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Exist, Ashnik and EnterpriseDB Power Digital Transformation through EDB Postgres for the Philippine Electricity and Power Sector in 2019. Java, Java Philippines

Exist, Ashnik, and EnterpriseDB Power Phenomenal Digital Transformation through EDB Postgres for the Philippine Electricity and Power Sector in 2019

Exist, Ashnik, and EnterpriseDB Power Phenomenal Digital Transformation through EDB Postgres for the Philippine Electricity and Power Sector in 2019 768 487 Exist Software Labs

At the recently concluded The Future Energy Show Philippines 2019, Exist, Ashnik and EnterpriseDB teamed up to highlight the advantages of using EDB Postgres for a number of IT projects specifically within the electricity sector.

During the 2-day event, booth visitors and fellow sponsors personally listened to the stories about how Exist, Ashnik and EnterpriseDB were able to provide their skills and expertise for the local energy sector which began not too long ago.  

With years of experience working on enterprise systems across a diverse range of industries from banking and finance to retail and healthcare, Exist was able to get the opportunity and win the trust of the main local energy corporations PEMC and WESM for developing mission-critical systems required to bring the electricity spot market closer to achieving its goal of having a transparent, fair, competitive, and reliable market for the trading of electricity throughout the Philippines.

Working closely with Ashnik as a partner, the push for the use of EDB Postgres has always made the most sense as the choice of database with the balanced mix between cost and features that make it the most complete open source-based data platform.

One of the highlights of our participation at the event is our talk entitled “Postgres Powers Digital Transformation in Southeast Asia – Success Stories”, presented by Rekha Ramaswamy, Enterprise Sales Manager at Ashnik and Jenish of Vyas, Solutions Engineer, SE Asia and Hong Kong at EDB Postgres. In this session, they shared compelling business cases and customer success stories highlighting the value of the open source-based EDB Postgres Platform in helping enterprises confidently deliver on the promise of digital business.

“Based on the open source Postgres platform, we’ve enhanced it in such a way that it has additional application security and improved performance. [In using EDB Postgres] we are not compromising on existing features but giving added flexibility with [their] existing legacy database.”
Jenish of Vyas, Solutions Engineer, SE Asia and Hong Kong at EDB Postgres

Check out the slides and videos below:

Enterprise Technology Solutions Leader, Exist Reveals Top 5 IT Trends for 2019. Java, Java Philippines

Exist Software Labs, Inc Reveals Top 5 IT Trends for 2019

Exist Software Labs, Inc Reveals Top 5 IT Trends for 2019 768 487 Exist Software Labs

IT Trends in 2019

The demand for business companies to go digital continues as they face the new year with new expectations, competitors, channels, threats, and opportunities.

Digitalization has created a new breed of market that companies of all sizes- small, medium-sized, or even large corporations cannot ignore. Traditional businesses have now accepted using digital transformation as a business strategy— to deliver products and services through the web, reap data from every market interaction then gain insights to rapidly optimize their value chain and help them increase competitive advantage.

By transforming digitally, businesses are able to build a connection with their customers, speed up the pace of innovation, and, as a result, claim a greater share of profit.

Today, companies that invest in digital transformation are building an edge over those that don’t, which will enable them to succeed in reaching the expanding digital lives of consumers that encompass the rules of engagement that strongly influence customer loyalty.

With this profound effect on business organizations, allow us to share what are the IT Trends our top executives think would make an impact by the year 2019:

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Top 5 IT Trends

Blockchain

By allowing digital information to be distributed but with a highly secured transaction, blockchain technology created the backbone of the new type of Internet. What do we really mean when we say blockchain? According to Don and Alex Tapscott, authors of the book Blockchain Revolution (2016), “the blockchain is an incorruptible digital ledger of economic transactions that can be programmed to record not just financial transactions but virtually everything of value”. The growing list of records found in blockchain is called blocks which are linked using cryptography.

In an interview with Mr. Mike Lim, President & CEO of Exist, he stated, “Blockchain has been really gaining quick traction not only because of bitcoin or cryptocurrency but because of the promise of more transparent but secured communication between B2B companies or even B2C depending on what vertical you are.” This IT trend gives internet users the ability to create value and authenticates digital information. By storing data across its peer-to-peer network, blockchain eliminates a number of risks that come with data being held centrally. Every network participant validates the transaction so that the data stored is immutable and cannot be forged.

Real-world applications of blockchain technology are becoming more mainstream resulting in the amount of transactional data becoming huge.

Combining blockchain and big data sparks a new level of analytics. Executives believe that the blockchain promise of secure, traceable transactions and improved transparency of information can streamline supply chain management. Thus, continuing to make a disruptive change in technology by the year 2019.

 

Big Data

With today’s digital technologies, it’s possible to analyze your data and turn it into insights rapidly. This IT Trend enables enterprises to make better decisions.

