Gamma Soft Use Cases

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Use cases

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Strategic applications (ETL, EAI, extranet)This is a leading French industrial firm. The company is divided into 2 administrative hubs, each with an Power i and 3 industrial sites.The company’s numerous requirements include: Converging the two Power i of the 2 administrative hubs into a single virtual machine through a bidirectional replication of data.

Gain: Elimination of a 6 human-operated months of software

development, around EUR 25 K.

•Managing communication in real time between the accounts department (Oracle, Aix) and the sales management department (Power i-specific). Upon billing, i.e, the customer’s account is charged, and the customer's outstanding is updated in Real Time.

Gain: 20% decrease of client’s accounts budgeted in doubt and

savings on interfaces.

•Refreshing the SQL Server decision-support databases at night, queried using Business Objects, only with the changed data (Change Data Capture).

•Update overnight SQL Server databases that will be called via

Business Object and only on modifications (incremental mode)

Gain: 4 hours of daily processing.


Strategic applications (ETL, EAI, extranet)

• Loading the Internet and extranet databases in Real Time so that customers and stores can be informed of prices and orders and be aware of the progress in manufacturing.

Gain: A better service provided to clients on follow-up

orders. Administrative gains on customer care center

(around EUR 30 K).

• Managing real-time dialogs with response time constraints (currently the response time is about 100 ms) between the production machine and the machine tools and the jukeboxes that manage the automated warehouse.

Gain: Elimination of a complex development of 12 months

human-operated (around EUR 80 K) and a daily

administration cost.


The issue raised is -besides the completely different data model between the front and the back office- the security imposed to the system. In fact, the front office is connected to the Internet and accessible to the clients of Net. No data from the back office is accessible and modifiable by the client because the financial stake is too high.

Real Time synchronization between the front office and the back office

Gain: Increase in company’s security while opening the system to clients. Therefore an increase in the

customer-base and turnover.


• A retail world leader needed to load a Big Database on Netezza. This feed needed 10 hours, several human interventions and the increase of the network throughput.

• Gamma Soft working only on the changes registered on the database, reduced the loading of the big data to 34 minutes and no human intervention. This dramatically reduced exploitation costs and the need to increase the network throughput.

• Gain: A net saving of around 300k€ on the network and exploitation

Big Data Loading


• A retail world leader needed to copy all its data every night in order to have the D-1 version in another machine. This process took 8 hours supervised by an operator.

• Gamma Soft allowed to automatize the process by capturing the changes made into the system and by postponing the application. This new process currently needs less than 3 hours and no human intervention whatsoever.

• Gain: Other than time, a human resource saving of around 40k€

Base copy in version D-1


The second example illustrates the case of a large company in the transport and logistics sector. This company has one administrative hub equipped with one Power i and comprises 50 warehouses,

Real-time loading of an ODS and distributed databases

Its numerous requirements include in particular:•Load the ODS (Operational Data Store) in real time. •As soon as the transport request is entered in the main site (currently Power i), the relevant data must impact the 50 Oracle databases spread over the territory in less than 5 seconds, so that the transport operators can process it. Gamma Soft has been compared to MQSeries and SonicMQ based solutions. Its rapid implementation time (less than 4 days of parameter definition) and its response time (less than 300 ms) are the main reasons for the customer's choice.•The definition of the architecture parameters and the replication rules took 4 days.

Gains: Greater responsiveness to freight exchange (daily financial gain) and financial gain of EUR 400 K over the previous service

provider. Net savings of around EUR 50 K on annual operation.


One very interesting feature of Gamma Soft is the creation of a virtual database.This customer has 3 types of databases, namely DB2/400, Oracle and Lotus Notes. The customer’s main requirement was to load the Oracle decision-support database with data from his or her production Power i that is hosted on a remote site. Also, the applications used were under Oracle and Lotus Notes, but certain Power i data was necessary for the Oracle and Notes applications and vice versa. Gamma Soft was a natural choice for replicating the data directionally, in real time.

