholesaler in the books supply chain throughout the UK with a wide range of customers both here in the UK and overseas.

With orders increasingly being placed online, Bertrams needed a robust back end database to support this growing route to market.

The Challenge
Bertrams Books uses DB2 with Net Search Extender (NSE) as the host for their Group Bibliographic / Multimedia Database, and was experiencing some issues surrounding the performance, scalability, resilience and backup for this critical DB2 database.

When customers searched online for book titles the search time was taking far too long which, in todays fast paced on demand environment simply was not good enough and customers were clicking off the site before completing their search.

Triton were commissioned to review the current DB2 set-up and provide recommendations that would improve the response times.  The objective was to get the best performance possible from Bertrams existing software licenses by using the best server configuration possible. 

The Solution
Triton's DB2 Health Check aims to address these challenges by providing a comprehensive, structured review of Bertram's DB2 environment, delivering detailed recommendations on how they can best be addressed.

After completion of the DB2 health check, Triton proposed a phased approach as a way forward for Bertrams to obtain better response times for the search queries and a more stable, scalable, and robust solution:

The first phase of the project was for Triton to implement the key recommendations highlighted in the DB2 health check. This would improve performance of both the update and search processes. The key recommendations included:

  1. Making sure no index update processes run during the day.
  2. Improving the performance of the index update process by updating the memory related parameters in the cteixcfg.ini configuration file.
  3. Tuning DB2 registry variables and configuration parameters to minimise I/O.
  4. Tuning DB2 bufferpools to reduce synchronous I/O.

Triton recommended that the second phase of the project should involve Bertrams moving to 64-bit so that DB2 would better leverage the vast amount of available memory on the database server.  This would then reduce I/O and improve the query response times.  This meant that Bertrams would need to migrate from DB2 V8 to DB2 V9.5 since all previous versions of NSE only support 32-bit.  It will also require dropping the 32-bit text indexes and re-creating the 64-bit versions. Triton provided Bertrams with consultancy for the database and NSE migration

The third phase would be to use the data partitioning feature (DPF) functionality of DB2. This will then enable NSE to leverage multiple CPUs if each CPU is dedicated to a partition. Using DPF will significantly enhance both the index update and search processes. Since data will be spread across partitions each of these processes can be done in parallel over smaller chunks of data and on dedicated CPUs.

Project Success!
Once the first two phases of the project had been completed Bertrams instantly saw a massive improvement in their search response times.  The times shot down to at most 1 or 2 seconds allowing Bertrams to provide their customers with a far superior and efficient experience.

As their business grows Bertrams, working with Triton, have a clear strategy for increasing search capacity and further reducing response times, using the scalable, multi-processor, partitioning and replication features of DB2 9.5.

RICS - Database health check, performance review and consultancy.

RICS (The Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors) is the global body qualifying and setting standards for members working in construction, land, property and on related environmental issues.

RICS was implementing a new member portal to provide members with 24x7 online access to their information from anywhere in the world. With members in 146 countries supported by a network of regional offices around the world, RICS need a highly robust IT infrastructure.

The Challenge
RICS was implementing a new member portal to provide members with 24x7 online access to their information from anywhere in the world. The new system utilised an IBM tool, EDA, designed to convert their Unidata files to DB2. Significant DB2 expertise was required and so the initial brief was for Triton to perform a database health check.

The Solution
Triton worked closely with RICS on the database project providing consultancy, services and DB2 education. It was vital that Triton worked closely with the RICS IT team as DB2 was a new technology within the organisation.
After the initial database health check Triton conducted a performance review and follow-up consultancy including:
• Installation of DB2 v8.2 and the latest FixPaks
• Design and implementation of DB2 Backup strategy
• Design and implementation of DB2 logging strategy
• Review and maintenance of database and instance level configurations
• Design and implementation of Data Placement (Tablespace and Bufferpool) strategy
• Design and Implementation of Housekeeping strategy (Runstats, Reorgs)
• Implementation of Remote Administration Server and Test Server.

After the completion of the project, DB2 education was provided for the team of DBA's. The education program was designed to enable the RICS DBA team with the DB2 knowledge and skills they needed to continue with the day to day administration of the database.