According to Gartner, big data is high-volume, high-velocity, and/or high-variety information assets that demand cost-effective, innovative forms of information processing that enable enhanced insight, decision-making, and process automation. As the head of the healthcare services at Exist and the VP for Sales and Marketing, Mr. Willex Perez shared with us his thoughts: “Imagine the possibilities of what big data can do for predicting illnesses. If you collect enough clinical information you’ll be able to compare your status or your clinical values with others. After which, you can search available research or studies to check your risk rating as an individual.”

Emphasizing on healthcare, Mr. Willex added that among the growth  IT trends the use of big data in healthcare will be essential. “With analytics, enterprises will be able to drive innovation and come up with intelligent business decisions. While organizations collect data for analytics purposes combined with IoT as another major source for data,” Mr. Willex concludes, “it is inevitable to use big data analytics to complete the picture.”

 

Internet of Things (IoT)

Countless business opportunities are in the firehose of IoT data as products and services have become more connected. The Internet of Things refers to the network of devices such as home appliances, and mechanical and digital devices that contain electronics, software, and connectivity which allows them to interact and exchange data.

Considered as one of his top IT trends, Mr. Christopher Silerio, the VP for Operations at Exist, believes IoT sensors provide us a valuable real-time update of the exchange of data with the sources. He shares, “there will be a time when there will be more data exchanges happening between sensors even without human interaction.  From smart appliances or smart meters, devices will continuously send data signals to a certain component or machine, providing information in real-time. It’s reasonable to say that IoT has begun to transform the business landscape and is expected to continue in 2019.”

 

Cloud

While IoT generates huge amounts of data, the cloud ensures that these are captured and stored properly. The simplicity and accessibility of cloud computing to manage vast amounts of data remain a catalyst enabling the rapid expansion of IoT. Cloud computing provides small to medium enterprises the ability to enjoy low implementation costs for their total IT infrastructure and software systems.

Utilizing the abilities of cloud computing, enterprises of all sizes can deploy applications a lot quicker and cheaper compared to the cost of setting up whole IT Infrastructure and service by themselves. According to Forrester’s predictions for 2018, the total global public cloud market will be $178B in 2018, up from $146B in 2017, and will continue to grow at a 22% compound annual growth rate. From this perspective, the cloud seems to be a key driver of digital transformation and economic growth.

“Cloud makes it easier for organizations to worry more about their business process rather than infrastructures. It makes it easier for startups to build their business quickly,” reveals Mr. Jonas Lim, the VP of Technical Services at Exist. “As early as almost a decade ago, we believed that cloud computing is a real game-changer and it has proven to be true as the future continues to bring us into a world of unlimited connectivity empowered by the cloud,” he further adds.

 

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence or AI doesn’t only apply to robotics. As a branch of computer science, AI involves the development of computer programs to complete tasks which would otherwise require human intelligence. As evidence of its spread, AI is even available for use along with other cloud solutions to which businesses can just subscribe to.

Internet technology companies also make use of  AI to optimize their IT infrastructures. In fact, according to Wikibon: “AI-optimized application infrastructure is one of today’s hottest IT trends in the IT business. More vendors are introducing IT platforms that accelerate and automate AI workloads through pre-built combinations of storage, compute, and interconnect resources.”

Mr. Jonas Lim pointed out the increasing use of chatbots in business services. Chatbots are programs built to automatically engage with received messages simulating actual human interaction. In addition, artificial intelligence might just be ready to explode with its use, particularly inside the healthcare industry.

What started with manufacturing has now spread to knock and open the doors to a greater digital business scale but now with analytics and computing intelligence as an IT Trend at the forefront of cutting-edge changes in the upcoming years. “[Like] growing population of robotics is bound to happen,” Mr. Willex added, “and although we don’t know the future, it is quite evident that interacting with AI will soon be part of our everyday lives.”

Happy EXISTversary :: 17 Years of Pursuing Innovation Excellence. Java, Java Philippines

Happy EXISTversary :: 17 Years of Pursuing Innovation Excellence

Happy EXISTversary :: 17 Years of Pursuing Innovation Excellence 768 487 Exist Software Labs

This month marks Exist’s 17th anniversary and we couldn’t be more proud to have delivered value to our clients, shareholders, and team members with our innovative solutions throughout the years.

To celebrate this milestone, a series of activities were held from August 20-September 10, 2018. With the theme, “17 Years of Pursuing Excellence — One Team. One Goal. One Vision.,” this year’s celebration has been more colorful with the launching of Exist’s first-ever sports fest.

Exist’s personal and team development through sports

Spearheaded by Exist Fun Committee, employees were divided into two (2) teams: Green and Blue, who competed in various games and sports. Individual sports including chess, dart, and table tennis were vied for during lunch break inside Exist’s Tech Bar.

