Case Studies
MyWorkplace Solutions in New Zealand is at the forefront of personnel management solutions in Australia. They have developed, implemented and supported vital technology to streamline workforce management processes and reduce costs. As a product and services company, MyWorkPlace Solutions delivers labor management solutions to the Australian market. Since early 2001, the company has focused on the design and development of a full suite of IT solutions that help address the electronic time-keeping and labor management needs of Australian clients.
When entering its market, MyWorkplace Solutions required a state of the art, industrial strength product that was both easy to develop on and easy to deploy and support; Ingres was the clear choice. Becoming an Ingres Independent Software Vendor was a natural progression and was made easy by the supportive and cooperative attitude of Ingres Australia. Their willingness to listen to our needs and the way our customers buy from us and ultimately adopt a commercial model that reflected our own further simplified our decision. The Commercial process happened in days. The result is that MyWorkplace is able to supply its Labor Management solution combined with excellent technology at a commercially sensible cost. Leveraging on Ingres' development resources and directions, MyWorkplace is able to concentrate on the development of a feature rich application which in turn flows to their clients who have a product which is future proof and constantly improved.
Partnering with Ingres has addressed a number of issues both from a technical perspective as well as a marketing perspective. Ingres’ flexible pricing model has enabled MyWorkplace to price its product competitively, scaled to the size of the client. At the same time, all clients want to have the security of knowing that the product they are using will not be made obsolete by virtue of the constantly changing computer world. The MyWorkplace/Ingres partnership has made this possible
"MyWorkplace sales have increased markedly since partnering with the NEW Ingres because our clients and prospects are confident about the technology platform and happy with the competitive pricing we are able to offer" said Richard Hazeltine, Director; MyWorkplace Solutions Pty Ltd.
Pesticides Safety Directorate
Industry: Library Services (Book Wholesale)
Annual Revenue: £22 million
Employees: 170
Product: Ingres 2006 / ABF
Industry: Government
Annual Revenue: £13.1 million
Employees: 200
Product: Ingres Database Enterprise Edition, Ingres II Replicator and Ingres OpenROAD
"IT is central to the organisation, it is the backbone of everything we do. We've found Ingres to be reliable, robust and cost effective... it's such a nice product to work with."
Andrew Park
IS Project Manager
Pesticides Safety Directorate
Key the word pesticides into Google UK and the first hit you'll get is not some global agrochemical brand or giant industrial combine, but instead a small government directorate located in the North of England. But size, as they say, isn't everything.
The Pesticides Safety Directorate (PSD) may be just some 200 people strong, yet its work benefits the environment and the health and safety of millions of people. It also regulates a market worth around £450 million in the UK and a similar figure in overseas exports.
An increasingly important tool in this work is the Ingres Business Open Source database, the software foundation which underpins many of the back office systems that the PSD relies on.
"We've used Ingres since 1992 when it was chosen as our strategic database and never seen a reason to change. We've always been happy with it," says Andrew Park, IS Project Manager at the PSD."
Ingres, however, is not just working behind the scenes at the PSD, it has a much more visible role too. Indeed anyone clicking that first Google hit will experience it first hand. They'll be taken straight to the PSD's own Web pages which are served up by – yes – Ingres. The PSD's mission is twofold. It is responsible for ensuring that the plant protection products used by farmers, growers, foresters, the food industry and amateur gardeners alike are safe, effective and comply with European regulations. The organisation is also charged with shaping policies on pesticide issues in the UK.
This work is done by a dedicated team of scientists, policy makers and support staff at the PSD's York headquarters. It is testament to their efforts during 2006/7 that while product approval applications ran 23% above predictions, all key ministerial goals for the directorate were achieved and the overall target for the time taken to process applications was beaten by a comfortable margin. Andrew Park and his 13 colleagues in IT can take some of the credit. "IT is central to the organisation, it is the backbone of everything that we do," he says, citing the reliability and robustness of Ingres as important factors in the database's 15 years and counting at the PSD. And as so many other publicly accountable organisations have found, the financial benefits of Business Open Source are compelling when compared with the conventional commercial model.
"We have to be careful about what we spend: we don't have an unlimited budget.As a full cost recovery organisation, value is extremely important to us, as is the flexibility to change as business changes," Park adds.
While he mentions flexibility almost as a postscript, he acknowledges that it is in fact a crucial element in meeting yet one more of those targets: this time one that has been set at the very highest level.
As an executive agency of the UK Government's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the PSD doesn't just work to annual performance targets. There are also more strategic, central government targets to be met. One of those is for the electronic delivery of all services and Ingres is once again playing a role in its realisation.
In a project that came in on time, under budget and saw the PSD short-listed for a national IT award, Park and his colleagues have already delivered the fully electronic and secure signing of licence documents. All of this happens inside Ingres, through a Web front end built in the database's companion OpenROAD development environment.The results have been dramatic: reduced paperwork, improved efficiency and significant reductions in time and costs. Park is understandably proud of the achievement.
"It took us a year to develop from scratch, using Ingres and OpenROAD, but made us direct savings of £100,000 immediately in the first two years and effectively it paid for itself."
"Now we've got flexibility. We can put what we want where we want, support and maintain three servers, use a community edition for trial purposes, and we've got the flexibility for all eventualities. "
But the next step in electronic delivery promises even more. This aims to digitise the completion and submission of product applications – a process which now involves incoming paper forms being manually logged into the Ingres-based system. Once this phase is complete, the entire application/approval workflow will be electronic end-to-end.
"Smart application specialists here will build the approval documents and they'll be put in the system for companies to download and submit securely," says Park.