Following on from this RICS then decided to take out both Remote DBA and Consultancy on Demand from Triton. Having a Remote DBA managed services contract means that RICS benefits from proactive, remote database support and database performance management from Triton's team of DB2 specialists. RICS also purchased 50 hours of Consultancy on Demand; these hours can be used as and when needed on anything from consultancy to DB2 education.

Holiday Extras - Consultancy on Demand

Holiday Extras is the UK leader for online airport parking and hotel reservation. They handle more than 1.5 million bookings each year and as such need a robust IT service to support this level of activity. With bookings being made online, the website and back-end IT infrastructure needs to be available 24/7.

The Challenge - Holiday Extras needed to improve the performance of decision support queries from their database.
Within their existing team Holiday Extras had no expert knowledge of DB2 and so needed support for their existing DBAs and guidance for DB2 best practices.

To enable them to provide the increased customer service levels they desired, Holiday Extras would need to be able to cover DBAs during absences and provide in-depth DB2 training for the team.

The Solution - The first part of the solution which Triton Consulting provided was a comprehensive database healthcheck . This revealed several areas where performance could be improved. These included:

  • Database configuration changes
  • Redesign of DB2 storage structures and caches
  • Regular maintenance procedures to prevent data fragmentation
  • Regular disaster recovery procedures

All these recommendations were implemented on a new server and resulted in significant performance gains.

Consultancy on Demand was chosen as a flexible means to implement the health check recommendations, provide DB2 training, continued DB2 mentoring and guidance. With Consultancy on Demand a block of hours can be purchased in advance which can then be used as and when needed. Holiday Extras have been able to effectively manage their support and training needs by utilising hours as and when they are needed.

In addition to their Consultancy on Demand hours, Holiday Extras decided to take out Remote DBA cover from Triton Consulting. This provides them with full managed services, taking over the day to day maintenance for their systems. This allows them the security of knowing that their database is fully supported at all times so they are able to deliver the best experience for their customers possible.

"The service that we have received from Triton has been fantastic, they are always available at the end of the phone/email to help with any issues that we have. The staff have a superb knowledge of DB2." Elizabeth O'Neil, Holiday Extras

Database Strategy - Financial Services Company Focuses On The Future

Simply staying in touch with today's database technology can be a major challenge. Trying to accurately predict database trends and define a strategy for the future can raise that challenge to a whole new level. A major UK financial services company was in the process of defining a comprehensive strategy that would shape its IT infrastructure for the next 7 years .

Having decided upon the hardware and operating system components, they found themselves in need of some independent advice on the choice of database advice that Triton Consulting was ideally placed to provide. After a thorough evaluation of the client's objectives, Triton was able to use its extensive knowledge of the database marketplace to provide a series of detailed strategy briefings for the client's IT executives. The briefings highlighted the major strengths and weaknesses of each vendor's offerings, carefully weighted against the client's specific requirements. Once the vendor had been selected, Triton was again called upon to assist the client in implementing the new software by assisting with initial installation, configuration and tuning of the product. According to the Manager of IT Strategy Services, "Triton provided us with clear, strategic, independent advice, backed up with solid technical implementation skills."

"Triton provided us with clear, strategic, independent advice, backed up with solid technical implementation skills."

Pervasive Computing - Manufacturing Supplier Modernises Mobile Sales Force

Background - The client, a large London-based museum, was encountering difficulty in distributing vital accounting information to a set of users that were dependent on multiple hardware platforms and operating systems. Triton Consulting were approached and asked to advise the client on a suitable technical architecture that would allow users to access accounts data held in an Informix data source from Web browsers on multiple client PCs and Macintoshes.

Application Requirements - An online interface was required to allow users to browse accounts data from a Chameleon 2000 accounts package without using the accounts package itself. Access was to be provided via predetermined SQL statements executing against the underlying Informix tables used by the package. Simple SQL statements had been coded by the client, but would require optimisation before being incorporated into the final solution. The existing method of distributing this information was for an accountant using MS Query to manually execute SQL statements against Informix via ODBC from a Windows client. The results were then pasted into an Excel spreadsheet and distributed in hard copy form. This solution was complex, time consuming and not tailored to individual user requirements. It was also highly dependent on a given hardware platform and operating system, which meant that some users did not have access to the information.

