RightNow Delivers Their Software as a Service Using MySQL

June 20, 2007; 05:51 AM
MySQL AB today announced that RightNow Technologies [NASDAQ: RNOW] uses its open source database to help provide customer relationship management (CRM) software solutions to large global enterprises. RightNow has more than 1,800 customers worldwide -- including large, well-known companies such as Black & Decker, Electronic Arts, Nikon and British Airways. The CRM vendor helps these organizations manage all of their customer interactions, enabling them to provide outstanding customer experiences while controlling costs. The RightNow solutions have received numerous awards and industry recognition from publications and research firms such as CRM Magazine, Forrester and Gartner Group.

"MySQL has helped RightNow to become a leading provider of on demand customer relationship management solutions," said Laef Olson, http://blogs.cnet.com/8300-13507_1-18.htmlRightNow's Chief Information Officer.

RightNow's 'Growing' Challenge

During the past five years, RightNow's client base has grown rapidly. To meet increasing demand for RightNow's solutions, which are available under a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) delivery model, the company needed an IT infrastructure that was reliable, scalable and delivered peak performance -- under heavy loads -- in order to handle many high-volume client deployments. RightNow also needed to be able to continue to cost-effectively add capacity to its IT infrastructure so it could quickly add new customers, without having costs spiral out of control.

RightNow's Scale-Out Solution

The RightNow solution includes service, marketing, and sales applications, which enables companies to interact with their customers consistently across all channels of communication. To ensure high levels of scalability, reliability, security and high-performance, RightNow chose to build its solution on high-quality, open source components including Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Apache, the MySQL database and PHP.

RightNow's MySQL implementation has evolved into a modern horizontal scale-out database architecture that utilizes master-slave replication, failover servers, backup servers, reporting servers and geographical redundancy. This scale-out architecture has enabled them to triple their Web traffic and manage:

* 30+Terabytes of data -- all stored in MySQL databases

* 17 billion queries and 500 million page turns per month

* Thousands of database schemas, all from different customers running dynamically-generated SQL, based on customer design

In addition, MySQL's low administration benefits allow RightNow to manage more than 200 servers with only four DBAs -- a much better ratio than could be achieved using proprietary database technology.

MySQL's 'Twelve Days of Scale-Out'

Each day from June 11-22, the MySQL Web site will be highlighting how many of the world's fastest-growing companies -- such as RightNow -- are using MySQL database technology to cost-effectively Scale-Out their successful online businesses.

The campaign is live at www.mysql.com.

What is Scale-Out?

Scale-Out is a modern computing architecture that enables organizations to improve application performance and scalability on an incremental, as-needed basis by adding multiple replicated database servers on low-cost commodity hardware. This is in contrast to a `Scale-Up' approach, which requires organizations to make a large up-front investment in more expensive and complex server hardware and database licenses in order to add capacity.

Tommorow, June 20, MySQL will be hosting a special worldwide Webinar titled, "Scale-Out & Replication Best Practices for High-Growth Businesses". To register for this event, please visit www..mysql.com/scaleoutwebinar

About MySQL

MySQL AB develops and supports a family of high-performance, affordable database products. The company's flagship offering is 'MySQL Enterprise', a comprehensive set of production-tested software, proactive monitoring tools, and premium support services.

MySQL is the world's most popular open source database software, with over 11 million active installations. Many of the world's largest and fastest-growing organizations use MySQL to save time and money powering their high-volume Web sites, business-critical systems and packaged software -- including industry leaders such as Yahoo!, Alcatel-Lucent, Google, Nokia and YouTube.

With headquarters in the United States and Sweden -- and operations around the world -- MySQL AB supports both open source values and corporate customers' needs in a profitable, sustainable business model. For more information about MySQL, please visit www.mysql.com.

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MySQL is a registered trademark of MySQL AB in the USA and other countries. Other product or company names mentioned may be the trademarks of their respective companies.