While he makes it sound easy, there is additional, complex work involved in converting the present paper forms into XML format for the new system. This calls for another software product, an electronic forms package. For this role the PSD team has chosen Open Source again, the Web 2.0 ready XForms model, and is currently working to link this with Ingres. With several very well established commercial forms packages on the market, the XForms choice might be viewed as a bold one. But Park remains comfortable with the decision.
"The whole Open Source, philosophy is good but you do have to pick and choose products," he cautions. "Having said that, with what we save by going open source we can pay a consultant to do some of the work, for example the forms to database consultancy part.
"The costs stack up favourably with open source and we're not paying for a commercial product," he adds.
"Take SQL server as an example. It might be cheaper to buy and install but then there's client access licences, development server, enterprise edition – the costs soon start mounting up. And once it's in, it's difficult to change things. Then there's the whole version upgrades thing," he says. "Now we've got flexibility. We can put what we want where we want, support and maintain three servers, use a community edition for trial purposes, and we've got the flexibility for all eventualities."
With its long track record at the PSD, it's perhaps not surprising that Ingres has run on a variety of platforms. It all started with Siemens-Nixdorf in the early days, eventually migrating to Windows NT4.
More recently, it has moved to Windows 2003 where it happily services tens of thousands of internal queries every month, as well as serving up between 300,000 and 500,000 Web pages.
In the future, another platform move – this time to an open source operating system – could well be on the cards. "We want if possible to reduce our dependency on Microsoft," says Park.
"Now we're looking at Ingres running under Linux and it just doesn't break, it's virtually bombproof."
He also likes the community feel that is part and parcel of open source, citing the Ingres experience as an example. "We really enjoy the enthusiasm of all the people we meet in the Ingres user community. And the technical support from the company has always been great, the people there are all real Ingres afficianados. But to be honest there haven't been many things we've come across that we couldn't fix by simply going to the user community on the Web."
Direction des Systèmes d'Information
Vaud, Switzerland
Direction des Systèmes d'Information (DSI)
Introduction
Direction des Systèmes d'Information (DSI) is responsible for the entire telecommunications and information systems of Vaud's Justice Department. Vaud is a canton (state) of Switzerland. DSI manages and administers the Justice Department's network system, including telecommunications to facilitate the state's business activities and operation. DSI's mission statement is to make sure that the department's network platform and telecommunications is efficient, highly available and that data is accessible by the citizens and businesses in the state.
To ensure that these missions are carried out, DSI makes sure that:
- Service to Justice Department is consistent, making them aware of any new, state-of-the art technologies
- Exploit how Vaud can take advantage of any free or open source software and their licensing models
- Achieve cost effective solutions
At the center of the Justice Department's system environment is the Ingres database and a 15-plus year business relationship that has acquired yet more momentum in 2006 with Ingres becoming an independent company. Software solutions provider Bedag Informatique installed the network system at DSI and is currently their service provider.
DSI has been using the Ingres RDBMS for almost fifteen years and is the platform for the applications used for the Justice Department of Vaud. There are three applications developed on Ingres database. The Gestion des Dossiers (GDD) application was developed to manage the cases which are severe in nature, with about 40,000 cases per year. Another application developed was the Gestion des Dossiers (GDD) which manages civil another 40,000 cases per year. The third application is Gestion des données de reference (DREF) which catalogs all the data needed by GDD and GDC to process the information needed by the courts. These three applications are interconnected by the Replicator to assure that data coming from DREF are consistent and reliable. All three applications were written in OpenROAD to speed up the application development and to quickly deliver legal services to the citizens of Vaud.
These applications need to be replaced by better software applications, but the Ingres database has been so solid and efficient that we are reluctant to do that", said Philippe Torche, Chief Project Manager, State of Vaud, Department of Infrastructures at DSI. He added, "The home grown applications only work with Ingres and migrating to another environment will require a lot of effort and money. Ingres has been a reliable platform for us to design applications that do not require dedicated system administrators." All three business applications were writen in OpenROAD and enables the legal system in Vaud to speed delivery of services to the citizens of Vaud.
At the core of DSI's mission is the delivery of outstanding customer service to the entire Department of Justice which includes the Public Ministry, Administrative Court, Neutral Court and Legal Order of Vaud. The Legal Order of Vaud is comprised of 13 different small courts responsible for a wide array of services including issues on education, bankruptcy, traffic, state exams, etc. For these reasons, DSI demands the utmost reliability and performance for a database, and they depend on Ingres technology to provide these all important attributes.
Vaud citizens are able to access a single, familiar interface that makes sense for them. Through this application, Vaud citizens are able to check information regarding their court cases such as request court dates online, see their court case status, etc. This provides real time data to their queries since they are able to find answers, extract critical information, and stay connected to what is happening in their court cases. Citizens are spared of spending too much time getting in the queue to request court dates and getting the tasks completed in order to complete court requirements. They don't have to spend the time and money checking multiple references, going to different places for information and verification.
The State of Vaud has long been getting the benefits of the application developed by DSI on the Ingres database platform. DSI made IT operations at the Justice Department more efficient, creating a single infrastructure and data set that is easy to manage and administer. This has given the Justice Department more time to spend on other legal issues that require more focus. Eployees are more empowered to make better informed and intelligent decision about their work operations because of real time and accurate data.
DSI developed their applications on top of the open source Ingres database to help manage cost. "We not only needed a cost-effective platform that we can easily develop our applications but it has to be stable and always reliable, and the Ingres database provided us with those requirements. The open source technology also lowered the cost of developing our own applications as we did not have to pay upfront licensing fees for using the database." Mr. Torche articulated.
