Performance improved 200x thanks to EXASolution
Nuremberg, 11. December 2012 – Wooga GmbH, a dynamically growing games software company, is extending its analysis platform to gain more detailed information about customer satisfaction and to enhance this effectively. To achieve this, the young Berlin-based games manufacturer relies on a business intelligence environment based on the new Data Warehouse Appliance from EXASOL. Wooga is therefore able to analyse the data of its now enormous user community for social games significantly faster.
Wooga (world of gaming) was founded in 2009 and develops web and mobile games that you are able to play with and against your friends. Within three years the company has established itself as one of the key developers of social games. The original games, such as Monster World, Diamond Dash or Bubble Island, which can be played on the web or downloaded onto smartphones and tablets wow over 50 million people worldwide on average. The company’s sales are generated through the sale of interactive goods or boosts, which accelerate the games process, for example.
The challenge is to be able to analyse more data over a longer period
Constantly growing data volumes from the users result from the company’s rapid growth. To analyse this data Wooga requires a high-performance data that is able to analyse large volumes of data quickly. The MySQL solution, previously used, was reaching its limits and the response times were too long. Additionally, it was unable to meet the requirement to evaluate analyses over any period, for example, up to a year. IT managers at Wooga looked for another solution. Markus Steinkamp, head of Business Intelligence at Wooga explains: “For our strategic direction, it was important to introduce a database that will also permit a selection of suitable BI tools at a later date. “We regularly add new functions to our games. To evaluate how these are being received, we have to analyse our customer’s game behaviour in real time”. Steinkamp goes on to say: “Good scaleability, rapid loading speed and the possibility of being able to use a variety of fast analytical functions and aggregation functions are important requirements that the new solution should demonstrate.”
A complete solution from a single source and significantly faster analyses
The high-performance database EXAsolution that is based on in-memory technology has been able to score points in the selection process over a further German provider, in particular, because of its tuning freedom. As Wooga does not require its own BI-frontend at the current time, the comprehensive reports of the EXASOL solution were very helpful during the four-week test setting and beyond. The EXASolution 4.1 has been productively used at Wooga since August 2012. The high-performance database runs as an appliance solution with Dell hardware on 6+1 individual computers that are merged together to form a cluster. Connectors load all the data permanently into the EXASolution through the messaging system Apache Kafka. They are analysed there in real time and can be retrieved as ad-hoc reports at any time. “The new platform provides us with an comprehensive insight into the satisfaction of our users – a significant benefit in the very competitive market of games software,” Steinkamp is happy to report. According to Steinkamp: “Our analyses and reports run 200x faster and we are able to analyse data over a longer timeframe without any difficulty, and more detailed analyses of large data volumes are now possible.”
“Based on the business model of the free-of-charge game (free-to-play), good communication with players is important externally for customer retention,” says Steffen Weissbarth, CEO of EXASOL AG. “A great deal of real-time data is produced for online and mobile games that has to be processed quickly. We support Wooga with our Data Warehouse Appliance to
gain an in-depth insight into the behaviour of its customers. Weissbarth goes on to say: “Required changes can be made simply and flexibly, which naturally has a positive influence on the company’s turnover.”
EXASOL AG, based in Nuremberg, develops and markets the high-performance database EXASolution, based on Loading...in-memory technology, which was designed specifically for datawarehouse applications and business intelligence solutions. This allows very large volumes of data to be analysed and evaluated in the shortest space of time. Thanks to the high performance and low administrative maintenance, EXASolution supports businesses not just with valuable decision-making fundamentals from their data, but also by reducing the total cost of ownership. In April 2011, EXASOL AG was named by Gartner as a “Cool Vendor” in the category Data Management and Integration 2011. In 2012 the solution was included in the Magic Quadrant “Data Warehouse Database Management Systems”.
About Wooga:
Wooga was founded in Berlin in 2009 and is one of the most important developers of social games for the web and mobile phones in just three years. Two hundred and fifty employees from 35 nations design high quality and original games in Berlin with a special focus on particular features, user friendliness and localisation in nine languages. The free Facebook games that are designed for players of all age groups are played actively by around 50 million users – 70 per cent of whom are women. The sales are generated from the sale of interactive goods: Monster World players, for example, have bought more than 100 million digital magic wands to date, for example, making Wooga the world’s largest magic factory.
About EXASOL AG
EXASOL AG, based in Nuremberg in Germany, develops a data management system that enables the rapid analysis and evaluation of data. By implementing the solution from EXASOL, business processes are optimised and secure foundations for decision-making are generated, which give companies of all industry sectors a sustainable competitive edge.
EXASolution is a relational high-performance database that was specifically developed for enterprise warehouse applications and business intelligence solutions. The In-Memory-technology-based database is utilised by companies of all industry sectors for time-critical analyses, comprehensive data research, planning or reporting. By integrating geodata and BigData-sources as well as unstructured data – e.g by using the feature EXAPowerlytics – EXASolution offers an additional dimension of evaluation for more efficient and ad-hoc analyses. The easy-to-manage database can be integrated easily into existing IT infrastructures and requires a minimal amount of administrative maintenance, while ensuring low investment and operation costs (TCO). As an appliance EXASolution, is available in three versions.EXACloud, based on EXASolution, is offered as datawarehousing as a services. By using this highly efficient way to manage their data EXASOL customers benefit as well from full data access at any time as from a transparent pricing model. Companies such as XING, Sony Music, Olympus, media control, Zalando, stayfriends, Coop, IMS Health, Semikron, Webtrekk, econda and xplosion rely on EXASOL technology, made in Germany.