CONTAX: Migrating to a next-generation database in the cloud for more elasticity and scalability
Explore CONTAX’s journey with SAP
SAP gold partner CONTAX Inc. needed more elasticity and scalability to handle huge demands on database resources following the launch of its shipping technology applications. To solve these challenges, CONTAX migrated to SAP HANA Cloud using the self-service migration service for SAP HANA Cloud, maximizing transactional and analytics data management with a single solution.
| Industry | Region | Company Size |
| Professional services | Chicago, Illinois | >150 employees |
to execute a complex database migration to the cloud.
reduction in original database footprint and cost.
Lead Software Engineer, CONTAX Inc.
Expanding its database capacity at speed and at a lower cost
An SAP gold partner and global consulting services provider, CONTAX Inc. is dedicated to helping customers maximize the power and flexibility of SAP solutions. Operating from nine locations in four countries around the world, CONTAX delivers high-quality implementation services, managed services, and support services for SAP solutions and applications. The company helps customers achieve their business objectives for growth, profitability, efficiency, and scalability by developing and marketing cloud-based application extensions using cloud services running on SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP).
With its database foundation built on SAP HANA, CONTAX had access to real-time analysis and decision-making capabilities. The database could handle processing large amounts of data as the number of business transactions multiplied, allowing for real-time business insights. In the event that the company required more memory to handle sudden demands for database resources, it would file an ad hoc incident report to gain the extra memory needed.
But when CONTAX rolled out its Shipping Technology Solutions, which have SAP-certified integration with RISE with SAP S/4HANA Cloud, the company’s need for extra database resources suddenly snowballed. As this required many more requests for memory increases, CONTAX realized it needed a better way to control fast-growing data volume.
Lead Software Engineer, CONTAX Inc.
Smoothly moving to the cloud by automating key database migration tasks
CONTAX liked how the native storage extension (NSE) capability offered by SAP HANA Cloud would allow it to partition data, keeping older data on disk and not loaded into memory. CONTAX also liked how the solution would allow it to handle more data in the same database memory size, helping it reduce operational costs. “We saw NSE as a valuable feature because we could partition data that’s needed for users of our shipping technology applications while still having access to all our data when needed,” comments Brian McDonnell, lead software engineer at CONTAX.
Having made the decision to migrate to SAP HANA Cloud on SAP BTP, CONTAX then needed to determine how best to get there. In terms of complexity, CONTAX’s data model had more than 300 tenants running in parallel, meaning 300 times more tables and procedures to change. Seeking to automate key migration tasks and reduce uncertainties by identifying potential issues up front to reduce migration cost and effort, CONTAX used the self-service migration service for SAP HANA Cloud. The service checked the compatibility of the company’s SAP HANA database with SAP HANA Cloud, identifying the features and schema objects that were ready for migration and those that needed to be adapted before use. This sped up the implementation timeline, shored up business continuity during the migration process, and allowed the team at CONTAX to get up and running on SAP HANA Cloud without delay.
Lead Software Engineer, CONTAX Inc.
Handling a mixed workload scenario with optimal database performance
Using self-service migration for SAP HANA Cloud, CONTAX started its move to SAP HANA Cloud on a Friday evening and was using the NSE features in SAP HANA Cloud by Sunday morning. In doing so, CONTAX was able to shift nearly two-thirds of its data into warm storage where it would consume only a quarter of the main database memory quota. This allowed CONTAX to reduce its overall memory footprint by 25%.
McDonnell comments, “SAP HANA Cloud is now our primary data store where we load millions of records every day for our shipping technology applications. Customers can query those records instantly and view charts to track packages. If there’s a major weather delay somewhere, users can see that instantly on the dashboard because we’re loading that data in real time. Before moving to SAP HANA Cloud, one of our main challenges was the cost of having to keep all this data in memory. But by shifting to SAP HANA Cloud, we’ve seen significant savings.”
Database performance is also optimized. “We were operating a more powerful system before,” McDonnell says. “Using SAP HANA Cloud, we’ve since scaled it down a little in terms of cost, but we are still seeing great performance for our mixed workload scenario. We have just one database for our transactional and analytics layers, which also helps in terms of ease of use as we’re not managing multiple different data stores.”
SAP HANA Cloud also provides CONTAX with more flexibility. McDonnell explains, “When we need more database resources, we just go to the dashboard, adjust a few parameters, restart the database, and we have more memory.”
Lead Software Engineer, CONTAX Inc.
Building and deploying next-generation data applications
With the migration to SAP HANA Cloud, McDonnell says that CONTAX has gained significant value from improved cost, reduced memory consumption, and an enhanced user experience. Now it wants to build on these business benefits.
The company is looking to make use of the data lake component of SAP HANA Cloud to tackle different data models and structured, semistructured, and unstructured data stored as files. Its goal is to better manage data aggregations and allow data queries in a more efficient manner.