Because some laws may change in Vaud in the coming three years, Mr. Torche hopes that new applications will work with their current infrastructure. Mr. Torche also conveyed his thoughts on Ingres Services, "We are very happy with Ingres Services. They have been very helpful and always have a ready answer for any network application problems we have. If the new applications work with Ingres 2006, maybe migrating to it is the next best thing to do."
DSI has reaped substantial benefits with their use of the Ingres database and continues to garner significant reqards as they leverages the Ingres database's enterprise class functionalities, reliability and scalability, and ease of management.
Rodan Systems
Industry: IT Solution Provider
Annual Revenue: 4 million Euro
Employees: 70
Ingres Products: Ingres 2006 & OpenROAD
"Ingres was our preferred database right from the start and it remains at the centre of operations at our largest customers. We know we have arrived at a level of functionality, performance and reliability that stands comparison with many well-known products from major vendors."
Dr.Witold Staniszkis
Founder and CEO
Rodan Systems SA
Formed in 1989 and now one of the country's most innovative companies, Polish independent software vendor Rodan Systems shows what can be achieved by intelligent, determined people who make the right decisions.
One of the early choices made by Dr. Witold Staniszkis, Rodan's founder and CEO was to reinvest a hefty 50% of annual profits in research and development. Another was from the outset to commit Rodan to the Ingres database as the standard foundation for an evolving range of integrated business productivity applications.
"Although we hadn't used Ingres 2006 until we started to develop the two new solutions, it's actually proved remarkably easy to build our own product around."Now, with a well-established user base of indigenous private and public sector organisations to its credit, Rodan is setting its sights on a burgeoning world market for integrated workflow and document systems. And 17 years on from first choosing Ingres, it is once again committing to make the database a key component of these new developments.
"Ingres was our preferred product right from the start and it remains at the centre of operations at our largest customers," says Dr. Staniszkis. Applications built around the database in the early days of Rodan and still in use include an integrated suite developed for the Polish Civil Rights Protection Office. Five modules – all using Ingres - provide a complete document management environment for some 200 users.
"It's clear that our choice of open source Ingres database combined with adherence of the OfficeObjects WorkFlow product to open industry business process management standards fits very well with our achievement of that very desirable goal."
Meanwhile, the settlement system at the National Bank of Poland - another tried and tested application from the early days of Rodan - continues to deliver reliable service. Bank systems managers quickly became self-sufficient and now do their own maintenance and development. "It says much about the quality of the early work we did with Ingres that both those solutions are still in use," says Dr. Staniszkis. But while he looks back with pride at earlier achievements, it is on the here and now - and a re-affirmed relationship with Ingres - that Dr. Staniszkis is focused.
"We did hesitate when Ingres became a CA product. But now it is once again a stand-alone organisation, and we can see serious development and marketing effort behind it, we have recommitted to Ingres as our preferred database," he says.
"It says much about the quality of the early work we did with Ingres that both those solutions are still in use".
As well as renewing its relationship with Ingres, Rodan is also seeking to establish itself as a centre of excellence and best practice in the use of the database. A new generation of Ingres-based applications will be marketed across the globe. Dr. Staniszkis predicts the combination of Ingres and Rodan will deliver the first serious European rival to solutions coming out of the US. One of the keys to this success will be Rodan OfficeObjects® software products, a Java-based multi-layer architecture integrating Ingres 2006 and forming the basis of a new generation of document and workflow management applications. Among the first, and soon to be delivered, is a support system for the provincial government in the Wielkopolska region of Poland. Funded by the EU, the solution will speed and simplify much of the work of 800 civic staff, and enable 3.3 million citizens to electronically access and interact with many services.
"Where we had a few problems, the Ingres technical support people were responsive and very efficient. We are confidently expecting Ingres 2006 to provide the same high availability as the earlier versions and we think our customers are going to be delighted with the end results."
A second major project is a document management solution for the national forestry organisation, Polish State Forest. Again, the system is based on Rodan's OfficeObjects platform and uses the Ingres database. Its aim is bold - nothing less than eventual elimination of all paper documents, enabling staff to process everything from correspondence and maps to financial information entirely electronically, and aided by customised workflow automation. A pilot system will be deployed to 900 of the organisation's staff, enabling them to track e-documents as they transit multiple systems and processes. Full rollout to all 9,000 staff of Polish State Forest is scheduled to follow successful completion of the pilot.
"Ingres was our preferred product right from the start and it remains at the centre of operations at our largest customers".
Significantly, the local government and forestry solutions will be the first from Rodan supporting the ideals of KROS, a coalition for open standards created by a large group of IT companies in Poland. Signatories, including Rodan, recognised that the lack of open standards in information storage and exchange has often forced organisations to choose from a narrow menu of products, leading to higher costs and reduced competitiveness in public and commercial sectors. Coalition members have pledged to work towards solutions that adhere to open standards and which enable customers to exercise freedom of choice. Says Dr. Staniszkis: "It's clear that our choice of open source Ingres database combined with adherence of the OfficeObjects WorkFlow product to open industry business process management standards fits very well with our achievement of that very desirable goal. "With the government and forestry solutions very near to delivery, Dr.Staniszkis has found himself re-acquainted with the advantages of the Ingres database that first caught his attention more than 17 years ago. "Although we hadn't used Ingres 2006 until we started to develop the two new solutions, it's actually proved remarkably easy to build our own product around," he says. "Where we had a few problems, the Ingres technical support people were responsive and very efficient. We are confidently expecting Ingres 2006 to provide the same high availability as the earlier versions and we think our customers are going to be delighted with the end results." "I think the move to make Ingres available under General Public License was a bold decision and a very interesting one. The model of no license fees but strong support funded by subscription is a model that works very well for us an independent software vendor. It gives us a real commercial edge."
