Take-Two Interactive Software Ensures High Availability for Enterprise Applications and Optimizes Internal IT Resources with Hosted Platform
 
 

Take-Two Interactive Software Ensures High Availability for Enterprise Applications and Optimizes Internal IT Resources with Hosted Platform

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Headquartered in New York City, Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. is a leading developer, marketer, and publisher of interactive entertainment for consumers around the globe. The company develops and publishes products through its two wholly-owned labels, Rockstar Games and 2K, which publishes its titles under the 2K Games, 2K Sports, and 2K Play brands. Its products are designed for console systems, handheld gaming systems, and personal computers, including smart phones and tablets. They are delivered through physical retail, digital download, online platforms, and cloud streaming services.

Take-Two Interactive Software has grown rapidly in recent years, posting a 49% increase in revenue for fiscal year 2011. To help it achieve sustained growth, the company focuses on its core mission of producing creative interactive entertainment while leveraging outside resources to manage administration and support services, such as managing its enterprise applications.

Take-Two Interactive Software first moved to a hosted enterprise resource planning (ERP) environment in 2008 when its on-premise JD Edwards EnterpriseOne environment in the Americas region was experiencing performance issues. The company faced a decision of scaling up, in house, to gain the resources required to manage the environment properly—which required an investment of upwards to US$1 million dollars and almost a year to build the necessary skill set. Evaluating whether building in-house expertise would have delivered value to the organization as a whole, the company decided to move its JD Edwards EnterpriseOne environment to Oracle application hosting specialist WTS, now part of Velocity Technology Solutions.

A short time later, the company announced plans to move the headquarters of its European operations from Geneva, Switzerland, to London, England, and decided to pursue a hosted ERP strategy for its European JD Edwards EnterpriseOne instance, as well.

In 2010, the company upgraded to Oracle's JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 9.0 and migrated from WTS to Oracle’s On Demand managed cloud services. It also migrated its internally run Oracle's Hyperion environment to Oracle’s hosted environment in 2011.

 
Challenges and Solution

A word from Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc.

  • “The greatest thing about Oracle’s On Demand managed cloud services is that we no longer have to worry about the performance and availability of our JD Edwards EnterpriseOne environment. It is like a dial-tone; we expect and know that it is available around the clock.”– John Hinkle, Chief Information Officer, Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc.

Take-Two Interactive Software has gained several important benefits from Oracle’s managed cloud services, including a more stable IT environment. Previously, the company’s ERP system experienced issues on a weekly basis. Now outages are extremely rare, with availability exceeding 99.9%. The company rests assured that the system is maintained by JD Edwards EnterpriseOne experts, with timely patching and management. In addition, upgrades are timely and seamless.

With Oracle’s managed cloud services, Take-Two Interactive Software receives high-quality service and can eliminate the internal burden of managing its ERP environment, ultimately enabling the IT team to focus on other business priorities. By making the move to a hosted environment, Take-Two Interactive Software's IT team has reallocated headcount to focus on business analysis, and can drive forward other projects that add value to the organization.

For example, the company was able to consolidate its distribution environments in the United States and Canada, and drove efficiencies in staffing and resources around order and customer service management, since it no longer had to devote significant resources and focus on day-to-day management of its ERP environment.

Further, using the managed cloud services delivered by Oracle Cloud Services, Take-Two Interactive Software has laid a foundation and has a project underway for achieving a single instance of JD Edwards EnterpriseOne across global operations.

Oracle Cloud Services has also delivered significant value to the company’s Hyperion environment. For example, when it migrated data from its Microsoft SQL Server Database to Oracle Database for transitioning the Hyperion environment to Oracle’s managed cloud services, Take-Two Interactive Software encountered several challenges. Oracle Cloud Services worked side-by-side with Oracle development and application teams to make the databases work together. As a result, Oracle demonstrated that its various teams can come together to achieve a common goal.

 
 

 
 

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