Winter Corp. Announces Database Scalability Program Prizewinners; SBC and Telstra Take Top Honors with Largest Databases

Business Wire, Jan 24, 2001

Business/Technology Editors

WALTHAM, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 24, 2001

Winter Corporation today announced the grand prize winners in its worldwide program that investigates practices in the implementation of large scale databases.

Database Scalability Program 2000 analyzes the characteristics of the world's largest databases, and examines databases supporting the world's largest workloads. These vast data repositories anchor e-commerce, business intelligence, supply-chain management, customer relationship management, resource management, and other business-critical applications.

The program is sponsored by EMC Corporation, Hewlett-Packard Company, IBM Corporation, Informix Corporation, Microsoft Corporation, NCR Corporation, NetGenesis Corporation, Oracle Corporation, Sun Microsystems, Inc., and Sybase, Inc.

The largest databases in this year's program employ over 100 terabytes of disk storage. When measuring database size for research, Winter Corporation excludes redundant copies of data and free space. The resulting figures, quoted below and in other Winter Corporation publications, may appear to be smaller than those reported elsewhere but are more useful for analysis and comparison.

SBC Communications, Inc. (www.sbc.com), with a database size of 10.5 TB, was the largest site in the program and led all entrants in the category of Decision Support Systems (DSS), Database Size, All Platforms. SBC subsidiaries--Southwestern Bell, Ameritech, Pacific Bell, SBC Telecom, Nevada Bell, SNET, and Cellular One--provide local and long-distance phone service, wireless and data communications, paging, high-speed Internet access and messaging, cable and satellite TV, security services, telecommunications equipment, and directory advertising and publishing. SBC is the 13th-largest employer in the U.S. and one of the largest Fortune 500 companies. A five-time Grand Prize winner in this year's program, SBC uses NCR Corporation database management system and server products and an LSI Logic Storage Systems, Inc. storage solution.

"SBC is very proud to accept this very prestigious tribute from Winter Corporation," said Rolf Hanusa, Principal Technical Architect of SBC's Enterprise Data Warehouse. "The award-winning database supports SBC's Enterprise Data Warehouse. It is the result of years of hard work by dozens of talented IT professionals plus ongoing support and commitment by upper management and has enabled thousands of users to turn raw data into business value."

The other DSS grand prize winners were The Dialog Corporation, A Thompson Company; ComScore Networks, Inc.; LifeMinders, Inc.; and Inmar Technology Solutions, Inc.

Telstra Corporation, Ltd., (www.telstra.com), submitted the winning entry in the category of Online Transaction Processing Systems (OLTP), Database Size, All Platforms. The Telstra implementation features an IBM Corporation DB2 database management system, IBM and Hitachi Data Systems servers and a Hitachi storage solution.

Telstra is Australia's leading telecommunications and information services company and is one of the country's largest corporations. Telstra offers a variety of residential and business telephone capabilities both within Australia and internationally and provides a full range of data, internet, online and mobile telecommunications support. Telstra makes its wholesale services available to other carriers and also delivers television capabilities through an affiliate.

The other OLTP grand prize winners were Telstra Corporation, Ltd., Korea Telecom; Samsung SDS Company; and the U.S. Customs Service.

Waltham, Mass.-based Winter Corporation, which administers the annual program, is a leading center of expertise in database scalability for e-business, enterprise applications and business intelligence. Winter provides research, consulting, and education services that help users and vendors define their database solutions, architect their implementations, and manage their scalability issues. The company focuses on database technology near, at, and beyond the frontier of scalability.

In announcing the leading entrants, Richard Winter, president of Winter Corporation, noted that, every year, business success depends on managing larger data volumes, user populations, and database workloads. "By using the architectures, products, and practices best suited to their needs," he said, "Database Scalability Program 2000 winners are leading us into a new era of scalable business solutions. Our program applauds the hard work and success of both the users and the vendors responsible for these groundbreaking implementations."

Looking ahead to the 2001 program, Winter added:

"We'll be looking closely at the tools and applications that enable large-scale databases. We'll investigate Web-based services such as application service providers and management service providers, and provide a way to measure the return on investment of these projects. "Also, as businesses seek to turn the knowledge of customers' Web behavior into competitive advantage, we'll explore CRM (customer relationship management) and e-CRM more thoroughly."