"We did hesitate when Ingres became a CA product. But now it is once again a stand-alone organisation, and we can see serious development and marketing effort behind it, we have recommitted to Ingres as our preferred database."
Before long - Dr. Staniszkis is not saying exactly when - Rodan plans to make the OfficeObjects family of solutions available internationally. "We know we have arrived at a level of functionality, performance and reliability that stands comparison with many well-known products from major vendors. Building OfficeObjects around Ingres helps us deliver those world-class solutions to customers at an unprecedentedly low cost." His prediction raises the possibility that before too long, the first US customers will be rolling out document management systems that have Ingres at their core, yet proudly bear the phrase 'Developed in Europe' on the packaging.
Askews Library Services
Industry: Library Services (Book Wholesale)
Annual Revenue: £22 million
Employees: 170
Product: Ingres 2006 / ABF
"...it's a serious and unique benefit to be able to deal direct with the people actually developing the database, rather than going through a third-party...We also really like the way the open source model adopted by Ingres has substantially cut our costs."
Tim Cotterall
Commercial Director
Askews Library Services
It has no name or even a fashionably obscure acronym, and yet the bespoke central system operated by Askews Library Services is, quite literally, the core around which this specialist supplier to the world's book lending libraries has built a highly successful and resilient business.
At the heart of the system-with-no-name is the Ingres database. For more than 10 years and through successive upgrades, it has provided Askews with an ultra reliable, high performance and easily maintained platform for growth. "And no sleepless nights," adds Tim Cotterall, Askews Commercial Director.
An IT veteran with extensive experience of complex environments, Cotterall was hired as IT manager by Askews in 1997. The firm had been struggling with the development and deployment of the bespoke central system — after four years of work, the migration from HP platforms to Sun technology running Ingres was in production but was still less than fit for purpose. Cotterall, recruited partly because he was already familiar with Ingres having run systems built around the database at his previous employer, swiftly built a team that pulled the project back on track. He recalls: "The problems were actually nothing to do with the database and we were able to resolve them very effectively." So effectively, that today's system can trace its lineage directly back to the original of 1997. It's grown in capacity and ability, but it is faithful to the original concept and the database, recently upgraded to Ingres 2006, remains at the core.
Founded 130 years ago and one of the longest-established companies of its type, Askews is nevertheless a business of the times. Although it is physically located in Preston in the UK, it uses the Web to market globally and the Internet to serve customers world-wide via Electronic Data Interchange. Askews is a full-service library supplier. It provides libraries with a complete package - selection support, buying, cataloguing, physical preparation for lending, promotional support and management reporting. "You can think of us as a factory," says Cotterall.
"We understand the pressures libraries face and so we employ a multi-stage process that results in an end-product that makes their lives easier and more cost-effective. That end-product is a fully catalogued book, with the right protective cover on it, and with the right combination of bar code, lending ticket and security mark applied, ready to go on a library shelf somewhere to be lent to a reader."
Achieving that end product requires the employment of some 150 staff – and Ingres. The libraries market has become increasingly sensitive as economic pressures cap and in some cases depress spending, but there are still rewards to be played for. Four other companies compete with Askews in the £90m-a-year UK market where contracts are awarded by competitive tender. The combination of the need to tightly control costs at home while supporting a programme to develop geographical reach, has pushed Ingres even more to the fore at Askews. "The pressures have meant we've had to become smarter and more efficient at what we do," explains Cotterall. "Doing things electronically that before were largely manual processes has benefits for us and for our customers. It allows us to keep our costs under control and pass on the savings which in turn makes us a more compelling partner than our competitors. Of course, it becomes even more important when you're servicing some customers half way around the world. We like to think we are at the leading edge of e-procurement and we offer a complete solution for EDI orders, quotes, acknowledgements, order fulfilment and invoices - in short the complete supply chain. 80-90% of orders are now placed electronically and our customers are able to access information stored in the database in order to make their selection. It's very transparent, but of course it places more demands on our systems."
So how large is the database? "It currently holds details of four million titles, 900,000 of which are currently in print. It's vital that we keep such a large repository of information about out of print titles because publishers can often decide to print another run of a title. We also need to retain knowledge of each customer and the relationship between each customer and each individual title. Different libraries have different requirements that we need to remember and apply to each of the books we prepare for delivery. There is no standard approach. One customer might expect a certain type of protective cover and want a book on geography denoted with a yellow spot. Another might want a certain type of date label and bar code. We deliver some three million books a year and deal with more than 5,000 libraries in the UK alone, many of them with a different profile of interests and requirements." Systems managers will immediately recognise that the Askews database team faces a task of significant complexity. But Cotterall insists it is very manageable, thanks in no small part to the ease with which Ingres can be maintained. Four in-house developers actually spend most of their time building enhancements to the service and working towards major system upgrades which, so far, have taken place approximately every three years.
The latest upgrade came just before Christmas in 2006 when the hardware was upgraded to Sun x86 platforms, the operating system to Solaris 10 and the database moved to Ingres 2006 – all without drama. Cotterall accepts that such smooth transitions owe much to the practised ease with which his people manage change, but he also pays tribute to the way the new version of Ingres simply builds on the strong foundations of earlier ones and delivers enhanced functionality without tears. "We did a couple of tests and went live."
"On the rare occasions we have had a problem, we've found the Ingres support service to be very good – even out of hours. We were concerned about the future when Ingres was taken out of CA, particularly over the possibility that the database might simply die through lack of development, but Ingres 2006 has shown us that our fears were groundless. Ingres as a company is doing the right things."