User Expectations - Users of the application required a simple, intuitive interface from a Web browser which allowed them to interrogate accounts data without the need to use the Chameleon 2000 user interface. The users did not have Chameleon expertise, nor did they wish to learn the package. The information they required resided in the Informix tables Chameleon used as its back end data store and the requirement was for this to be presented to them in a form they could readily understand. The users had no wish to use personal productivity software (e.g. MS Excel) or native SQL tools (e.g. MS Query via ODBC).

Technical Environment Server - Informix version 5 (runtime only) on HP9000 hardware running HPUX and CERN Web server. Clients - Intel PC clients running Windows 95 or Windows NT 3.5.1 using Netscape Navigator Web browser clients (V2 or later) Data - Chameleon 2000 accounts system, storing data in Informix version 5 RDBMS. Conclusions The client accepted the recommended technical architecture, which addressed all of their requirements. Implementation to the recommended technical architecture was completed very successfully.

Database Conversion - Critical Role in Banking Giant's Conversion Project

A major North American Investment bank needed to consolidate and update their existing disparate legacy systems. Multiple copies of their core data existed on various platforms such as Adabas, Sybase and Access with no central source. They also had a pressing business requirement to enable some of their customer related data for access via the web. DB2 UDB V7 for OS/390 was chosen as the strategic DBMS and it was soon realised that specialised assistance and technical expertise would be required to ensure a smooth transition from their legacy systems to DB2.

To aid the large-scale conversion effort, Triton provided experienced consultants to assist in many diverse areas of development. Physical database models were produced and general database design procedures devised. Triton?s technicians also produced SQL coding standards and guidelines whilst providing valuable assistance throughout the development cycle. Other areas where Triton contributed to the overall success of conversion projects included devising database object naming standards, database change management procedures and proactive performance tuning. Within the first 12 months of DB2 development, Triton played a crucial role in the successful production implementation of several applications within demanding timescales. These applications gave investment bank personnel a major competitive edge over their counterparts at other large financial organisations. Triton's main task was to ensure that a DB2 infrastructure was in place to support the delivery of critical applications to the business in a timely and accurate manner. However, another major focus was to enable staff that were new to DB2 to be self-sufficient. The transfer of knowledge from Triton's consultants to permanent employees was another major success story, empowering IT staff in the skills required to develop major DB2 applications as efficiently and as economically as possible. As part of the ongoing relationship we develop with our customers, our DB2 specialists give regular technical updates on the latest releases of DB2 and also other specific technical subjects such as data sharing. This reduces the need for long-term contract staff whilst ensuring that valued employees keep up to date with the latest database features and technologies.

"With few in-house skills, we needed to support the delivery of critical DB2 applications to the business in a timely and accurate manner. Triton made that possible."

HM Land Registry - Consultancy

Synopsis - HM Land Registry wanted to improve the quality of its customer service and extend its valuable registry data online when it engages IBM and IBM Business Partner Triton Consulting to implement IBM DB2 9 for z/OS and IBM Websphere Application Server for z/OS software running on IBM zSeries 990 servers.

Industry: Government

Customer Background - HM Land Registry (HMLR) is the UK agency responsible for registering titles for land in England and Wales and for recording dealings with registered land, such as property sales and mortgages.

Business Need - In the early 1980s, HMLR started the process of storing all of its title deeds using IBM DB2 database-supported customer information control system (CICS) running on a mainframe. Initially, it stored the information as text and later moved on to scanning images with mapping data. Over the years, as the database increased in size, HMLR added a second data centre to provide greater resiliency for these important records.

In the 2000s, HMLR faced pressure from government representatives to upgrade its key services and comply with the principles of e-government as a means of tapping a broader market and offsetting expenditures with fee income from conveyers, corporate customers and individual citizens. For example, the prime minister requested that all HMLR services be available electronically and that the agency increase the amount of revenue capable of being generated from its services. And the Lord Chancellor had been encouraging HMLR to continually improve its performance targets.

