Meritz Fire & Marine Insurance relies on MySQL Enterprise Edition to operate a stable and smooth communication infrastructure that supports real-time system inspections, efficient data backup, and recovery.
Business Challenges & Goals
Founded in 1922 in Seoul, Meritz Fire & Marine Insurance is one of the five members of the Meritz Financial Group and a leading South Korean insurer, with a market cap of $1.8 billion. Starting out as the first Korean insurer to provide coverage for houses, farmland, and business properties against natural disasters, today the company's portfolio includes a variety of non-life insurance services such as automobile, travel, leisure and casualty, health, retirement, and pension.
With close to 3,000 staff members, and in preparation for a rapid increase in data load and number of users, Meritz Fire required an enterprise-level database solution.
Meritz Fire required a database that is fully compatible with its Linux environment, and is also highly performant, stable, and reliable. Additionally, it had to meet key requirements for on-demand scalability, flexibility, data security, availability, and backup, as well as round-the clock monitoring and uptime.
Finally, Meritz Fire also needed to improve response times and system recovery in case of performance issues, downtime, or system failure-all while minimizing development and maintenance costs.
Business Results & Metrics
As a result of implementing MySQL Enterprise Edition, Meritz Fire was able to provide a reliable and secure database foundation for its internal messenger service and groupware. MySQL Enterprise Edition annual subscription pricing model helped Meritz Fire slash its total cost of ownership in comparison to competing database vendors.
Using MySQL Enterprise Edition, Meritz Fire has gained higher visibility into the health and activity of the database. The company is now able to accurately perform assessments, and can easily identify potential issues using MySQL Enterprise Monitor, contributing to stable support for critical internal groupware.
If a system error occurs, Meritz Fire ensures efficient and stable point-in-time recovery and data restore with MySQL Enterprise Backup-up to the moment the error took place. The company also reduced the time needed to back up data from a full day to a few hours and eliminated complex recovery procedures, which translated into important savings in terms of time and resources.
The 24x7 Premier Support means that experts in the MySQL team are always available to help with database issues, so that Meritz Fire & Marine Insurance can deliver on its SLA commitments to its customers.
Why MySQL Enterprise Edition
Meritz Fire not only wanted a stable and high-performing database suitable for their Linux environment, but also one that would integrate with their existing groupware. Additionally, the purpose of the database was also to support the company's growth trajectory while achieving high availability, performance, and security.
After a careful evaluation of other databases and vendors, Meritz Fire selected MySQL Enterprise Edition since it provided maximum compatibility to their Linux environment and offered the best quality-price ratio. Another critical factor was the annual subscription model which included 24x7 support.
Coupled with the enhanced features of MySQL Enterprise Edition, the technical and consulting assistance offered by Oracle Premier Support throughout the development and deployment phases, the product contributed greatly to a faster response time, as well as a reduction in Meritz Fire & Marine Insurance's IT costs and total cost of ownership.
Partner Implementation
The implementation of MySQL Enterprise Edition was successfully carried out with the contribution of RockPLACE, an Oracle Gold partner. Meritz Fire benefited from flawless process design and deployment delivered by RockPLACE's MySQL experts, who helped the company go live with MySQL Enterprise Edition on schedule.
Future MySQL Products
As part of their growth strategy, Meritz Fire also plans to introduce MySQL Enterprise Edition to other business units in the near future, especially for its MySQL Enterprise Authentication feature, which will enable the organization to leverage existing security rules and processes from centralized directories.