“While this is our first experience with an ETL tool, we were very thorough with our evaluations. Centerprise suits our needs perfectly. It has all the functionality we need, it is easy to use, keeps the data together so it can be centrally managed, and it is the most cost effective.” Steve Mann, Information Systems Manager, City of Lodi CA
The City of Lodi’s Information Systems (IS) department has been charged with maintaining and integrating all financial and planning data, and serving it electronically to its internal and external users- securely, efficiently AND cost effectively.
Upon evaluating ETL tools available, the IS team selected Astera’s Centerprise Data Integrator as it delivered enterprise level functionality, and intuitive user interface and was the most cost effective solution to the city’s needs.
Production of premium quality wines is the economic engine that drives the Lodi-Woodbridge region. Supported by over 90,000 acres of vineyards that surround the Lodi community, Lodi-Woodbridge wine grape growers annually produce a crop worth more than $350 million. Nearly 40% of California’s premium wine grapes are grown in this region, making Lodi the “ Winegrape Capital of the World”.
Although the City proper has a population of over 63,000 within just over 13 square miles, its school district, retail, medical, and other service industries serve an estimated 175,000 customers, as well as business, trade and visitors.
The City has invested heavily in its infrastructure and downtown revitalization plan, as well as a commitment to eservices to better serve the community. The City’s Information Systems (IS) department has been charged with maintaining and integrating all financial and planning data, and serving it electronically to its internal and external users- securely, efficiently AND cost effectively.
The many financial and planning systems’ data is kept in many disparate databases and must be shared amongst internal departments. Additionally, the City wanted to share information and services, securely, to its customers- the city’s businesses and taxpayers. Maintenance and integration had always been done using an intermediate Access database and scripting and hand coding. The systems multiplied and the need to share data quickly became too cumbersome to achieve project success and maintain on an ongoing basis.
Steve Mann, IS Manager for the City of Lodi, decided to investigate data integration tools as a means to deliver the number of projects and take some of the data maintenance burden off his team.
The integration platform’s requirements were fairly straightforward. They needed to transfer data from one location to another securely, efficiently and quickly.
“We need to move data from disparate sources to a target, to be able to manipulate it, and exchange data between sources. And we need to do it easily, quickly, and, since we are very conscientious with taxpayer money, affordably,’ says Mann.
As the city was using a variety of database servers including Oracle, MySql, DB2, and SQL Server, the solution had to be versatile. The core financial and billing systems are housed in IBM DB2 databases and moving the date into mySQL as well as drawing information things with ACCESS and SQL server, and create and share files in a number of formats for sharing on the other end is necessary. The manual execution of this solution was also becoming a burden, so the new solution had to be more automated. Additionally, the solution needed to be centralized, as multiple team members would be working on projects at different times.
Upon evaluating ETL tools available, Steve and his team selected Astera’s Centerprise Data Integrator. Centerprise fit Lodi’s requirements because it allowed him to just transfer data one table to another with whatever database server he needed to connect to.
“While this is our first experience with an ETL tool, we were very thorough with our evaluations. Centerprise suits our needs perfectly. It has all the functionality we need, it is easy to use, keeps the data together so it can be centrally managed, and it is the most cost effective,” says Mann.
“It is very important to get the functionality we need, and not pay for what we don’t need,” adds Mann.
The team also takes advantage of Centerprise’s built in scheduler to automate transfer jobs, eliminating the need for his old manual process involving Access.
“We are able to write transfer, save and schedule it to launch whenever. We use the scheduling functionality a lot,” says Mann.
“We depend on Centerprise. We use it extensively and it has allowed us to share information internally and externally quickly, and securely,” says Mann.
The City has been able to share information and connect with its customers more rapidly thanks to its ability to rapidly and securely share information. For example, Centerprise is used to create files from the databases that become source files for web pages, for both internal and external customers. This means that the public can look up business license information, as well as the city’s public utility accounts, and have their results delivered online.
Because the data on the database is housed internally, for obvious security reasons, sharing this data electronically previously would have been too risky as well as burdensome. But using Centerprise, the data is easily exported automatically into another database platform from the core systems, and the data can then become source files, giving the public the information they want and need without exposing the core systems to security threats.
“Centerprise allows my team to better share information internally and the ability to make the call as to what information and services they can offer to the public, easily, rapidly, and securely,” says Mann.
And rapidly has been key. Centerprise gives the team the ability to write a transfer, save it and schedule it to launch when they want using the scheduling functionality.
“Centerprise meets our needs for rapid deployment. Now, we can have transfers done in a matter of minutes which would have previously taken us a day, or days.”
Mann and his team have been so pleased with Centerprise and its functionality that they recently upgraded to Centerprise Data Integrator 5.
“We saw the additional features and functionality and definitely envision using them as we progress. And because we use it so extensively, we want to ensure we stay current with the software,” says Mann.
Additionally, Mann and his team have been very pleased with Astera’s responsiveness. Some can be hesitant to purchase an enterprise level product from a lesser-known company. But Mann has been very pleased.
“Astera’s size has been a benefit. We get fast and very responsive service from a team that is very intimate with the product and can solve our problems. With a some enterprise companies, we have been very disappointed with the level of competent and attentive service,” adds Mann.
“Astera is very responsive and has come through when we need them, quickly,” says Mann.
Astera Software is a leading provider of data integration solutions. Astera is focused on eliminating complexities in integration processes through continuous innovation.
Astera’s flexible and extendable Centerprise platform is fast becoming the platform of choice for medium and large enterprises and government agencies. An innovative parallel processing architecture and smart optimizations enable Centerprise to meet the needs of large enterprise scale data integration projects.