Creating a virtual database

Recently, this customer decided to set up an Internet portal for their maintenance staff. The company that was approached to set up the portal was faced with the complexity of the customer's heterogeneous system infrastructure involving several local and remote databases (Power i, Oracle, Notes) with a large number of tables. Slow connection and potential breaks in connection rendered the project lengthy, complex to implement, and rather unreliable. Gamma Soft was the immediate choice to produce a set of 3 tables under Oracle (the table structure was modeled based on the portal requirements) and load data in them from the different systems in real time.The development of the portal was simplified to a considerable extent and took only a few days. It was also freed totally of communication breaks and source system downtime problems (the systems had different production schedules).

Gain: Possibility of setting up the project and saving 24 months of human specific development effort (around EUR 14 K)


• The increase of Oracle licenses meant the company needed to acquire these spending over €350K.The use of Gamma Soft allowed to execute a migration of applications on-the-fly and a slow shifting of users.

Gain: Other than the comfort of a migration on-the-fly, the net saving of around €320K

Database Migration


The issue was to bidirectionally consolidate the databases (SQL Server) of the French and Italian purchase centers with sophisticated selection rules (for example, only French product additions are added to the Italian database if the product does not exist). Gamma Soft is also used to load the customer CRM in the customer extranet (customer retention management) and, in particular, to transmit the data to the logistics center, in real time,

Inter-country consolidation, CRM in extranet and logistics

Gain: Better store responsiveness and stock optimization.


A very large stock broker operating on behalf of the major French banks and e-Brokers, used Gamma Soft to capture the security purchase and sales transactions in real time, load the accounting application and generate the billing (mainframe) while keeping a complete trace record for accounting purposes.

Traceability and billing in the stock exchange sector

Gain: Reliability of billing services and elimination of online losses (around EUR 50 K per annum).


Given its ability to update aggregates in real time, Gamma Soft enabled one of our customers (a major hospital) to obtain a real-time view of the number of anesthesia administrations in each department, and their average duration in minutes. As the customer's software package did not offer this option, all anesthetics given were entered in the form of a record which could be modified, particularly the date and time of induction and emergence from anesthesia. The customer did not want to modify its application, as this would have involved changes to many other applications, therefore resulting in additional development and testing costs.

Gamma Soft, through a customized distribution of only 30 minutes, authorized to deliver this information in real time to its users.

Real-time aggregate management

Gain: 12 months of human operation (around EUR 50 K) and better service provided to doctors and patients.


An industrial company, a world-leader in its field, has been using Gamma Soft for nearly 10 years to create a distributed database all over France. Twelve factories in a star-connected architecture, each equipped with an AS/400, are replicated bidirectionally from a main site. The main site contains data equivalent to 12 consolidated factories. It is used as a backup for the factories when needed. A given data item may concern several factories; when it changes, the factories concerned are automatically updated in real time. Conflicts and downtime (network outage) are taken into account by Gamma Soft's parameter definition scripts.

Creating a distributed database

Gain: Elimination of an expensive investment (software and network) of around EUR 300 K in order to cater these needs.


This company is a typical example of multiple requirements covered by a sole system – Gamma Soft in this case. Not only did the modeled decision-support database need to be loaded in real time by an expert using state-of-the-art procedures (de standardization, snowflake diagram, etc.), but the real challenge was to couple the two ERPs together. The first, MOVEX, is used particularly for the commercial part, and the second, REFLEX, is a logistics software. When the order is received in MOVEX, the manufacturing order must be immediately generated in REFLEX. This coupling was obtained using Gamma Soft s EAI capacities, with a parameter definition time that did not exceed 2 days. Gamma Soft became a strategic system for this company which, as the European leader and the world's second company in its sector, was duty-bound to be highly responsive. The increasingly widespread use of SQL Servers in its workshops raises the issue of data exchange between the different systems (Power i, SQL Server, etc.). Gamma Soft immediately stood out as the ideal solution to perform bidirectional data exchanges between databases

Inter-application exchange (EAI), e-Business and Business intelligence

Gain: Setup of a Real Time BI. Significant reduction of

turnaround times. Increase in reactiveness of companies

towards competition. Reduction of software development.

Savings of around EUR 100 and 150 K per annum.


This company needed to periodically load the SQL Server databases of 4 regions with the updates performed on the main Power i site. It had a single ISDN line and could establish communications with only one region at a time. The solution set up with Gamma Soft is based on a batch mode. This mode creates a batch file in real time, sent periodically to the four regions using a telecommunications tool. On receiving the batch file on the region's disk, Gamma Soft program applies it to the database to update it. Telecommunication in broadcast mode can be performed via e-mails to salespersons or roaming staff, for example.