Cotterall approves of the commitment to product development; he also likes the way licensing is now structured. "First of all, it's a serious and unique benefit to be able to deal direct with the people actually developing the database, rather than going through a third-party – which we would be forced to do if we used an alternative database. We also really like the way the open source model adopted by Ingres has substantially cut our costs. Ingres is clearly well aware that it will only retain the confidence of customers like us if it keeps a tight grip on development and I am confident that it will do so".
"For now, the system does all we need, and does it with great integrity. Ingres makes a profound contribution to that robustness and utility because it is very high performance, flexible, ultra stable and easy to maintain."
Some might be surprised that Askews has stuck with the essentially green-screen Solaris environment for so long, but Cotterall counters that the business is driven by the pragmatists' mantra: 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it.' "We do have some Java screens on the desktop running via terminal emulation and we are looking at possibly moving to a windows environment, but that's in the future."
Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission
Industry: Government Agency
Ingres Products: Ingres Enterprise Database
"Our Ingres database drives one the largest animal tracking projects in the world...."
Carter Stein
Program Manager
PTAGIS Project
Monitoring millions of fish, ensuring their lifecycle
The PIT Tag Information System (PTAGIS) is a fisheries data project of the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission. PTAGIS monitors fish migrations through the Federal Columbia River Power System and provides valuable research information to ensure the restoration of declining salmon and steelhead populations. Since 1987, about 17 million fish have been marked with PIT tags-a tiny electronic device-and released into the waterways of the Columbia River Basin. Beginning in 1991, PTAGIS automated its processes and developed software using an Ingres database that receives, stores, and analyzes PIT Tag information for research purposes. The data is available on the Internet.
Protecting the environment, one fish at a time
Utilizing the same technology that powers microchips to identify pets and the security mechanism for car keys used by car manufacturers, various research agencies throughout the Pacific Northwest inject a Passive Integrated Transponder (PIT tag) into each fish with the latest in Radio Frequency Identification technology. A PIT-tagged fish is uniquely identified and then monitored throughout its entire lifecycle as it migrates to and from the Pacific Ocean back to its original spawning grounds. As the fish passes by one of about 70 interrogation sites along the Columbia River Basin, the unique code which associates characteristics of the fish-its mark/release data and its species, stock, size, and condition-is detected by its PIT tag. A variety of monitoring devices, stationary and hand-held, record the data, which are automatically uploaded to the PTAGIS database every three hours.
Making a difference with Ingres technology
"We rely on Ingres to provide a reliable and robust relational database management system for researchers to retrieve information about PIT-tagged fish from our data system," says Carter Stein, program manager of the PTAGIS project. The system contains about 17 million mark/release records and nearly 70 million interrogation/tracking records for fish in the Columbia River Basin.
"Our project has grown in scope, scale and complexity and the data system has met the challenge," says Stein.
The PTAGIS project handles advanced queries from 257 registered users whose research includes everything from academic projects to the work of other fish and wildlife agencies that share a common mission to protect and enhance the environment.
"Ingres has all of the performance we need. It's been scalable for this project. The maintenance costs are low and the administration time it takes is minimal-it just runs the way it's supposed to," says Stein.
For more information about the PTAGIS Project visit: http://www.ptagis.org/
For more information about the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission visit: http://www.psmfc.org/
Cypress Semiconductor
Industry: Semiconductor Manufacturing and Distribution
Ingres Products: Ingres Enterprise Relational Database
"Ingres is at the heart of everything we do....It's embedded into our company's DNA."
Robert Price
DBA Manager
Cypress Semiconductor Corporation
For over 20 years, Ingres's technology has scaled to match Cypress's impressive growth
Cypress is a world-class leader in the fabrication of semiconductors and an innovator in the use of technology to improve business processes. It is also one of the largest and most successful suppliers of diversified, high-performance integrated circuits for consumer, computation, data communications, automotive, industrial, and solar solutions.
In its first year of business, Cypress chose an Ingres database, running on a single VAX 750, to track its order-entry and manufacturing systems. Today, over 20 years later, Cypress continues to use Ingres technology. All of Cypress's manufacturing processes are managed by an Ingres-driven network of 20 databases located in fabrication plants around the world.
"We've grown with Ingres," says Dennis Bell, Director of IT Development for Cypress. As Cypress's portfolio of "high performance" products expanded-everything from wired and wireless USB devices to reconfigurable mixed-signal arrays-its need for a highly scalable and reliable database to manage its worldwide manufacturing network became even more critical for its continued growth and success.
"We wrote all our own code," says Robert Price, DBA Manager and a key Ingres developer for Cypress. "We must have hundred's of DBA years in this by now. Our database has a lot of rich features."
Ingres is reliable. "In over 20 years of using Ingres technology, we've never had a major loss of data," says Bell.
Premium Support-getting inside the box
Every quarter, Cypress produces over 200 million parts for its pipeline of products. Continued success for Cypress means never missing a beat. And to ensure its manufacturing processes are functioning with precision and speed 24 x 7, Cypress uses Ingres Premium Support Services.
With up to 1500 users working simultaneously in manufacturing sites worldwide, Cypress depends on Ingres day in and day out. If one of the databases is down for any reason, it can cost extremely valuable production time.
"The depth of Ingres support is amazing," says Price. "If we ever have a problem, no matter what time of day or night, Ingres is right on it with three experts who have in-depth technical knowledge of my system. It's like having three DBA's looking at my screen, knowing exactly what to do to recover."
