Improving ERP Observability and Performance with DSE
The Bünting Group is a trading company based in Germany that sells products to supermarkets, retailers, and wholesalers and also maintains an e-commerce store. They needed a database that could ensure high performance of their ERP system in any scenario while supporting event-driven architectures.
Elimination of ERP performance bottlenecks with DSE complementing existing SQL servers
Continuous monitoring of the ERP system at scale
Process optimization with event-driven tasks
Fast NoSQL adoption with DSE’s documentation, online training, and support services
Quick searches for countless parameters with DSE Search
Real-time analytics with DSE Analytics
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The Bünting Group is a medium-sized trading company headquartered in Germany that operates in the wholesale, retail, industry, and e-commerce sectors. The company employs more than 13,000 people and has stores in northwestern Germany. The Bünting Group is owned by parent J. Bünting Beteiligungs AG, which focuses on the strategic orientation and central management of all Bünting subsidiaries, including a tea trading house, six distribution companies, two service companies, a foundation, and a tea museum.
The company develops its enterprise resource planning (ERP) system internally and relies on Microsoft SQL for the database layer. Unfortunately, during some projects the relational database management system reached its limits for specific use cases—which resulted in slow response times for business processes that required complex read operations.
Seeking a better way forward, Bünting decided they needed a NoSQL database to ensure high performance at scale for these use cases. After doing their due diligence, the company found that DataStax Enterprise (DSE), the NoSQL database built on top of Apache Cassandra, was best suited for their needs.
The Challenge
In addition to its tea trading operations, Bünting does business with 200 supermarkets in northwest Germany, maintains its own online grocery platform, and supplies numerous wholesale and retail partners. The company develops its own merchandise management system to keep track of its inventory and make sure its customers have the products they need when they need them.
Due to the scale of their operations, ERP users often complained to the IT team about slow response times for business processes that required complex read operations from the database. Unfortunately, since the company lacked data integrity across testing and production environments, it was next to impossible to determine the source of these bottlenecks.
To figure out the best way forward, the company decided to develop a framework that accurately measured each application function and the associated response times with all substeps—and store that data in a database.
As a result, the team initiated a search for a NoSQL database that delivered the performance and scalability Bünting needed. With the right NoSQL solution in place, the company would not only be able to solve its ERP performance issues, they would also be able to implement an event-driven architecture to optimize business processes.
The Solution
Bünting evaluated several NoSQL databases, including MongoDB, Elasticsearch, and Apache Cassandra. Since the IT team had little experience working with NoSQL, they needed a solution that developers would be able to learn quickly. After studying their options, the team decided that DataStax Enterprise (DSE), a NoSQL database built on open source Cassandra, met their needs the best.
In addition to providing a powerful database layer, DSE also comes with a number of helpful resources, including robust documentation, complimentary online training, and top-tier support.
What’s more, Bünting was also able to extend its investment in DSE by adding DSE Search, for quick searches for countless parameters and correlations, and DSE Analytics, for real-time analytics.
The Results
With these new tools in place, Bünting is now able to continuously monitor their ERP system in production to pinpoint the conditions that lead to performance loss. As a result, they’re able to resolve problems that materialize quickly—and even prevent them from occurring in the first place.
For example, after analyzing their infrastructure, the IT team realized that certain workflows were only slow at certain times. By shifting tasks to night processing, that issue was quickly resolved.
Additionally, Bünting was able to implement a new event-driven architecture that significantly optimized recurring processes. Now, when a task arises and a user needs to take action, the system automatically lets that individual know. Once that person completes their task, the next person in line is automatically notified. Add it all up, and the right people are notified at the right times—all without manual intervention.
With DataStax, Bünting was able to quickly introduce Apache Cassandra and implement new ERP projects. Thanks to the scalability of the solution and DSE Analytics, the company is
well-positioned for the future.
Jens NintemannSoftware Developer at The Bünting Group
To date, Bünting has already implemented DSE for four ERP modules; the company plans to add more modules in the future. And while Bünting has just started getting used to DSE Analytics, the company is excited at the prospect of unlocking additional use cases for the product, including in the area of condition simulation. Thanks to its decision to use DataStax, Bünting has future-proofed its mission-critical business system, putting them in a great position to thrive as they move further into the future.
About DataStax
With DataStax, any developer or enterprise can now deploy data at massive scale, with 100 percent uptime, for lower cost. Today, nearly 500 of the world’s most demanding enterprises and half of the Fortune 100 rely on DataStax.