Replication in non-connected mode

Gain: Reduction of network infrastructure (around EUR 100 K of investment and EUR 20 K per annum).


Large volumes and 24/7 operation are the two main characteristics of this major luxury mail order company. Despite the constraints – the ODS needed to be loaded as an airlock to the data warehouse without causing delays or disrupting production, which had to remain continuous or the company would be likely to lose sales and customers – Gamma Soft successfully completed the assignment as it could easily accept nearly 400,000,000 transactions on peak days, with its transformation scripts that optimized the data flows exchanged. Another use of Gamma Soft was to track certain transactions and debug an application in a truly innovative manner. Sometimes, certain data in the customer’s form disappeared when an order was entered by a customer on the Internet. Gamma Soft was used to identify the application that caused this error along with the full context. With the self-correction feature, the script also restored the deleted information.

Loading large volumes and traceability in Business Intelligence

Gains: significant gains on exploitation time. No Information Loss. High data warehouse availability. Client loyalty,

increase of turnover, no need to increase power of machines (cost saving of around a million euro)


The issue for this company was to consider the whole of its databases scattered around the world, like a single database distributed globally, The communication breaks and system outages had to be handled in a fully transparent manner, and administration tasks reduced to a minimum and limited to the working hours of the head office.

World-wide data consolidation

Gain: Setup of a centralized and scalable platform eliminating local costs (around EUR 500 K per annum). Elimination

of local software development (around EUR 400 K).


In the setting up of a PeopleSoft OM Billing project, this company had to create a reference database to collect in real time the data coming from many heterogeneous systems (AS/400, Oracle and SQL Server). This base is structured following PeopleSoft's logic and the transformations are performed on the fly. This has allowed the operators to check through Business Objects the state of client's contact details, contracts and the services provided, and to resume them under PeopleSoft's new logic. At the same time, there was a need to make data from Siebel in the SQL Server available in an intranet in Oracle. In this intranet, data is presented following a re-standardized structure of great simplicity and fast access.

Creating and loading of a framework and loading of an intranet

Gain: Contribution to successful migration towards PeopleSoft and a write-off saving of EUR 3.5M.


Real-Time synchronisation of CRM

After the Microsoft CRM solution has been set, it was necessary –as usual- to interconnect it with ERP data that are distributed in Oracle databases. The use of Gamma Soft technology has allowed the bi-directional synchronisation in real-time between both systems. Therefore, when for instance, the liabilities of a certain client change, the CRM is modified instantly and the helpdesk has acces to the data in real time. Equally when a Sales Rep modifies the delivery information, these changes impact the ERP in real time. The Sales Rep can consult the stock, the authorised liabilities, the credit threshold in real time.No interphase batch is necessary anymore and everything works as if the CRM was integrated to the ERP.

Oracle

Gain: Reduction of client risk. Reactivity towards the customer. Participation in growth of 10% of turnover.


Real-Time synchronisation between Cloud and « on premise »

This company, after a tailored CRM solution has been implemented, has decided to install it in the cloud with a PostgreSQL database so its Sales Reps could have worldwide access.It was simply neccessary to bi-directionally synchronise the data between the CRM in the Cloud and the central systems where the data is, in the Oracle and PostgreSQL databases. Gamma Soft already in use by this company was the best choice to perform this task.

Gain: This success validates the first step towards an infrastructure transfer to the Cloud, representing savings for

EUR 200 K in infrastructure.


Real-Time synchronisation betweenmobiles and backend

The problem of this medical company’s Sales Reps is that they can’t access the GSM inside the medical environment. It was a must to be able to work offline with a base on their tablet PCs.The same data can be modified simultaneously by many Sales Reps who have to receive the updates of other Sales Reps as well as those from the ERP.The application that has been developed uses the MySQL base and Gamma Soft assures the bi-directional synchronisation in real time or deferred as soon as the link is transparently established by the user. Of course, everything is inter connected to the different applications and ERP.

Gain: Increase productivity rate of sales representatives. Win market share. Reliability of customer data. In all, that represents hundreds of thousands of EUR per annum.

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Gamma Soft Use Cases