The Australian SaaS ISV streamlines database management and scaling, as well as reduces downtime by implementing MySQL HeatWave on Oracle Cloud.
Introduction & Background
Gieman IT Solutions is a software development company that specializes in building enterprise-level web applications using Java. Founded in 2004 in Victoria, Australia, the company has since built a proven track record of delivering robust and scalable applications for a worldwide market.
Gieman provides SaaS applications to the education market in Australia, and its flagship product EMS360 is widely used by over 18,000 teachers across the country. The company has also delivered software development services for over a decade, developing cutting-edge and complex applications for a variety of business needs.
Business Challenges & Goals
Gieman began its operations by running the MySQL Community Edition on its own physical servers. As the business expanded and data volumes grew, the company moved its servers to an external data center but managing the complexity of its production and development instances remained a significant challenge.
The company's attempts to use virtual machines (VMs) to meet customer demands led to cumbersome resource management and scaling processes, which limited Gieman's potential for further growth.
While Gieman’s enterprise clients demand the highest levels of security for their business information, patching a virtual machine or a server was a time-consuming process that frequently required restarting the server, causing application downtime.
Gieman needed a more powerful, high-availability database solution that would simplify management, improve the performance of its online applications, and provide more flexibility for expansion.
Business Results & Metrics
Gieman boosted operational efficiency and improved the performance, scalability, security, and technical support of its mission critical software applications by upgrading to MySQL HeatWave on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).
With the latest MySQL enterprise-grade version supporting its business-grade web applications, Gieman has been able to implement more robust security measures and reduce the risk of potential breaches. The added protection has enabled the company to reassure its enterprise customers of its commitment to keeping their sensitive data secure, bolstering Gieman’s reputation in the market.
Application performance has also noticeably improved thanks to a more optimized and well-tuned database—ensuring schools across Australia can access Gieman’s applications in a fast and reliable way and find the data they need instantly.
With MySQL HeatWave on OCI, Gieman achieved high availability for all its online applications. "With the click of a button, we suddenly had failover, high availability, and zero downtime. And we no longer need to take down servers to apply database patches across several virtual machines, as security patching is now performed automatically with the managed service. That’s an enormous step forward for us and our customers," commented Gerald Gierer.
By moving to the fully managed MySQL HeatWave database, Gieman has saved significant time and resources previously spent on maintaining database infrastructure. As a result, IT specialists now focus on more value-added tasks such as enhancing the performance, functionality, and development of internet applications used by thousands of Gieman’s end customers.
"The time saved on configuration, maintenance, security, and backups has been a total game changer for our enterprise software business, enabling us to be more agile and respond faster to changing market conditions and customer needs," said Gerald Gierer.
With MySQL HeatWave on the Oracle Cloud, Gieman has significantly improved its ability to scale without having to worry about performance issues or downtime. It can now easily keep pace with its growing end user volume, rapidly ramping up RAM and CPU where necessary, while providing a seamless customer experience.
"When we previously managed the database ourselves, our scaling was always limited with the virtual machine. But with the MySQL managed service we can confidently scale rapidly and easily no matter how big the business grows," said Gerald Gierer.
Gieman now benefits from improved support across its database and infrastructure stack, enabling its IT team to spend less time troubleshooting technical issues. MySQL Support and Oracle Support specialists helped to skill up the software firm’s system administrators, assisted during the migration process, and continue to provide guidance on optimizing Gieman’s database for better performance.
Why MySQL Heatwave
Gieman has a long history of using MySQL as the preferred platform for its Java applications. To meet its growing business needs and simplify database management, Gieman selected MySQL HeatWave due to its outstanding performance, scalability, ease of use, and high availability.
"MySQL and Java are our bread and butter technologies. Moving to MySQL HeatWave was the perfect choice as we look to streamline our operations and enhance our flexibility for future expansion. While there are many cloud environments out there, including AWS, Google, and Azure, we did the comparisons, and the Oracle Cloud was simply the best fit for what we do, building world-class web applications for global clients," explained Gerald Gierer.
Next Steps
With its database now improved and easier to manage, Gieman will be focusing on expanding the business while its IT team will devote more time to developing features and improving the functionality and performance of its web applications. The company will also examine other features of the Oracle Cloud environment and explore the analytics capabilities of MySQL Heatwave.