While other events such as bowling, and badminton were held in different venues during afternoon breaks. The major events — basketball, volleyball, and relay were scheduled every afternoon and filled a gym nearby the office.

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On September 10, 2018, the global consulting and IT solutions leader celebrated its anniversary alongside the monthly birthday salu-salo and the 2018 Sports Fest awarding ceremony with a luncheon.

The program started with opening remarks by Exist’s president and CEO, Michael Lim, followed by the giving of recognition to service awardees for their loyalty and contribution, and an introduction to September birthday celebrants.

Before the much-awaited awarding ceremony, a video presentation was showcased.

The program was then capped off with the awarding ceremony for the sports fest special awards and winners, with Green Team, who won most of the major games, being declared as champion.

Indeed, it was a joyous and memorable celebration that fostered camaraderie and ignited team spirit among Existers. As we continue our journey, we’d like to thank the unwavering support and loyalty of our team members, customers, and shareholders. We are grateful to be on this journey with you. Cheers!

The Future is Open: EDB Postgres and Your Enterprise Data. Java, Java Philippines

The Future is Open: EDB Postgres and Your Enterprise Data

The Future is Open: EDB Postgres and Your Enterprise Data 768 487 Exist Software Labs

EDB Postgres and Your Enterprise Data

The trend of adopting open-source technologies by enterprise-grade organizations remains on the rise. This is markedly true in the area of database technologies.

Consider the following forecasts by Gartner with regard to the continuous adoption of open-source technologies and Open-source DBMS (OSDBMS):

“By 2019, OSDBMS technology will account for more than 10% of DBMS spending, reflecting accelerating adoption by enterprise users.

By 2022, more than 70% of new in-house applications will be developed on an OSDBMS, and 50% of existing commercial RDBMS instances will have been converted or will be in process of converting.

Through 2020, relational technology will continue to be used for at least 85% of new applications and projects.

Through 2020, open-source software in IT portfolios will increase at a 30% compound annual growth rate.

By 2022, more than 60% of all global organizations will improve their internal skills related to open source to enable better use of open source in production, which represents an increase from 20% in 2018.” [Gartner, State of the Open-Source DBMS Market, 2018, 02-28-2018]

EDB Postgres: The viable OSDMS alternative to proprietary and commercial solutions.

Postgres has been the RDBMS of choice of many government and private enterprises for over 25 years. Government agencies depend on Postgres to deliver robust, secure applications for the public. In private companies, industries included in the extensive Postgres portfolio include financial services, insurance, health care, energy, media, retail, telco and pharma. [Which Postgres Is Right For Me?]

The following signify the reasons for this confidence in Postgres:

Robust OLTP engine – Postgres’ database engine combines ACID transaction guarantees with referential integrity, advanced subquery processing and other enterprise-class features.

Rich, expressive data types – Postgres supports a broad range of data types, including multi-dimensional arrays and user-defined types. Postgres also provides indexing and query operations on JSON data, matching or exceeding the functionality of NoSQL document stores for many use cases.

Advanced concurrency control – Postgres maintains data consistency through multiversion concurrency control (MVCC), allowing database read and write operations to execute optimistically, without blocking each other.

Stored procedure flexibility – Postgres has loadable modules that enable database developers to write stored procedures in popular programming languages such as Java, C, Perl, Python, Ruby and even JavaScript.

Community ecosystem – In addition to delivering bug fixes and enhancements for the core Postgres database, the extended Postgres community provides a broad range of add-on products and services. [ibid]

It is undeniable that Postgres is uniquely poised to act as the open source database backend for many sophisticated applications. However, many organizations require the enterprise class features and support that are missing in the community version.

EDB is the global leader in providing enterprise-class products and services for Postgres users.

EDB’s collaborative efforts within the Postgres community have been going on for over 10 years, initiatives that include the funding of research projects and contribution of core database functionality to the open source code base. As a highly-esteemed community partner, it is a major influence in the future direction of Postgres.

EDB offers two Postgres-based product subscriptions:

EDB Postgres Standard (EPS) – This subscription, based on the open source PostgreSQL database, provides technical support and mission-critical tools needed for enterprise class deployments. EPS is generally geared toward departments and smaller organizations building mixed-workload applications.

EDB Postgres Enterprise (EPE) – Leveraging the Postgres database core, EPE combines enterprise technical support SLAs and product roadmap influence with a wealth of high- value product features. EPE is geared toward organizations that need to build and manage durable, scalable, high performance database applications. EPE also includes advanced security and performance features in addition to a renowned suite of Oracle® compatibility capabilities that accelerate Postgres adoption in Oracle shops. [ibid]

Advantages

Referencing the IDC (International Data Corporation) report entitled, The Economic and Business Advantages of EDB Postgres Database Solutions, wherein key organizations that have adopted EDB Postgres were assessed, it was determined that benefits in the following areas were realized: Business Value, DBA Staff Efficiencies, and Database-Related Costs.

