www.foedus.eu foedus@foedus.eu

Foedus moves over to MariaDB on IBM POWER8

Foedus srl is an Italian Independent Software Vendor (ISV) established in 2008, providing innovative solution and management tools to the SMB market, targeting companies that are looking for a solution which gives them a competitive advantage – both in local and international markets. Foedus selected IBM POWER8, Open Stack and MariaDB as the technology platform for the application “Octobus”, an enhanced ERP solution. Originally based on MySQL, the company was migrated to MariaDB in November 2014 and subscribed for the MariaDB Enterprise offering because of the great performance of MariaDB and in particular MariaDB 10.0 on IBM POWER8.

The core of Octobus is a parameter driven, flexible and scalable Enterprise Management System. It supports multiple companies, languages and currencies. It can be used across different devices (PC, tablet, smartphone) and with any web browser. Octobus allows a high degree of customization: all functions use set of default values which can be customized via the user interface. Octobus is used in various industries like manufacturing, distribution, services and there is also a special version for insurance. Beyond typical SMBs it is also deployed at more than 20 large Italian companies.

“We realized that one of our longest running queries on

MariaDB was almost 10 times faster than the same query

executed on MySQL." - Paolo Messina, CEO of Foedus Group

https://mariadb.com/customer-success-stories/foedus

www.foedus.eu foedus@foedus.eu

Always relying on Open Source

The company has always utilized open source technologies based on the LAMP stack and with a focus on Java for its solutions. Foedus also originally deployed MySQL. In making a change, FOEDUS was looking for a cost-effective platform with further improved performance and scalability that would enable it to meet growing customer demands and succeed in a highly competitive market.

At that time IBM suggested testing Octobus with the new MariaDB port for the POWER8 platform. The result was so overwhelming that Foedus quickly decided to run a live proof of concept in a Windows based production environment. There too, MariaDB performed well - but it was when the company eventually tested it on POWER8 that MariaDB become their ultimate database of choice.

Up to 10 times faster queries

Foedus experienced a significant improvement in the Octobus performance when switching from MySQL 5.6 to MariaDB 10.0. “We realized that one of our longest running queries on MariaDB was almost 10 times faster than the same query executed on MySQL. And once we built the system on MariaDB with IBM POWER8 the execution time of the same query improved from “hours” to “seconds”. During this migration the MariaDB team provided us with all the support we needed and was a great back-up for us,” said Paolo Messina, CEO of Foedus Group.

Other drivers for the migration included:• MariaDB is completely open source• Migration costs have been minimal and without any technical glitches• MariaDB proved to be cloud ready• Quality of the MariaDB support team services has been excellent

“With MariaDB backing up our Octobus product we can not only provide our customers with the best available technology, we are happy to promote MariaDB support to all our customers as well,” continued Paolo Messina. “Foedus has always been focused on cutting-edge open source technologies. The IBM POWER8 platform offers a server designed for the optimal usage of Linux as the operating system, MariaDB as the database and for taking advantage of the incredible computing capabilities of the Power processor. Since testing MariaDB performance on IBM POWER8, it was clear that MariaDB had to be the new database for our core ERP product,” concluded Messina.