To adapt to these new expectations, HMLR sought a new information management system that would:

  • Improve its ability to handle increased workload with increased resiliency and throughput for its core information systems
  • Offer robust, high-performance replication
  • Provide read-only copies of database data to facilitate 24x7 access to data and services
  • Improve data security to increase confidence in citizens in businesses Solution

IBM and IBM Business Partner Triton Consulting teamed with the HMLR IT team to plan, install, configure and test IBM WebSphere Application Server for z/OS software, a tool specially designed to distribute, consolidate and synchronise data. Although the solution is still not fully implemented, the team expects the tool to provide the queue replication processes needed to meet the agency's information management requirements for increasing transaction and data volumes. HMLR next increased the security of its data with an IBM Geographically Dispersed Parallel Sysplex (GDPS), solution that enables comprehensive DB2 data sharing between IBM zSeries 990 servers production environments at the client's two data centres. It also added a third zSeries 990 server to provide hot standby support using extended remote copy (XRC) technology.

The IBM System z platform is specifically designed to offer the highest possible levels of reliability and availability for demanding, business-critical environments. With multiple redundant components and operating systems that are built to recover rather than reboot, each System z server provides phenomenal resilience. The GDPS technology extends this resilience across multiple physical systems at separate sites, providing an automated solution that is to deliver continuous application and data availability.

The client also deployed two IBM System z9 Enterprise Class servers and allocated nine central processors and two IBM System z Application Assist Processors (zAAPs) to support the Java development workload for its Web applications.

A DB2 environment based on IBM DB2 9 for z/OS software provides over the 32TB of storage capacity . It is one of the largest online transaction processing (OLTP) environments in the world and supports all activity through the Land Registry Direct system, as well as internal land registration processed and a variety of Web-based systems running on IBM Websphere Application Server software on the System z environment. In particular, the Land Registry Direct tool supports a user base of 13,500 professional organisations and more than 140,000 individual users, as well as roughly 4,000 concurrent users.

The client plans to eventually leverage its WebSphere environment as the basis for a service-oriented architecture (SOA) that will improve its ability to communicate with business partners and customers.

With the WebSphere solution, HMLR was able to open its data to the internet with its Land Register Online service. Unlocking the value of its online services to generate more than £28 million in fee income in 2005 and 2006. Furthermore, the highly reliable and secure System z servers have enabled HMLR to:

  • Acquire additional performance and resiliency levels
  • Support ongoing development of its online offerings
  • Provide better protection against unplanned outages or disasters
  • Boost its price/performance ratio significantly with the zAAP engines
  • Exceed e-government targets for making data available online

And with the zAAP engines on the System z servers, the client was able to migrate approximately 55% of its Java workload off the central processors, liberating them for other roles and facilitating that new workloads do not increase its software licensing costs.

Gamesys - Managed Services & Consultancy

Gamesys are the UK's leading online Instant Win and Bingo entertainment brand. Gamesys Group is one of the fastest growing businesses in the e-gaming sector. Voted as Bingo Operator of the year at the 2007 E Gaming Review Awards, Gamesys have built a solid reputation within the industry and with their customers.

The Challenge - As a result of their increasing popularity, Gamesys were experiencing vastly growing numbers of visitors to their website which put a strain on their current database. Recognizing that they needed a database that was robust, scalable, and able to provide high levels of performance, Gamesys made a strategic decision to move their 24x7 backend database from Firebird to DB2 UDB V8.2 in 2005. This posed two major challenges for Gamesys:

  • There were no resident staff with DB2 knowledge that could migrate the Firebird database to DB2.
  • DB2 specialist knowledge was needed to support the new DB2 infrastructure 24x7 and provide continued guidance for DB2 best practices.

The Solution - Triton worked with Gamesys on the move to DB2 by:

  • Reviewing and updating database and instance level configuration parameters
  • Designing and implementing a data placement strategy (including tablespace and bufferpool configuration).
  • Designing and implementing a logging/archiving configuration.
  • Designing and implementing a backup and recovery strategy.
  • Designing and implementing a housekeeping strategy (routing database reorganisations, database statistics collection, etc).
  • Configure and test HADR replication between primary and standby production server.

Given the 24/7 nature of their business Gamesys recognised the need for full database support. With no onsite DB2 resource, Gamesys decided to use Triton's Remote DBA service. The full 24/7 package was chosen as the best service option. This provides Gamesys with support for their DB2 production environment around the clock, 365 days a year. In addition to proactive database support Gamesys have access to their performance and availability metrics online.