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Zalando Selects EXASolution to Optimize its Data Warehouse

By Madhubanti Rudra
TMCnet Contributor

An online shoe store in Germany, Zalando, recently has invested in a high-performance, in-memory database from EXASOL. Nuremberg-based EXASOL AG is the developer of high-performance database EXASolution, which is a technology- based solution that has been designed specifically for enterprise warehouse applications and business intelligence solutions.

Zalando specializes in footwear but also sells clothing, fashion accessories and sports equipment. The store sells over 800 brands and 40,000 different products. With such a comprehensive product portfolio, the company has to manage a massive database. According to the company, since mid 2010, the company’s data warehouse has grown five-fold.

Zalando was on the lookout for a high-performance database that would allow the company to evaluate very large volumes of data within a short span of time. The high-performance in-memory database from EXASOL offers target group-specific analyses in real-time.

With the new database management solution, the company expects to accelerate its reporting, process complex requests more quickly and carry out analyses more precisely.

This will in turn enable the company to effectively respond to consumer behavior. Through better management of its database, the company will be able to identify sales potential early on and modify its product range according to the target group. 

The EXASolution is flexible and infinitely scalable. In addition, it can fully support the future growth of the company data and can be integrated easily into the existing IT infrastructure.

EXASolution 4.0 has been used at Zalando since December 27, 2011. Running on HP hardware, this database supports SAP (News - Alert) business objects amongst other things.

“EXASolution has contributed to clear improvement in performance. Analyses that previously took 10 minutes are now finished in 10 seconds,” Business Intelligence Manager at Zalando, Eric von Czapiewski, said in a statement.

“In addition to the performance of the system, we were also sold on its high level of scalability. Trial versions working with data volumes that we expect to reach in around two years showed that EXASolution will easily grow with the data. Moreover, it was important that the new solution could be implemented very quickly. In this respect too, EXASOL ideally fulfilled our expectations,” Czapiewski added.