Makau: Bring Workshop Content to E-Learning
 
 

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Case Study

Makau Corporation: New math: IBM Business Partner substitutes DB2 9 for MySQL and saves big

"The number one reason we moved to DB2 9 is cost savings. We were spending a lot on licenses with MySQL -- and DB2 9 Express-C 9 is free. In addition, we feel much better about the short- and long-term support that we get from IBM for the DB2 platform -- and being able to pass that on to our customers. Our clients feel much more comfortable with DB2, knowing it's backed by IBM." - Mark Lindsay, vice president of sales, Makau Corporation.

Challenge

Makau Learning Appliance features a library of more than 300 courses with a built-in learning management system that tracks student progress and improves course administration. Makau wanted to reduce licensing costs it paid to build its solution on MySQL. By converting to IBM DB2 9, Makau saved about $75,000 in MySQL and Windows server licensing fees, a 30 percent reduction, for its solutions.

Makau is an IBM Business Partner based in Orem, Utah. Makau offers enterprise-wide, 24 x 7 delivery of custom courses in partnership with training professionals. It combines advanced e-learning with traditional on-site workshops.

Solution

Makau ported its complete application suite to run on the IBM and Novell Integrated Stack for Suse Linux™ Enterprise (ISSLE), including DB2 Express-C 9 and WebSphere Application Server Community Edition running on IBM System x™ servers. The IBM DB2 9 Data Server serves large and small customers, and DB2 9 Express-C 9 is available free of charge for all to use, deploy and distribute upon registration by the IBM Business Partner.

Makau will no longer incur any database licensing fees, saving the company hundreds of thousands of dollars. The move also allays client concerns about maintenance because of the flexibility to purchase DB2 Express for commercial IBM support or seamlessly upgrade to a more powerful version of DB2 without making any application or database changes.

Brigham Young University will be one of the first customers to migrate its Makau solution to DB2 9.

Benefits

Makau now allows its customers to:

  • Scale their applications as content size and usage grows
  • Store, search and retrieve course data faster and more efficiently
  • Leverage autonomic functionality that allows the database to manage itself
  • Run the solution on a Windows or Linux server—and choose Linux when security, reliability and lower costs matter