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Summer 1999
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General Automation, Inc has announced that Matol Botanical International Limited of Montreal, Canada has completed its implementation of a 120-user General Automation mv.ENTERPRISE database environment to enhance the performance of its multilevel marketing operations.
The AIX-based mv.ENTERPRISE environment running on a Groupe BULL platform will replace a Sequoia system to manage the company’s network marketing distribution system.
“The mv.ENTERPRISE solution on a BULL computer system is part of General Automation’s overall strategy to provide products that address cost, speed and integration requirements of customers with high-end information management systems,” said Jane M Christie, General Automation president and chief executive officer.
“Matol Botanical’s successful migration from a proprietary system
to the open mv.ENTERPRISE database further demonstrates General Automation’s
leadership in protecting customers’ investments in existing IT infrastructures,
while providing flexibility to adopt to new technologies.”
After considering other MultiValue database environments, including D3 from
Pick Systems and UniData from Ardent Software, Matol chose mv.ENTERPRISE from
General Automation based on its powerful and earnest benchmark results.
“The tests were between 10 and 30 times faster than our previous system,” said Luc Hamel, director of MIS at Matol. “We ran 13 jobs that, when combined, normally took 6 hours to run. On the GA system, they take just 12 minutes. Now that’s a good ratio!”
Matol Botanical offers health and nutrition products through its 300,000 distributors worldwide. Matol has accumulated over $1 billion in sales since 1984 and has sold over 25 million bottles of its flagship product, Matol/Km™, a liquid potassium mineral supplement.
The mv.ENTERPRISE database, which is running on a BULL Escala T Series, has been implemented to manage the company’s order entry application with an integrated compensation plan module for its growing network of distributors.
“We selected General Automation because of the ease of conversion, the additional functionality of mv.ENTERPRISE, the speed and capacity of the BULL equipment, and the inherent security of AIX,” Hamel explained. In addition, Hamel cited substantial savings among the reasons for the move. “I’m projecting hardware and software maintenance costs to be cut in half now that the new system has been installed,” he said.
mv.ENTERPRISE is General Automation’s enterprise-level solution for environments requiring high-volume On Line Transaction Processing (OLTP) throughput and high system availability. Leveraging the capabilities of UNIX, mv.ENTERPRISE offers support for a wide variety of hardware peripherals as well as excellent communication tools, which include: MultiValue X.25, TCP/IP, uucp and Telnet.
Bull’s Escala systems provide the most reliable computing environment there is, with up to 99.99% up time. In case of failure, or during maintenance periods, servers can replace each other mutually, transparent to the application. Escala servers feature 64-bit SMP computing supported by Bull’s innovative PowerScale architecture and PowerPC processors for greater efficiency and dependability.
“The mv.ENTERPRISE approach provides customers with unbeatable performance, immense scalability and constant reliability,” commented Bill Rice, general manager of General Automation’s System Solutions Business Unit.
“Matol’s selection of mv.ENTERPRISE and BULL as the engine for supporting its evolving customer database is a prime example of how our technology addresses the needs of some of the most demanding, customer support-dependent applications.”
GA Mentor LimitedLast Updated: 30 June 1999