Challenges

• Remain competitive in a growing IT services market, by attracting new customers and encouraging current customers to recommend the company
• Meet high customer expectations by ensuring impeccable data security, 24/7 availability, and efficient system administration and customer support at all times
• Reassure customers and create publicity for the company by implementing database infrastructure with an excellent reputation across numerous industries
• Cut the time staff spent double-checking system and application performance reports and reduce external auditing requirements

Solutions

• Improved performance of customers’ systems and applications by more than 100%, rather than an expected 20% improvement
• Lowered hardware licensing costs by 70% and significantly reduced data center, maintenance, and power costs, by shutting down 16 legacy servers
• Reduced system utilization rates to less than 20%, compared to 70% previously, enabling the company to support at least 3x more customers than expected
• Cut the time taken to complete one customer’s quarter-end transaction report from nine hours to less than a minute during tests
• Compressed data from customer applications and systems by 10x, using only 1 TB of the 4 TB available
• Installed new customers’ systems and applications in less than an hour, compared to two days previously
• Eliminated all single points of failure, providing 99.999% system availability and ensuring customers’ systems and applications will run 24 hours a day, seven days a week
• Saved staff several hours in overtime each week by removing the need to double-check customers’ system and application-performance reports
• Cut external auditing costs and reassured customers by guaranteeing system performance reports are 100% accurate
• Generated back-dated reports showing performance data for the past week, month, quarter, or year immediately, without requiring staff to enter extra data
• Enabled customers to quickly fix any application issues, by providing more detailed performance reports with real-time data
• Ensured customers’ data is completely secure by using options such as Oracle Database Vault and Oracle Audit Vault
• Attracted new business by increasing customer satisfaction and eliminating complaints about resources
• Enhanced staff satisfaction significantly, which will subsequently reduce attrition rates
• Implemented and tested Oracle Exadata in just two days, three days faster than expected and at half the cost

Why Oracle

Softcell assessed products from several vendors, including IBM, HP, and Oracle, but chose Oracle Exadata as it offered better and more reliable performance than the other vendors' offerings.

“Softcell is an Oracle Partner and many of our customers also use Oracle Database, so it made good business sense to work with a vendor that everyone was already confident and familiar with, and which could provide us with a full hardware stack and support,” said Patankar. “In addition, Oracle Sun products have an excellent reputation in India, especially in the markets in which the majority of our customers operate, such as financial services and data analytics for retail and telecommunications.

“By implementing Oracle Exadata with Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c, we ensured enthusiastic support and advocacy from many of our biggest customers,” he said.

Implementation Process

Softcell implemented Oracle Exadata Database Machine Quarter Rack and Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c in February 2012. The company installed and tested the database machine in just two days, rather than five days, as expected.

“Oracle Exadata was very easy to deploy—it took less than a day to install, and it didn’t require any customization,” said Patankar. “We ran self-diagnostics overnight and were ready to go in just a couple of days. The implementation also cost around half of what we expected.”