EXASOL acquires first customer in Poland and lays the foundation stone for market cultivation in Eastern Europe

Nuremberg, September 3rd, 2012 – With immediate effect, the Polish branch of IMS Health, the European market leader for market research in the pharmaceutical and health sector, will be using the high-performance database EXASolution for its data analyses and reports. Thanks to the data warehouse management solution, the healthcare specialist can provide its customers analytics and reports much faster than before. Due to the significantly shorter delivery times, IMS customers – including the pharmaceutical industry, companies from the biotech sector, major pharmaceutical companies and health insurers – will be able to speed up the process of making low risk decisions based on high-quality data. This is a decisive competitive advantage which will have a particular effect on the fast-paced pharmaceutical industry.

IMS Germany as an example

The MS SQL solution that was used by IMS Poland up to now caused significant performance problems. When looking for a high-performance alternative which would be highly scalable and easy to integrate, the decision to choose a solution from EXASOL AG meant that a Best Practice approach was adopted. EXASolution has been used at the Frankfurt-based IMS Health Germany since 2007. When the convincing proof of concept was carried out on the IMS test cluster in Frankfurt, the approach was sufficiently proven with EXASolution convincing even the colleagues in Warsaw.

Challenge: High-performance data management for multi-layered requests

IMS processes large amounts of data from various sources which have to be read, validated and prepared for the customers in the form of complex reports. Something that is particularly worth mentioning with regard to this project is the practically flawless migration into the IMS infrastructure as well as the fact that the existing BI infrastructure was able to remain as it was and did not require any changes.

“We decided on the Loading...in-memory solution from EXASOL due to its high level of scalability as well as the impressive performance we witnessed during the trial period. We were very impressed with the results. We were able to drastically accelerate our processing which meant that delivery times to our customers were significantly shortened”, says Krzysztof Florjanski, Senior Manager of Operations at IMS Poland. “We were able to continue using our existing hardware with just a few upgrades and, in comparison to our previous system, the administration work is minimal.”

“Market research-related data warehouse and business intelligence applications work with very large data volumes. In addition to this, new questions often arise from the continual observation of strictly defined figures (KPIs) and these have to be answered reliably and quickly”, continues Steffen Weissbarth, CEO of EXASOL AG. “With EXASolution, IMS Health can now work with quickly available information in new business areas; they can provide tailor-made, just-in-time evaluations, drive developments faster and react more flexibly to new data management requirements.”

“IMS Health Poland is EXASOL’s first Eastern European customer. Consequently, we are continuing to develop our partner network in this area. Trials for the EXASolution database in the retail and insurance sectors are currently underway and more are being planned. We are certain that we will acquire more customers by the end of the year”, concludes Steffen Weissbarth.

EXASOL AG, based in Nuremberg, develops and markets the Loading...in-memory database EXASolution, which was designed specifically for enterprise warehouse 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 IMS Health

For more than 50 years, IMS Health has been the world’s leading provider of information services for the pharmaceutical and healthcare industry. In over 100 branches around the world IMS combines a vast amount of healthcare information with great analysis know-how and extensive consulting expertise. This unique range of offers provides decision-makers in pharmaceutical sales and marketing with the precise support they need for success in strategic planning, portfolio development and product introduction.
For more information, please visit http://www.imshealth.de

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 adata warehouse 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. For more information, please visit www.EXASOL.com follow us on twitter or like us on facebook.