Ingres handles it all. "Today, Ingres manages everything, from that first order by phone, to the manufacturing of our wafers and the making of parts for products, to shipping and invoice systems," says Price.
For more information about Cypress Semiconductor Corporation visit: http://www.cypress.com
Lufthansa Systems
Industry: IT Services
Revenues: $500M to $1B
Ingres Products: Ingres Database, OpenROAD
Lufthansa Systems' applications for Airline Operations rely on Ingres/OpenROAD Platform for mission-critical, global aviation data and support.
Airline Information on the move
Lufthansa Systems is one of the world's leading full service IT providers and industry specialists for the airline and aviation sector. The products of the business unit Airline Operations Solutions provide up-to-the minute aeronautical data for flight planning. The clients: More than 110 International operating airlines.
Global aviation data and support distributed seamlessly using Ingres database technology
A modular, full-range of products and services manage all aspects of airline planning and transmit mission-critical data. The flight planning applications provide both pilots enroute and navigation experts on the ground with information from a variety of sources, such as updated weather satellite reports, and combine it with customer-specific resources.
The data is real-time, easy to use, secure and available 24 x 7. And it's portable.
A central Ingres database serves as the repository that manages and distributes this data. Ingres/OpenROAD has helped Lufthansa Systems to expand its Airline Operations Solutions business and continue to provide its customers with important real-time flight planning information.
The application databases have already upgraded successfully to Ingres 2006, the flagship Business Open Source database product.
For more information about Lufthansa Systems visit: http://www.lhsystems.com
National Center for Missing & Exploited Children
Industry: Non-Profit Organization
Ingres Products: Advantage Ingres Enterprise Database, Ingres Premium Support
Accessible from all corners of the globe, an Ingres database works 24 x 7 to help solve crimes against children.
The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children ("NCMEC") is an organization with a global network dedicated to solving cases of child abduction and child sexual exploitation. NCMEC and its international partner, the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children, rely on critical information distributed by an Advantage Ingres Database and delivered by web-based applications written in Java. Over the last 20 years, NCMEC's reliance on technology has grown from a single Ingres database with "very simple, single-user transactions to a powerful Advantage Ingres Enterprise Database that runs both internal and external systems for our organization," says Peg Flick, the CIO of NCMEC.
"Technology empowers us to achieve our goal-finding missing children and helping to prevent child sexual exploitation. The reliability and the support of the Ingres database product are vitally important to our success," Flick says. "Together with the coordinated efforts of government agencies and our own Ingres-driven technology, we have assisted in the recovery of nearly 99,500 children."
NCMEC's web site receives 2.8 million hits per day and is available 24 x 7 x 365 to ensure the uninterrupted delivery of its critical information. An Advantage Ingres database houses critical case records accessed via various NCMEC web-based applications, distributed throughout the organization, and to a global network of International Centre web sites. Ingres's technology supports NCMEC's multi-user, multi-language environment. "Each country configures its own web site according to its own specifications and its native character sets," says Flick.
NCMEC utilizes Ingres's Premium Support whereby dedicated support engineers, with an in-depth knowledge of the customers' systems, provide personalized support and ensure holistic focus on the success of NCMEC's systems and projects.
"The support I receive from Ingres Premium Service has been crucial to the success of our efforts at NCMEC. A team of senior engineers is at the ready to make sure the system is always running smoothly," says Flick.
Today, the organization's enterprise consists of several user communities. A secure intranet offers access to over 200 employees, as well as Federal agencies and the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force (ICAC). It also provides public access to NCMEC's Web sites, MissingKids.com and CyberTipLine.com, a call center and online reporting resource, staffed 24 x 7, which processes leads regarding missing and exploited children.
"We depend on Ingres technology to provide us with a robust and scalable database that can handle our internal case management system, distribute information worldwide via customized web sites, and provide real-time leads we receive with CyberTipline."
Peg Flick
Chief Information Officer
National Center for Missing & Exploited Children
Future plans with Ingres include development employing Ruby on Rails to create data-driven Web sites, all running in the Ingres Enterprise Database Server.
For more information about the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children visit: http://www.MissingKids.com and http://www.CyberTipLine.com.
International Customer Loyalty Programmes plc
Industry: Marketing
Annual Revenue: £8 Million
Worldwide Customers—Managing Profitable Relationships
ICLP is the world's leading specialist in loyalty marketing programs, helping organizations maximize profits by building more effective customer relationships. ICLP delivers world-class marketing solutions through its three core competencies-consulting, creative, and client services.
Established in 1987, ICLP employs more than 500 staff worldwide with offices in London, Dallas, Dubai, Hong Kong, San Francisco, Shanghai, Singapore, and Sydney. Clients include many world-class companies such as Apple, DHL, Radisson SAS Hotels & Resorts, Star Alliance, Virgin Atlantic, and VISA.
When ICLP was a small company, it was looking for a database solution that was simple to use and provided tangible financial savings. It found one in Ingres, which is the foundation of all its customer loyalty systems.
Ingres-Reliable, Scalable, Cost-Effective, and Easy-to-Use
"We rely on Ingres, which is at the heart of our mission-critical systems and those of our customers," says Shaf Rahman, ICLP's Group Technical Director. "We had reviewed all the big brand database names and done due diligence. But when it came to cost, Ingres delivered everything we needed and it was significantly more cost-effective. As we've grown and our customer base has expanded, we've continued to use Ingres. The technology is impressive and it still delivers excellent value for the money."
Ingres also scales easily, from small, discrete systems to multi-national, multi-million customer applications, says Rahman. The database can support all of ICLP's business applications-from a few thousand contacts in one of the business-to-business systems to the Priority Pass airport lounge card system, which has 1.5 million customers and processes 3.5 million vouchers every year.
