TAIFUN Software, a Hannover-based company that has been developing commercial software for over 30 years, faced a significant challenge. The company needed a high-performance database with a small footprint for its ERP system, specifically designed for firms operating in the German and Austrian building trades. The database needed to be user-friendly and require minimal management, as most of the companies TAIFUN was targeting did not have access to an IT team or a skilled database manager. Many databases that were capable of providing a touch-free experience typically sacrificed performance for ease of use. Conversely, those that could provide the high performance TAIFUN wanted often came at the cost of ease of use, requiring ongoing management for optimal performance.

The Office of the Revenue Commissioners in the Republic of Ireland (Revenue) faced a significant challenge in improving the performance of their mission-critical database systems without compromising application availability or service delivery. The agency needed a highly reliable and available database platform to support uninterrupted operation of its mission-critical computer systems. The Revenue had to ensure that it could efficiently manage tax revenues, enforce import and export controls, administer various European Union schemes, and provide collection services for several other Irish government departments. The challenge was to maintain a system that could handle the influx of information and transactions as a large percentage of Revenue’s customer base moved to mandatory e-filing and e-paying.

Tsubakimoto Chain Co., a global machinery manufacturer based in Japan, was faced with the challenge of creating a registration and identification database capable of tracking and sorting up to 10,000 items per hour on their high-speed conveyor belt sorting systems. The company needed a solution that could meet their millisecond-level response times for database reads and writes. The challenge was not only to find a database that could handle the high volume of items but also to ensure that it could maintain its speed and efficiency over time. The company also needed a solution that could seamlessly integrate with their existing systems and processes.

The University of the West of England (UWE) was faced with the challenge of upgrading its student record system and underlying Ingres from Ingres 10 to Actian X, and migrating the entire system to the CentOS 8 implementation of Linux. This was a daunting task as the student record system was the only mission-critical application still running on the university’s aging Solaris UNIX systems. The challenge was further compounded by the global pandemic, which made it impossible for the teams to meet in person to plan or execute this critical project. The goal was to upgrade the database from Ingres 10.2 to Actian X 11.1 and to migrate the entire student record system from Solaris UNIX to the Linux platform, without interrupting access to the system.