Keste Demonstrates Oracle Exadata and Oracle Exalogic Performance

Companies that effectively leverage new technology tend to gain quicker go-to-market opportunities—and a competitive edge. But adopting new technology is often a business decision where cost, benefits, risk, and timing all come into play. IT leaders want certainty that technology investments will meet the needs of their business, and it minimizes risk when there are opportunities to try technology before purchasing it.

The technology experts at Dallas, Texas-based Oracle Partner, Keste, are making it easier for customers to embrace innovation by engaging the only Oracle Partner-operated Center of Excellence (CoE) for Engineered Solutions, featuring both the Oracle Exadata Database Machine and the Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud.

The Center of Excellence (CoE), which opened in spring 2011, provides a way for customers to see how the engineered systems work together to offer exceptionally fast application and database performance at a significantly lower cost. “Oracle Exadata and Oracle Exalogic offer the perfect platform for us to leverage the two needs we were looking to fulfill—to solve our customers’ performance problems and to execute on the overall management,” says Howard Moore, CEO and co-founder of Keste. “The CoE runs Oracle hardware, middleware and database. Customers can come and put their solutions on it, run it, and witness for themselves how they can benefit from a platform like this.”

The CoE is the latest effort by Keste’s management to offer a complete line of Oracle-based solutions. The company has achieved Oracle Specialized status in Oracle Enterprise Content Management, Oracle Service-Oriented Architecture, Oracle Linux, Oracle Application Development Framework and Oracle WebCenter. “We are positioning ourselves as trusted advisors to our customers, and are investing in Oracle Exalogic and Oracle Exadata so customers are able to try it before they buy it,” says Moore.

Moore recommends customers set aside 30 days (customizable) for a three-step proof-of-value (PoV) process. The first phase involves scoping the work by collecting customer data, creating use cases, and creating the benchmarks on existing infrastructure. The second phase involves configuring and setting up the exact same data with the CoE environment, and the third phase involves proving performance with benchmark tests. At the end of the final phase, a document is created for the customer that details the hardware required for the project and demonstrates the performance gains that can be achieved by using Keste’s production infrastructure.

“The document provides all the required data for customers to believe and trust that this platform is truly going to help them in their production,” says Sri Ayyeppen, CTO and co-founder at Keste.

One of the first Keste customers to take advantage of a PoV, with both Oracle Exadata and Oracle Exalogic, was DJO Global, Inc., an international provider of high-quality medical devices for rehabilitation and pain management based in Vista, CA. “We want to improve our system performance,” says Mark Farabaugh, Vice President of IT, ERP Program Office at DJO. “Our data and reporting had grown, so performance was a compelling driver when deciding to make investments around infrastructure.”

DJO Global uses Oracle E-Business Suite R12, Oracle Service Oriented Architecture solutions, Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition, and Oracle Hyperion applications, and has had a long and fruitful relationship with Keste. “Keste has been a valuable partner of ours, in both software development and consulting, so it was only natural to use Keste for this POV on Oracle Exadata and Oracle Exalogic,” says Farabaugh.

To make sure the PoV reflected real business scenarios, DJO selected 40 use cases from Oracle E-Business Suite operations for testing. DJO considered this CoE testing to be particularly valuable because the test was run on Oracle Exalogic and Oracle Exadata systems using an exact copy of DJO’s Oracle E-Business Suite production environment, including all customizations and configurations.

“The POV was comprehensive and complete and it definitely solidified DJO’s interest and confidence level in the Exa technology,” stated Farabaugh. “At an aggregate level, our Oracle E-Business Suite system was six times faster compared to DJO’s current production environment on commodity hardware, and reporting was on average, 50 times faster.”

Keste’s Moore predicts a growing demand for its CoE and for Oracle’s engineered systems. “To us it is not just about deploying Oracle applications and technology, it is about solving business problems for our customers” he says. “We are not a big sales and marketing company. We put our money into execution and delivery. That is what sets Keste apart and that is what our customers are going to delight in.”