Korea Investment & Securities leverages the cost-efficiency and performance of MySQL Enterprise Edition 8.0 to build its internal messaging platform.
Introduction
Korea Investment & Securities Co., Ltd. (KIS) has been an important player in the Korean asset management industry for over 40 years. It is one of the seven subsidiaries of Korea Investment Holdings, the first non-bank financial holding company in Korea. After the merger with Dongwon Financial Group—a specialist in securities brokerage, investment banking, and derivatives trading, the newly formed KIS has become a leading financial investment company and the core subsidiary of Korea Investment Holdings.
Headquartered in Seoul, KIS owns a diversified portfolio of services covering securities brokerage, asset management, trading, and investment banking for both domestic and international customers. The company employs over 2,700 people and manages US$ 13.29 billion (KRW 150.6 trillion) in client assets.
Business Challenges & Goals
With the objective of providing constant improvements for their employees, KIS created an easy-to-use chatbot—a messaging platform with human-to-digital interaction. The system aimed at maximizing staff members' business knowledge by analyzing the sentences formulated by employees for patterns and providing them with suitable responses based on algorithms that draw information from a knowledge base. Using speech-to-text and text-to-speech conversion technology, the chatbot system requires a highly available, reliable, and performant database environment.
For the development of the chatbot system, KIS was interested in minimizing total cost of ownership of the database.
Fast data backup and point-in-time recovery were also among the main requirements for KIS in the event of system errors and downtime. Additionally, to minimize data loss and prevent unplanned incidents from becoming critical, it was vital for KIS to be able to detect underlying issues with ease and to access accurate repair solutions on a short notice.
Business Results & Metrics
KIS' chatbot service on MySQL Enterprise Edition 8.0 provided the company's employees with reliable and accurate business knowledge related to their fields of expertise through automated personalized answers drawn from a knowledge base with AI capabilities, which helped increase productivity at work.
By switching to MySQL Enterprise Edition, KIS was also able to leverage Oracle Premier Support's 24/7 guidance and gain comprehensive technical knowledge on how to ensure smooth database operations through patches, bug fixes, and upgrades. With the quality information gained directly from MySQL experts, KIS improved development efficiency which enhanced the overall chatbot service quality.
MySQL Enterprise Monitor enabled real-time monitoring and more proactive database administration. The MySQL Query Analyzer offers full visibility for performance tuning. The MySQL Workbench simplified the database design and the development of the queries.
The use of MySQL Enterprise Edition significantly increased the efficiency of KIS's technical team by reducing the time spent on database operations. Dealing with a lack of DBA manpower, KIS was able to make the most of Oracle Premier Support and the high availability offered by MySQL Enterprise Edition, freeing staff for critical tasks without compromising the performance of the chatbot service.
The annual per-server subscription pricing model for MySQL Enterprise Edition provided compelling cost savings and enabled KIS to reduce total cost of ownership and increase profitability.
MySQL Enterprise Edition's enhanced backup functionality enabled KIS to reduce backup time from one day to several hours and perform point-in-time recovery, thus reducing risk of data loss.
Why MySQL?
With the experience and knowledge acquired from using MySQL Community Edition, the transition to MySQL Enterprise Edition was the KIS' preferred option for deploying the chatbot system.
24x7 access to Oracle Premier Support allowed for more efficient, proactive operation of KIS' MySQL database estate and a better focus of its DBA team on critical tasks.
Coupled with the advanced capabilities of monitoring and backup and the low ownership cost, KIS decided to deploy MySQL Enterprise Edition.
Implementation
KIS deployed MySQL Enterprise Edition in mid-October 2020 and went live with the chatbot service in December 2020, being especially impressed with the improvements brought by MySQL Enterprise Monitor.
With the help of Oracle Premier Support, KIS was able to smoothly transition from MySQL Community Edition to MySQL Enterprise Edition and complete the necessary upgrades in a timely manner, as originally scheduled.
Embracing the success of the deployment, KIS plans to introduce MySQL Enterprise Edition to other business departments.
Partner
Leveraging the direct support and contribution of Oracle Gold partner RockPLACE, the implementation of MySQL Enterprise Edition 8.0 at KIS was delivered successfully and on time. Alongside Oracle Premier Support, RockPLACE assisted KIS through consulting, architectural design, development, implementation, user testing and trainings, and go-live support.