Yamaha Motor Revs Up Website Performance with Progress® DataDirect®

BEDFORD, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Progress Software Corporation (NASDAQ: PRGS), a global software company that simplifies and enables the development and deployment of business applications, today announced that Yamaha Motor Europe has chosen the Progress® DataDirect® SQL Server for JDBC driver to dramatically increase page load speeds for its dealer website and improve overall database access performance.

“So called free or cheap drivers may seem like a cost saver, but in fact, given the key role drivers plays in application infrastructure, can significantly negatively impact the application and therefore the business. In this case Yamaha was able to dramatically increase their website performance and eliminate database crashes”

For commerce driven businesses with rich online content, high-speed data access and web performance are critical factors in ensuring sales. The Yamaha Motor site, for example, connects its 1,500 European dealers with Yamaha distributors in 12 countries. Designed to help dealers quickly order spare parts, as well as register warranties and process claims, it is imperative that the site deliver an optimum user experience.

Yamaha encountered a database performance problem when it shifted from a high-end application server to a virtualized environment to run its dealer website. Because the existing database driver was limited, page load times that used to take five seconds began to take 40 seconds. In the test environment, the site and database crashed. An investigation revealed that the drivers that accompanied the commercial database the company was using were not able to operate efficiently enough to ensure the kind of performance and speed that customers, distributors and dealers had grown to expect from the website.

In order to alleviate the problem before the website went live, Yamaha chose the Progress DataDirect for JDBC drivers to replace the built-in drivers. Designed for optimal database access and performance on virtual machines, this eliminated the need for database client libraries, reduced administrative overhead of managing multiple vendors and diminished the amount of excessive network ‘chatter.’

After implementing the new DataDirect for JDBC drivers, Yamaha’s dealer website was able to function at 20 times faster than with the other driver, increasing page load times by a factor of ten. The database has stopped crashing and in terms of IT operations, the new drivers are making possible a new level of infrastructure agility. The database is no longer an obstacle to updating or replacing components of infrastructure, such as application servers.

The DataDirect for JDBC drivers also made it possible to launch the new dealer site in 12 different languages. Some of the countries where Yamaha does business have UTF8 characters, while others have Unicode. The DataDirect for JDBC drivers handled this discrepancy effortlessly and made it possible to get the site up in all territories easily.

Progress Software is the software industry’s leading comprehensive provider of software for connecting the world’s most critical business applications to data and services, running on any platform, using proven and emerging standards. Developers worldwide depend on DataDirect products to connect their applications to an unparalleled range of data sources using standards-based interfaces such as ODBC, JDBC and ADO.NET, XQuery and SOAP. More than 300 leading independent software vendors and thousands of enterprises rely on Progress Software to simplify and streamline data connectivity for distributed systems and to reduce the complexity of mainframe integration.

Quotes:

“For users of our website, there are only two acceptable speeds for the underlying application and database: fast and faster,” said Kees Trommel, Division Manager Information Systems at Yamaha Motor Europe. “DataDirect JDBC drivers help ensure that our website experience meets customer expectations for quick and reliable transactions. We’re excited to be able to boast that all of our pages now load in four or five seconds.”
“So called free or cheap drivers may seem like a cost saver, but in fact, given the key role drivers plays in application infrastructure, can significantly negatively impact the application and therefore the business. In this case Yamaha was able to dramatically increase their website performance and eliminate database crashes,” said Michael Benedict, Vice President and Business Line Manager, Progress DataDirect. “This is just one example of hundreds we see every year of customers that are able to significantly enhance their application performance, reliability and functionality by switching to our suite of drivers.”

Additional Resources

The complete Yamaha Motor Europe case study
http://www.datadirect.com/case-study/yamaha-motor-europe.html

About Progress Software Corporation
Progress Software Corporation (NASDAQ: PRGS) simplifies the development, deployment and management of business applications on-premise or on any Cloud, on any platform and on any device with minimal IT complexity and low total cost of ownership. Progress Software can be reached at www.progress.com or 1-781-280-4000.

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Progress and DataDirect are trademarks or registered trademarks of Progress Software Corporation or one of its subsidiaries or affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. Any other names contained herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.