Saturday, January 17, 2009

Independent Study Finds Replication Critical for Real-Time Business Solutions

As the value of data as a business asset grows, enterprises are increasingly finding they need to distribute and synchronize data bi-directionally between business-critical applications in real time. To do this, according to a recent survey conducted by Database Trends and Applications (DBTA) magazine, they are frequently relying on third-party database replication tools that provide functionality beyond what their database management systems’ embedded replication solutions can offer.

The DBTA survey looks at database replication tool usage among its subscribers, a broad group of database administrators, enterprise architects and IT managers from some of the world’s biggest companies. Respondents came from various industries—everything from financial services to healthcare to retail businesses—and are users of diverse database management platforms.

What the survey found, however, is that despite their diversity, many respondents agree: Replication is a critical piece of the real-time data management, data integration and business continuity puzzle.

Real-Time Replication Needs
Database replication has long been crucial to disaster recovery plans. When companies stand to lose millions of dollars as a result of system downtime, replication tools are a necessary safeguard to protect their ability to provide continuous availability for mission-critical applications and meet compliance requirements with a real-time copy of data ready at a secondary sight.

But replication has also become important for facilitating efficient reporting and data distribution processes. To deal with performance issues caused by exponential data growth, IT departments are using replication to copy data from transactional database systems onto separate reporting servers. This allows them to run processor-intensive reports against the reporting servers without affecting OLTP (online transaction processing) system performance. Replication ensures that these reports contain completely accurate and up-to-date information, because the tools capture all changes in the OLTP systems as they happen and copy them in real time to the report server.

Similarly, the DBTA survey found that real-time loading of existing data marts and data warehouses is becoming increasingly important. Because today’s managers need access to the latest business intelligence to make intra-day decisions, reports and applications that rely on replicated data must have access to the most current information.

In addition, enterprises are using replication tools to facilitate the exchange of data between multiple applications that need to operate on the same version of common data. Administrators use replication to automatically distribute and synchronize data between applications regardless of the database platforms being used by the applications.

The Heterogeneous Requirement
In fact, all enterprises rely on a range of applications, including third-party, home-grown and legacy software, to manage crucial business processes. Each of these applications may run on different database platforms, yet require replication and distribution of data among them. For many embedded database replication tools, this creates an insurmountable challenge.

For example, an application that uses data stored in an IBM DB2 system and uploads the results to a Sybase IQ server for real-time analysis and reporting requires a heterogeneous replication tool to move real-time copies of data between the systems. Many native replication tools that are built into a given database system simply aren’t designed to handle such heterogeneous data movement tasks.

The DBTA survey results support this finding. Although 77 percent of large corporations use native replication tools that automatically come with their database management system, 40 percent of these companies also rely on standalone, third-party tools to support heterogeneous environments, get access to specific features and/or gain greater performance.

Wall Street-Proven Replication Solution
To meet the challenges posed by growing enterprise needs for real-time replication in heterogeneous environments, many firms are turning to Sybase’s Replication Server. Sybase Replication Server was originally designed to meet the demands of some of the most complex data environments in the world—large Wall Street financial services firms. Now Sybase Replication Server has over 2,000 customers across all types of data-intensive industries worldwide.

Sybase Replication Server distributes and synchronizes data bi-directionally between business-critical applications in real time, automatically maintaining the most consistent, up-to-date data between Sybase and heterogeneous databases. It helps overcome today’s enterprise replication challenges by:

* Guaranteeing real-time data warehouse updates for reporting and analytics
* Eliminating costly discrepancies between unsynchronized applications
* Providing multi-site database disaster recovery solutions for high availability
* Preserving production system performance by offloading reporting to real-time report servers
* Sharing data among related applications in business processes

Sybase Replication Server also provides a common solution for both data movement and business continuity needs. This means database administrators only need to develop and maintain their skills for one replication tool rather than a different tool for each task and system.

For example, Metropolitan Health Group (MHG), one of South Africa’s leading providers of medical scheme administration and managed healthcare, relies on Sybase Replication Server to help it synchronize data—including management of membership information, medical claims processing, premium management and actuarial services—between its headquarters and satellite offices. “Our data management systems are as mission-critical as you can get,” says Rod Russell, the company’s infrastructure manager. “If they’re not up and running, we’re not up and running and neither are our clients.”

Sybase Replication Server helps MHG keep data synchronized, giving managers across the organization access to real-time information they need from all office locations. It also ensures business continuity in the event of a system failure, allowing MHG to meet its service-level agreements.

In today’s business environment, where moving data between diverse systems using an array of applications can provide a competitive edge, Sybase’s Replication Server is a key part of the data management toolkit.