Total cost of ownership and ease-of-use are key issues for ICLP and its customers. For example, when ICLP develops an application for a customer, the difference in cost between using Ingres or another product as the database engine can be as much as £80,000. "Ingres is significantly more cost effective than other databases," says Rahman. "As we migrate our applications to run on the open source version of Ingres, the cost savings will be even more significant."
Ingres's technology also enables ICLP's customers to benefit from complex database applications without having to invest in expensive database skills. For example, ICLP developed "an Ingres-based frequent flyer system for an operator in the Philippines," says Rahman. "Once we'd installed the system, the customer didn't need any expertise to run it. In fact, they didn't have to employ a database expert. Other products require a lot of in-house skills."
For ICLP, using the Ingres database has also meant that it is able to protect its investment in skills and knowledge. With the advent of browser-based front-end IT applications, ICLP was able to port all of its applications to more engaging and easy-to-use interfaces and still retain all the original back-end data and relational processes.
Going forward, ICLP will use Ingres technology to open up new business opportunities.
Business Value with Ingres
"Because Ingres is simple to install, we can now have a new Ingres database application up and running in less than an hour. Had we been using any other database for our business applications, we would have had to employ three database administrators instead of one—that's a cost saving of more than £100,000 a year."
Shaf Rahman
Group Technical Director
ICLP
For more information about ICLP visit: http://www.iclployalty.com
Algonquin College
Industry: College
Ingres Products: Advantage Ingres Enterprise Database and OpenROAD
Algonquin College provides state-of-the-art client services to staff, students, and employees with Advantage Ingres Enterprise Database and OpenROAD.
Navigating the Learning Landscape
Algonquin College meets the needs of its educational community with a full palette of technology driven services. Utilizing Ingres technology, students, faculty, and employees access web-enabled services and information.
For example, the Algonquin College Student Information System ("ACSIS") is a self-serve module that allows students to manage all aspects of campus life-everything from viewing their timetables and grades to ordering transcripts, registering for classes, and even keeping track of their tuition account balance.
Likewise, HRIS, a human resource application, is a one-stop administrative source for all employee related information.
"We have a lot of very complex applications and Ingres has always been there to help. When we have a problem in the middle of the night, Ingres support is there, ready to handle our problems over the phone. They know our system and they have the technicians and the expertise to help us. Our Lifeline Support is a lifesaver."
"Ingres's ease of use, stability and excellent support, allows us to continue to work with Ingres without second guessing."
"Most of our Continuing Education students register online. Without our Ingres-based online services, we would have totally unmanageable line-ups during registration periods."
Tom Friesen
Senior Data Management Analyst,
Information Technology Services
Algonquin College
"15 years ago, we chose Ingres because it was the best product with the best support for our needs. Over the years, as we have grown, the product has grown with us. From the beginning, Ingres has been there, providing us with excellent support, ease-of-use, stability, performance and cost efficiency. There was a time when we didn't have a database manager and the system ran itself without any problems. It just kept running."
Peter Kerkhof
System Analyst and Sr. Developer
Algonquin College
For more information about Algonquin College visit: http://www.algonquincollege.com
CDA
Industry: Optical Media Replication (e.g., CDs, DVDs)
Ingres Products: Ingres Database; Ingres OpenROAD
Purpose: Ingres ETC Custom Builds Manufacturing Application, LeanPro, to Increase Production and Efficiency
Ingres ETC (formerly Thinking Instruments, see announcement link below), with over 13 years experience as an Ingres reseller and developer serving the European market, will continue to provide its customers with cutting edge service, support and applications to improve their businesses. Case in point: CDA Datenträger Albrechts GmbH, or CDA.
Faster and Better. When CDA was looking for technology to boost its manufacturing capabilities, it turned to the development team at Ingres ETC. The international demand in the entertainment, gaming and music industries for media replication, such as CDs, CD-ROMs, CD-Rs and DVDs, was growing astronomically. To remain competitive, CDA needed to increase and streamline its production.
Ingres ETC worked with CDA and developed LeanPro, a customized application, built upon Ingres OpenROAD and the Ingres Database. LeanPro automates all aspects of the manufacturing process to ensure greater efficiencies in production and permanently shorter cycle times. It also provides remote management and DBA support for the LeanPro application system. When orders come in for fulfillment, LeanPro manages and tracks each stage of the production process, ensuring maximum efficiencies and utilization of resources.
Today, CDA is one of Europe's top performing replicators of optical media. LeanPro runs 24/7, achieving 99.999% availability, with no down time. Scheduled service updates take less than 8 hours per year. An innovative "emergency concept" keeps LeanPro running, even if the server or network fails.
"With the introduction of LeanPro we achieved production efficiency which we need for flexible, on schedule production of our products. We are able to produce up to 500,000 CD's, DVD's as well as HD-DVD's. We build on the speed and reliability of the Ingres database and LeanPro to fulfill the more and more dynamic requirements of our business. "
- Konrad Scholz, CDA Datentraeger Albrechts GmbH
For more information about CDA visit: http://www.cda.de
Scottish Qualifications Authority
Ingres takes the stress out of administering qualifications
Industry: Government
Turnover: £51m
Employees: 560
Product: Ingres Database and OpenROAD
"We are currently running 10 Ingres databases... and together they absorb about the same amount of time and effort required by just one of the competition's databases."
