Based in Luxembourg, AlSego is an Independent Software Vendor delivering Web, e-Commerce and financial applications including:

• A Rapid Application Development (RAD) and Business Process Oriented (BPO) Web Server Platform.
• E-payment and e-banking "Plug & Play" solutions.
• Archiving solutions for the banks' SWIFT data.

AlSego counts some of the largest banks in Luxembourg, Belgium and Switzerland among its clients and partners.

Challenges

• Supporting multiple database platforms for its products' master repositories generated a relatively high number of technical support incidents as end-users did not always master the various technologies involved. This in turn increased costs for both customers and AlSego, and negatively impacted the customer experience.
• The company wanted to offer its clients turnkey solutions delivering the desired results out of the box, without requiring significant tuning for each new and different environment, nor an expensive and complex infrastructure.
• The database underpinning the AlSego applications needed to deliver very high performance and reliability, paramount criteria for financial applications.

Solution

• Decision to standardize on one database for all its products' master repositories in order to cost-effectively deliver the best customer experience. Customers would get a turnkey solution, optimized to deliver outstanding performance out of the box. Additionally, they would only have one company to turn to should they encounter any issue.
• Evaluated several databases and decided to standardize on MySQL based on the following criteria:
  • Features: Among many others, stored procedures, views and triggers were essentials, and MySQL had all the needed features.
  • Ability to handle large volumes of data: e-banking solutions generate a significant volume of transactions and related data, and some data may need to be archived for over 10 years.
  • Performance: Financial institutions have typically been very pleasantly surprised and delighted by the MySQL performance during Proofs of Concept.
  • Flexibility: MySQL demonstrated the fairly unique ability to deliver excellent performance in different environments with minimal and predictable configurations changes. Additionally, when compared to other databases it did not require an expensive infrastructure to deliver the needed performance and scalability.
• AlSego’s e-banking solutions are typically able to handle millions of system transactions per day, and store up to a Terabyte of data in large banks.
• Developments and tests for the AlSego products integrating MySQL are often conducted on either Linux or Windows platforms, while production environments tend to also include UNIX-based or Mainframe-based platforms, running for example on Oracle Solaris or IBM zOS.
• MySQL enabled AlSego to deliver solutions that were simpler to use and faster to implement, while reducing the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of its customers.
• To make it even easier for its clients, AlSego is now evaluating the opportunity to integrate MySQL more deeply, embedding it within its core solutions.

"MySQL is one of the most mature and stable database products on the market. It is clear that Oracle understands the need to continuously develop the database, adding new features and making it a better solution for its various and different customers." Marc Van Oost, CEO, AlSego