“All in all, our move from Oracle to SQL Server will reduce our total cost of ownership for our PTC Windchill database by at least 90 percent—and yield a four-month return on investment.”

Tim Suiter, IT Director, IGT

International Game Technology (IGT), a global designer and manufacturer of computerized gaming machines and systems, wanted to eliminate excessive costs related to the Oracle database used by its PTC Windchill Product Lifecycle Management system. The company migrated to Microsoft SQL Server 2005 data management software, which delivers 18 percent better performance than Oracle and will reduce the company’s total cost of ownership by 90 percent.

Business NeedsIGT is a market leader in computerized gaming equipment, software, and gaming network systems. The company’s long history of innovation includes the video poker machine, computerized player tracking, and the Wheel of Fortune progressive slot machine, one of the most popular gaming machines of all time.

In the past, applications used by the IGT Engineering department were budgeted and supported within that department. In 2008, to take advantage of economies of scale, the company moved those applications under the purview of its corporate IT group. One such application is PTC Windchill, which all of the company’s mechanical engineers rely on throughout the day to manage the product lifecycle—such as working with Pro/ENGINEER CAD files. Like many of the engineering applications inherited by the IT department, Windchill ran on the Windows Server 2008 operating system and used an Oracle database.

“When we reviewed the costs for those applications, we discovered excessive expenses related to the Oracle databases—close to six figures,” says Tim Suiter, IT Director at IGT. “We were paying about

half of that in consulting fees for a few Oracle databases, which seemed excessive, considering we had one database administrator supporting 700 SQL Server–based databases. The other half of those costs were Oracle licensing and maintenance fees. Clearly, we had the responsibility to search for a more cost-effective alternative.”

SolutionIn that search, IGT found that other companies were running Windchill successfully on Microsoft SQL Server data management software. “We’re a Microsoft shop by default, so moving from Oracle to SQL Server aligned well with our IT strategy and skill sets,” says Suiter. “We were already planning a hardware refresh for the application and an upgrade from a previous version of PTC Windchill, which presented a good opportunity to migrate to SQL Server at the same time.”

The company brought in Wipro to assist with migrating its PTC Windchill database from Oracle to SQL Server 2005 Standard running on Windows Server 2008 Standard, and then ran benchmark tests to validate application performance. “After working with PTC to tune the application for the new database, we found

Customer: IGTWebsite: www.igt.com Customer Size: 4,800 employeesCountry or Region: United StatesIndustry: ManufacturingPartners: PTC, WIPRO

Customer ProfileLas Vegas, Nevada–based IGT is a world leader in providing computerized gaming equipment, including supporting software and network systems.

Software and Services Microsoft Server Product Portfolio− Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Standard− Microsoft System Center Operations

Manager 2007− Windows Server 2008 Standard

For more information about other Microsoft customer successes, please visit: www.microsoft.com/casestudies

Microsoft SQL ServerCustomer Solution Case Study

Gaming Equipment Company Achieves Four-Month ROI with Move from Oracle to SQL Server

performance on SQL Server to be slightly better than on Oracle,” says Dan Wolf, Applications Engineer at IGT.

IGT ordered new hardware in the spring of 2010. Two weeks after the hardware was delivered, the company had PTC Windchill running with SQL Server in a production environment.

BenefitsBy moving the PTC Windchill application from Oracle to SQL Server 2005, IGT is saving a significant amount of money while maintaining application performance. Key benefits include:

Lower costs. The elimination of Oracle database administration consulting fees, licensing fees, and software maintenance fees will reduce database-related costs by an order of magnitude. “Licensing and software assurance costs for SQL Server 2005 will be far less than for Oracle, and administration will be handled by existing resources,” says Suiter. “All in all, our move from Oracle to SQL Server will reduce the total cost of ownership for our PTC Windchill database by at least 90 percent—and yield a four-month return on investment.”

Better performance. Benchmark tests run by IGT show that the performance of PTC Windchill on SQL Server 2005 is 18 percent faster than on Oracle. “Total elapsed time for our PTC Windchill benchmark tests were 21.78 minutes on Oracle and 17.88 minutes on SQL Server,” says Wolf. “The performance gains are even greater on some common tasks such as Save As, which took 141 seconds on Oracle and only 91 seconds on SQL Server.”

Strong reliability. Suiter points to the company’s long-standing use of SQL Server for other mission-critical systems as evidence of why he doesn’t expect any problems. “We’ve been running SAP on SQL Server since 2001, with very few issues,” he says. “We have several hundred SQL Server databases within our IT organization, and one of the reasons why we always use SQL Server is its strong reliability and cost effectiveness.”

Ease of migration. With Wipro’s assistance, IGT found the migration process to be quick and easy. “It took about two days for a Wipro consultant to convert the database,” says Wolf. “The process was automated and straightforward, and Wipro brought to the engagement a proven methodology that reduced risk.”

Improved management and monitoring. From this point forward, IGT can use its existing database administration tools and skill sets. What’s more, the company now can take advantage of its Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 implementation for real-time operational monitoring. “In the past, if there was an issue, we had to call Oracle or a consultant,” says Suiter. “Today, we have everything we need in-house for database tuning, issue resolution, upgrades, operational monitoring, and so on.”

With its migration of PTC Windchill to SQL Server completed, the IGT IT team is now turning its attention to migrating its remaining systems from Oracle to SQL Server. “By January 2011, we plan to have completely eliminated Oracle from our corporate IT environment,” says Suiter. “SQL Server provides all that we need in terms of performance, reliability, and ease of management; I can’t see any reason to increase costs and complexity by using another database.”

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Document published November 2010