Tony Douglas
Senior Enterprise Systems Manager
Scottish Qualifications Authority
Stress and pressure are no strangers to systems administrators the world over, but when Tony Douglas of the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) discusses them, he's not talking about himself. Rather it's the 150,000 students every year who depend on SQA-awarded qualifications for their academic and professional futures. Playing a key role since the mid 1990s in making that experience as painless as possible has been the Ingres database. Indeed Ingres has been the dependable, flexible constant at the heart of an IT infrastructure which has otherwise seen considerable technical and administrative change.
"It's great to have a company that cares specifically about the database products we're using."
And with yet more changes on the horizon, Ingres is now set for an even wider role as SQA pushes forward with ambitious plans to expand its geographical reach beyond Scotland, and to offer new Web-based services. "Yes. We've stayed with Ingres and we intend to for the foreseeable future," affirms senior enterprise systems manager Douglas who - in 17 years with the SQA and its predecessor body – has been committed to ensuring things run as smoothly as possible. Ingres, he believes, will continue to be a powerful aid in making sure they do. As proof, he cites experiences with rival databases. "We have Ingres' competition here. Other database products are embedded in some of our third-party management applications such as human resources and finance. Ingres is much easier to live with at both a housekeeping level and in terms of its ability to meet our needs for analytical views of the information in our main system. We are currently running 10 Ingres databases - the exam processing system and nine quality assurance and development systems - and together they absorb about the same amount of time and effort required by just one of the competition's databases."
"We've stayed with Ingres and we intend to for the foreseeable future."
As well as having extensive hands-on time with Ingres, Douglas is chairman of the Scottish Ingres Users Association and in touch with other users in Scotland and throughout the UK. He therefore has an unusually well-informed view of the database, warts and all. He clearly likes the product, but what does Douglas feel about the re-emergence of Ingres as a stand-alone company? "Very pleased. It's great to have a company that cares specifically about the database product we're using," he says. "We're also excited about the move to open source. I actually think it's the way software has to go. It means vendors have got to be serious about support because it's their only revenue stream." And what about the quality of support behind Ingres? "A lot of the time we are wholly self-sufficient, but when we've called on the service it's worked well."
"We're also excited about the move to open source. I actually think it's the way software has to go."
It would be uncharacteristic for an organisation as historically aggressive with new developments as SQA to sit on its hands. It has leveraged its reputation as a centre for excellence to deliver curriculum development support to Trinidad and Tobago, Botswana and Jordan and recently began certificating students in China. Meanwhile, the data systems team is currently working on the next big migration of the core system that will, says Douglas, use Linux clustering and the new features within Ingres 2006 including advanced Web connectivity.
"We have Ingres' competition here. Other database products are embedded in some of our third-party management applications such as human resources and finance. Ingres is much easier to live with at both a housekeeping level and in terms of its ability to meet our needs for analytical views of the information in our main system."
"There's a whole load of new stuff coming along. More and more is going online. This year, for example, we supplied results online for candidates in remote areas where the postal service may be slower. We also began accepting online submissions from markers in addition to the normal paper based process. Cutting out re-keying is going to make that part of the process faster and less prone to errors. It will also mean that our quality assurance process gets an earlier view of any inconsistencies."
With so much ahead, it is good that change has been in the blood at SQA since day one. It was created from two separate bodies in 1997 with a remit to unify previously quite separate academic and vocational awards. At that time, it inherited a bespoke core system that, with Ingres as its database, had been operating successfully since 1994.But increased numbers of subjects and students meant an in-house redevelopment was required. "By then we'd learned a lot about the system, including how easy the Ingres database was to manage and operate," says Douglas. "It was an incremental change rather than a complete rewrite. We certainly didn't want to lose the Ingres element."
"We are currently running 10 Ingres databases - the exam processing system and nine quality assurance and development systems - and together they absorb about the same amount of time and effort required by just one of the competition's databases."
So began a series of changes to the core system that saw SQA progress through successive versions of the Ingres database and its development environment OpenROAD. The primary driver was almost always the need to offer new functionality as user expectations grew. A new Web-based query facility opened the flood-gates as schools and colleges across Scotland clamoured to be given their own remote facilities. Within a couple of years, the service had been extended to all high schools – in all approaching 3,000 remote clients at 1,700 sites. This, together with added historical information, meant the Ingres database growing linearly every year by about 3,500,000 records, each of them multi-faceted. The most substantial change came when SQA used OpenROAD to move to Windows XP desktops and student registration and exam entry online. "This was not an incremental change. It was a huge project. We had pretty much half the SQA team working on it at one point when we moved to parallel testing," recalls Douglas.
"By then we'd learned a lot about the system, including how easy the Ingres database was to manage and operate."
To some, that might sound extreme, but there is history behind SQA's belt-and-braces approach. The organisation went through what Douglas describes as its 'darkest night' in 2000 when about 3% of students received incomplete results due to only partial information being entered into the database. The software was exonerated, but the episode taught SQA painful lessons about the value of testing - and then testing again. It also showed that the matter of trust is critical in the extreme. "Even a small mistake in this field very quickly becomes very public and the repercussions are felt for a long time.
Don't forget, we're talking about examination results here that students have worked hard for years to achieve and which will affect the whole of their lives. It's a very stressful and emotional time for them and we have a huge responsibility to get things right first time, every time."
Ever the reliable performer, Ingres is now moving centre stage once again as the SQA gears up for the future. An upcoming move to online submission of marks will result in an explosion of data since many examinations include multipart questions, but by using the partition tables feature in Ingres 2006, SQA will comfortably accommodate the increase while allowing queries to be run at high speed in parallel. It's one more example of the continually evolving power of Ingres that continues to win the respect of SQA and of data professionals the world over. Not to mention the thanks of countless Scottish students who've perhaps been able to sleep just that little bit better.