IT Vision is a developer of Digital Enterprise Solutions and has been in business for over 30 years. Their cloud-based software serves Australia’s local governments, port authorities, and more recently, Medicare local branches. Over 170 local government councils use their ERP software and Altus platform solutions. They are big players in the managed services niche, and their SynergySoft suite is a module-based product that is geared to the everyday needs of government administrators.
IT Vision’s products and services rely heavily on the UniVerse MultiValue database system. The UniVerse Database system is user friendly and has multidimensional capabilities, which offer significant advantages over other database models. The UniVerse file system, does, however, require close attention to file analysis and resizing, which can be done in-house. That was IT Vision’s original (and unsuccessful) approach—until they discovered and adopted Mercury Database Console.
Mercury Database Console is now an integrated part of IT Vision’s improved database management system. Mercury is the complete solution to UniVerse file analysis and critical resizing chores necessary to keep the UniVerse database performing well. It is browser based and relieves database managers of the time-consuming tasks necessary to seek out and tune poorly performing database files, and even facilitate database repairs if needed.
IT Vision’s adoption of Mercury Database console ended a five-year quest to find the optimal file resizing and database tuning solution. “Before Mercury we just didn’t get good results in file resizing and the systems did not see any improvements in performance,” says Glenn Summerfield, an IT Vision team leader.
Because of the critical lack of tools and skills available in the industry to properly optimize a UniVerse database, Glenn’s team tried an in-house solution: “We had developed an in house resizing tool and integrity check tool. It was not as efficient as Mercury and did not optimize the database like Mercury.”
IT’s approach before Mercury was mostly hit miss. “Before Mercury there really wasn’t a process. It was simply a matter of tuning a file in hopes of solving a performance issue.” They tried at least one other alternative solution, which according to Glenn, “simply did not work as advertised.”
Glenn cites the following reasons that the Mercury Database Console is the best solution:
As mentioned above, IT Vision’s software relies on the UniVerse database. Their more than 180 customers use the UniVerse database server. Says Glenn, “Mercury is the superior method for optimizing these databases, which reflects positively with our Application performing better."
Mercury ensures a better performing database for their applications, allowing them to give their clients better service.
IT Vision provides an array of managed services for a wide variety of customers: Says Glen, “Mercury is a great addition to our Managed Services packages which we already offer to customers. Mercury made it much more cost effective to manage our client’s systems.”
Product adoption, training and launch, according to Glenn, went smoothly: “Paradigm Systems did a great job of training our team and help with our first install to ensure it was implemented properly and that we knew the steps required for a proper configuration. We then replicated this configuration for all other clients.”
What was the most obvious advantage that influenced IT Vision’s decision to adopt Mercury Database console? “That is an easy question,” said Glenn. “Mercury highly optimizes our UniVerse database from the moment we started using it and continues to do so on an ongoing basis.”
At the time of the interview, IT Vision had been using the Mercury Database Console for six months. Glenn has already noticed improved productivity and time savings while using Mercury: “Purely based on database benchmark tests, we can see significant improvements in our applications file I/O.”
As far as customer satisfaction, “Mercury has represented better value to our managed services package which translates to more satisfied clients.” Glenn’s bottom line: “Mercury is easy, automatic, thorough, and is the latest and greatest tool for optimizing UniVerse.”
Glenn’s advice to others who might be considering Mercury Database Console: “Mercury is definitely worth trying.”