A Government ERP Platform in India improves operational efficiency and minimizes costs by deploying MySQL Enterprise Edition.
Introduction & Background
E Connect Solutions is a full-spectrum IT solution company that provides a comprehensive range of enterprise products and services to clients in India and around the world, particularly in the government and public sector. With a focus on digital transformation, the company leverages its expertise in integrated project management, cross-domain experience, and diverse technical skills to deliver innovative end-to-end business and IT solutions.
Founded in 1991 and headquartered at the IT Park in Udaipur, Rajasthan, E Connect Solutions is present in 10 locations across India. Its mission is to provide end-to-end custom software solutions with the lowest cost of ownership. The company is dedicated to operational and process excellence, achieving prominent certifications including CMMI Level 5 and ISO standards.
A major client of E Connect Solutions is Kerala State Beverages Corporation (KSBCL), a fully owned Kerala government company, for which it has developed a custom ERP Solution encompassing supply chain, warehousing, ordering, and billing to help manage the state-run distribution and sale of liquor across the region’s authorized retail outlets.
Business Challenges & Goals
Previously, KSBCL did not have an integrated platform centralizing business data from its 270+ retail shops and 100+ bars. With each outlet operating its own isolated database and software, data was shared with the head office manually via electronic transfer, before being compiled into reports using basic spreadsheets.
Considering the hundreds of thousands of liquor invoices generated daily across the region, this setup entailed lengthy data management processes and frequently resulted in inconsistent data, making it extremely difficult for senior government staff to assess their operational needs and take decisions accordingly.
For its proposed enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution, E Connect Solutions needed an extremely powerful database capable of synchronizing data across hundreds of locations, while also maintaining affordability for its client.
Given the magnitude of the project, the reliability of E Connect Solutions’ software would be a crucial factor. It therefore needed a high-availability database solution with advanced backup capabilities and comprehensive technical support to meet the government’s needs.
Business Results & Metrics
E Connect Solutions deployed MySQL Enterprise Edition as the backbone for its enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution for KSBCL. It streamlined the public entity’s operations from supply chain management to end-customer billing, and seamlessly managed data that supports regional liquor revenue of nearly three billion dollars per year.
Using a MySQL distributed environment—comprising local MySQL Community databases in each shop synchronized with a centralized MySQL Enterprise Edition on-premises—E Connect Solutions was able to offer its client an integrated ERP solution with a remarkably low cost of ownership. Since the deployment three years ago, the company has not experienced a single instance of business downtime, solidifying its reputation within the government sector as a reliable provider of high-availability software solutions at the lowest cost.
E Connect Solutions significantly boosted operational efficiency and reduced data inconsistencies by leveraging MySQL’s robust InnoDB cluster technology for its client’s OLTP workloads. Using MySQL Enterprise Edition, the ISV ensures seamless data synchronization from 272 retail liquor shops and over 500 bars every second, supporting approximately 900,000 invoices per day.
Circulating updated liquor pricelists—which change every few days—across more than 700 outlets is now accomplished immediately, a task that was previously highly labor-intensive and took several hours. “Data management and synchronization across hundreds of isolated data centers used to be all manual, requiring tremendous effort. MySQL Enterprise Edition automates these processes, saving enormous amounts of time, reducing the risk of errors, and ensuring that centralized data is kept up-to-date in real-time,” said Rajendra Chouhan, Chief Technology Officer, E Connect Solutions.
With accurate, updated business information, and enterprise level reporting capabilities, E Connect Solutions is now able to rapidly produce local and regional operational reports for government client stakeholders, as well as internal strategic reports for the company’s own top management—ensuring efficient decision-making at all levels.
E Connect Solutions dramatically improved backup and restoration processes using MySQL Enterprise Backup, which enabled the company to back up all operational data across the entire region on centralized servers. The automated backups, managed at Kerala state government’s data center, have been critical in ensuring business continuity. Additionally, they have alleviated data loss concerns for E Connect Solutions’ IT team, with clear and comprehensive data recovery procedures in the event of inconsistencies within the database or servers.
MySQL Enterprise Edition’s ease of use has saved database administration time and streamlined E Connect Solutions’ productivity, as engineers can spend more time developing software solutions instead of managing infrastructure. The IT team now applies patches and performs upgrades with minimum downtime and can rapidly scale out database nodes to meet performance requirements.
E Connect Solutions boosted its application and database security—crucial for government entities—by using MySQL Enterprise Edition’s advanced security features, including Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) to ensure that all data at rest are secured.
E Connect Solutions ensured a smooth implementation, high systems availability, and unparalleled performance through close collaboration with MySQL Support experts. “We have enjoyed an excellent relationship with the MySQL Support team, which was instrumental throughout the deployment, and has provided complete support with respect to performance and uptime. This is truly mission-critical assistance because the operational success of an organization generating nearly three billion dollars in annual revenue hinges entirely on our solution,” commented Manoj Agrawal.
Why MySQL Enterprise Edition?
After an in-depth vendor selection process, E Connect Solutions chose MySQL Enterprise Edition for its ERP platform due to its robustness and the strong technical support services provided. It was also attracted by the extensive product range offered by Oracle, its reputation for reliability and security, and the cost effectiveness of the complete MySQL solution for the Kerala State Beverages Corporation.
“Our selection of MySQL Enterprise Edition was primarily driven by the anticipated customer load and their existing technological infrastructure. Given the necessity for each liquor shop to have its own on-premises database, leveraging MySQL allowed us to deploy hundreds of MySQL Community databases at each location, all seamlessly integrated with MySQL Enterprise Edition on the backend. This distributed environment solution not only ensured optimal performance and scalability, but was also remarkably cost efficient,” said Mukesh Gaur, Head DevOps Team, E Connect Solutions.
Next Steps
Based on the success of its solution deployment at the Kerala State Beverages Corporation, E Connect Solutions is actively migrating many of its legacy projects from DB2 and Oracle over to MySQL Enterprise Edition, a setup it is also promoting to prospective clients.
The company is also exploring the capabilities of MySQL HeatWave to drive further operational efficiencies and optimize its analytics workloads.
Learn more about E Connect Solutions