Realizing Business Value With EDB Postgres

Lower cost-of-operation expenses (42% lower across three years) by virtue of the elimination of database-related licensing fees and lower maintenance costs (EDB’s opex-based pricing model as opposed to capex-weighted licensing models) enabled organizations to be more flexible and scalable in their use of database technology, thereby lending reliability and performance to the solutions that support their business operations.

The following are the ways these organizations are realizing value by leveraging EDB Postgres as a high-performance, cost-efficient database platform to better capitalize on business opportunities:

Scalability – EDB Postgres enables organizations to scale their database resources to match business demand. In particular, organizations do not face limitations imposed by up-front capex costs when they need to build new databases or expand a database. A database manager explained: “The scalability of EDB Postgres is a real benefit. We just started with the platform for customers to do queries on our databases, and we can very easily scale this up and down depending on the demand of our clients, which is difficult to predict. We shoot to be flexible and offer high scalability, and EDB Postgres can do this against relatively low costs. It would be far more difficult with another platform.”

Flexibility – EDB helps organizations avoid vendor lock-in by providing an open 
source–based alternative to other database solutions and gives them more flexibility to find enterprise data solutions that match their business and operational needs. A database manager commented: “We are always looking for alternative technology just in case our current technology proves to be a dead end or bottleneck in performance, which led us to EnterpriseDB.”

Cost impact – Beyond paying less for their database environments, organizations can embed lower database costs in their pricing and better compete because the overall cost of operating EDB Postgres databases is lower than the overall cost of operating their previous or alternative solutions. A database manager explained: “We are better able to sell to new customers in this new space. Without EDB Postgres, we could go after them, but we wouldn’t win them.”

Integration – EDB Postgres offers the ability to integrate with a number of Big Data analytics solutions, which can enable application development efforts and help tie Big Data analytics more closely to improved business and operational outcomes. A database manager noted: “As we come up with crazy query requirements for our application development, it’s easier to get [them] done and faster with EDB Postgres.” [The Economic and Business Advantages of EDB Postgres Database Solutions]

These EDB Postgres attributes paved the way for the following positive business results:

More revenue and more customers – A database manager at one interviewed organization explained: “EDB Postgres allows us to be not only the best provider in the world but the lowest-cost provider. That’s the best way to describe it … We’re bringing in substantially more revenue because it has allowed us to take new contracts.”

Increased database functionality – Another database manager commented: “EDB Postgres gives us the ability to expand the type of databases that we’re actually interacting with. In that sense, it gives us a flexibility that says I don’t have to be tied to this other database or a particular database. We can do functionality in multiple databases. For us, that’s key. It gives us flexibility.” [ibid]

As a result of EDB Postgres being a reliable and robust database platform, these organizations have also reported fewer unplanned, database-related outages and shorter resolution times (62% lower impact of such unplanned outages on their operations with EDB Postgres over three years).

Achieving DBA Staff Efficiencies

Another benefit realized was in the area of database administration. The ease of deployment and management of EDB Postgres environments resulted in an average of 15% less deployment, configuration, maintenance, and administration time, measured in a span of  three years, as compared to competing database technologies (16% more efficient administration). The respondents reported that it was the platform’s simplicity that undergirded these improvements.

As a database manager at one organization noted:

“There is a significant difference in DBA staff time with [our alternative database environment] — 10 hours per week with EDB Postgres compared with 40 hours per week previously … EnterpriseDB is a much simpler model and is built to be operated without dedicated operators — it’s not built on the premise of having people with deep knowledge about the database.” [ibid]

Reducing Database-Related Costs

It is precisely in two areas that EDB Postgres showcases maximum profitability in terms of database-related costs:

  • No exorbitantly-priced, up-front licensing costs. This is particularly the bane of the majority of commercial database solutions.
  • Lower annual subscription rates. This translates to cost savings realized across more than three years in comparison to the organization’s prior or competing traditional or open source database technologies.

Conclusion

Adopting EDB Postgres, either as a greenfield implementation or migration initiative, is not a mere instance of jumping on the open-source bandwagon. While it is a fact that many may have had to settle for trade-offs in moving to open-source database management systems, trade-offs in terms of performance degradation and awkward administration for lower cost, this is never the case for any organization that decides to embrace EDB Postgres.

In fact, these organizations will reap the benefits of their systems running faster, easier to administer, and providing more flexibility than the systems they had used previously. EDB Postgres, aside from providing the standard benefits of open source, is the go-to solution to the problem of expensive, unduly complex, and poor performing database platforms.

EDB Postgres is the future.