Travelport and Estuate Partner to Curb Test Data Proliferation with IBM Optim CHALLENGE Travelport faced an urgent need to reduce its data storage costs for its Oracle E-Business Suite applications hosted on Oracle On Demand. Because the company generated test data by making copies of production data, it was forced to store and manage tens of terabytes of superfluous data at accelerating cost to Travelport.
SOLUTION Estuate helped Travelport implement IBM Optim Test Data Management Solution, which enables subsetting of production data to create efficient test databases.
RESULTS With IBM Optim Solutions, Travelport:
Reduced the size of its testing and development environment by 40 percent. Saved $240,000 in storage costs in its first year with seven weeks of effort. Enabled tens of thousands of dollars in ongoing annual savings. Addressed several data management issues with a single software investment. Retired legacy applications and archived their data.
MULTIPLE COPIES OF PRODUCTION DATA CAUSE AN EXPLOSION IN STORAGE COSTS
As Travelport delivers the solutions that power the global
usage of disk space—but without jeopardizing our
travel industry, the company runs its business on Oracle
business operations.”
E-Business Suite, hosted by Oracle On Demand. For years, this arrangement met Travelport’s business needs and budget—until the company recently received
Dellapa and his team began to investigate the cause of Travelport’s data proliferation, and soon found an all-toocommon culprit: test data.
a hefty bill for data storage. “When our contract with Oracle came up for renewal, we suddenly faced substantial increases in our disk storage charges,” says Jim Dellapa, Director of Business Operations, Travelport. “We needed to minimize our
Like many companies, Travelport’s application developers generated test data by making copies of production data. Over time, the company had created 13 copies of its 1.3 terabyte production environment—and development showed no signs of slowing down.
IBM OPTIM DELIVERS BENEFITS OUT OF THE BOX
Eager to reduce storage costs, Travelport decided to
Optim to other areas, such as application retirement
start conducting testing by using subsets—rather than
and archiving. And choosing an IBM product felt much
complete copies—of its production data. But Oracle E-
safer than working with a smaller, less-proven vendor.”
Business Suite didn’t provide tools for the task—and subsetting data manually is typically a risky activity. “If we had directly updated or deleted data from our application tables, we likely would have ended up with corruption issues,” Dellapa explains. “Also, we would have had to invest significant time and effort in writing the necessary scripts.” So Travelport began to evaluate test data management (TDM) software solutions. IBM Optim stood out from the pack, in large part due to its out-of-the-box templates for subsetting production data. “We chose IBM Optim primarily because we knew it would save us many hours of development time,” recalls Dellapa. “We also liked the fact that we could apply
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EXPERT CONSULTANTS HELP REDUCE NON-PRODUCTION DATA BY 40 PERCENT
Seeking to achieve a fast, reliable payback, Travelport wanted to keep its TDM project narrowly focused. IBM recommended that Travelport work
“Within a seven-week
with Estuate to implement IBM Optim and launch its new TDM initiative.
engagement, Estuate
Estuate helped Travelport identify the high-volume application schemas and tables—mainly in financial applications—that were the best candidates for subsetting. By targeting these areas, Travelport quickly reduced the size of its testing and development environment by 40 percent. As a result, the company achieved corresponding savings in its storage costs.
of test data. Not only did we meet all of our targets in that regard, but Estuate also over-delivered by leaving us lots of documentation to ensure
“Within a seven-week engagement, Estuate dramatically reduced our
we could continue to achieve
volume of test data,” says Dellapa. “Not only did we meet all of our targets
outstanding results in the future.”
in that regard, but Estuate also over-delivered by leaving us lots of documentation to ensure we could continue to achieve outstanding results in the future.”
Jim Dellapa Director of Business Operations Travelport
By shepherding Travelport through all phases of the project, Estuate helped ensure the ROI that Travelport was looking for. Estuate did the footwork to help Dellapa’s team get budgetary approval within Travelport, and then applied a proven process to keep the project moving from initiation through analysis and all the way to final delivery. “Our Estuate consultants were very thorough from end to end,” says Dellapa. “It was clear from their process and approach that these were real professionals who had been through many similar projects and knew exactly what to expect.” Estuate’s chief operating officer, Marc Hebert, believes Estuate’s ability to execute comes from years of focused experience. Despite having to implement IBM Optim in three separate locations, Estuate helped Travelport go live right on schedule. “We’re really the only IBM Optim implementation partner that knows Oracle E-Business Suite as well as we do,” Hebert explains. “That’s because many of our professionals are actually ex-Oracle employees who built world-class skills by working directly for the vendor. IBM values our Oracle skills so much that we are the chosen product development partner for the Optim Solutions on the Oracle platform.”
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dramatically reduced our volume
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FIRST-YEAR PAYBACK: $240,000
ABOUT ESTUATE Headquartered in Silicon Valley,
With Estuate’s help, Travelport achieved its top goal in implementing IBM
Estuate is a global information
Optim: reducing costs. Travelport saved $240,000 in its first year on IBM
technology services company that
Optim and continues to save tens of thousands of dollars per year.
specializes in helping companies establish and improve enterprise
“Estuate helped us cherry-pick the modules that would give us the biggest up-front cost savings,” Dellapa explains. “They also left us with the tools and knowledge to squeeze additional savings out of other areas over time.”
data management strategies and best practices. Estuate is IBM’s go-to partner for ®
the implementation of IBM Optim The knowledge transfer from Estuate to Travelport extended beyond TDM. Based on Estuate’s best practices, Travelport is now using IBM Optim to address its needs in archiving and application retirement. Dellapa expects Travelport to achieve an ongoing ROI in these areas.
Solutions for custom applications, Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, Siebel and JD Edwards. We have expertise on distributed
“Although we made our initial business case for this project based on
platforms and IBM mainframes.
TDM, our initial investment in IBM Optim is going to keep paying
Estuate was one of the early
dividends as we solve other data management problems across our
partners involved in the Oracle-to-
enterprise,” says Dellapa. “We’ve already completed some application
DB2 migration program. We work
retirement projects and brought groups up from legacy applications to
closely with IBM account teams to
our Oracle platform.”
meet our mutual clients' Enterprise
What was the key to Travelport’s success? Dellapa credits his team’s
Data Management needs.
focused approach, executed with key assistance from Estuate. “Our success was a function of targeting our biggest pain points, selling clear benefits to our senior leadership, and then working in well-defined phases to achieve a quick payback,” Dellapa concludes. “With their professionalism and technical know-how, Estuate’s consultants were a tremendous help to us at all stages of the project.”
For more information contact: Marc Hebert, Estuate’s COO marc@estuate.com T: 510-468-7132
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