Microsoft SQL ServerCustomer Solution Case Study

Top-Five Global Financial Firm Cuts Costs by 50 Percent and Speeds Performance

OverviewCountry or Region: JapanIndustry: Financial services

Customer Profilekabu.com Securities Co., Ltd., is a financial instruments firm registered under the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act of Japan. The company is a member of Japan Securities Dealers Association and the Financial Futures Association of Japan.

Business SituationThe company needed to increase the performance of systems and enhance scalability to support innovation.

SolutionIn just two months, kabu.com Securities upgraded its mission-critical ordering and customer databases to Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Enterprise and Windows Server 2008 Enterprise.

Benefits Boosts hardware utilization by up to 91

percent and cuts costs by 50 percent Improves service with faster

performance and high availability Increases the efficiency of IT personnel Delivers agility and peace of mind

“The fact that we can build mission-critical databases on the user-friendly Microsoft platform makes SQL Server 2008 very attractive…. It delivers the speed and reliability that satisfy our customers.”

Mr. Masataka Hoshino, Systems Operations Manager, kabu.com Securities

The Tokyo-based kabu.com Securities Co., Ltd., facilitates online trading and financial transactions for more than 7 million people. In December 2008, kabu.com needed to update its mission-critical ordering system to support growth and deliver consistently fast performance, even during peak transaction times. In just two months, kabu.com upgraded the system’s infrastructure to Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Enterprise and Windows Server 2008 Enterprise. The company has continued to scale the solution to support other systems and facilitate new services such as round-the-clock trading. By deploying its solution, kabu.com boosted hardware utilization by up to 91 percent and cut hardware costs by approximately 50 percent. The solution also improves service with faster performance and high availability, streamlines IT processes, and facilitates agility that results in peace of mind for employees.

SituationThe kabu.com Securities Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of the Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, is one of the top-five financial brokerages in the world, according to a 2011 study conducted by Forbes. The Internet securities company provides financial services such as securities trading, credit, foreign exchange, and risk management to more than 7 million people. In 2011, kabu.com employed 94 people and earned 13.5JPY (U.S.$172 million) in revenue.

One reason for the company’s success is that it continues to offer global customers new and innovative services. For example, kabu.com was the first company in Japan to facilitate trading during evening sessions and through an auction system. The company also has two patents for trading functions that automate the creation of online brokerage accounts and the implementation of limits on reverse orders.

To maintain exceptional customer service and facilitate growth, kabu.com must rapidly process a high volume of transactions. Any slowing or suspension of trading is unacceptable. “Slow transaction performance can have a devastating effect on our customers’ trading and must be avoided at all costs,” explains Mr. Masataka Hoshino, Systems Operations Manager at kabu.com Securities. To deliver mission-critical performance and reliability despite exceptionally high demand, kabu.com manages its own IT infrastructure that includes 500 server groups that run on the Microsoft platform. In just one second, the company can facilitate more than 3,000 stock exchange

queries and process more than 6,000 financial transactions. These transactions include stock trading, futures and options trading, covered warrants trading, and securities processing. “We can complete 3,000 to 4,000 trades in our usual peak trading time between 9:00 and 9:10 in the morning,” says Mr. Hoshino. “The company’s ordering database is perhaps our most mission-critical system because it receives and processes customers’ orders with the stock exchange. If it became unavailable for any reason, our customers’ trades would be completely suspended.”

To give its customers peace of mind regarding the reliability of its services, kabu.com offers service-level agreements (SLAs) that stipulate that the relay time between its ordering system and the stock exchange will not exceed five minutes. In addition, “Since August 2010, we have maintained a one-second guarantee,” says Mr. Hoshino. “For transactions that take longer than one second to process, we do not charge a service fee.”

In December 2008, kabu.com needed to deploy a new hardware and software solution to support its ordering system. The company’s lease for its HP Itanium hardware was going to expire in March 2009. In addition, the ordering system ran on the Windows Server 2000 operating system and Microsoft SQL Server 2000 data management software. These 32-bit products were designed to manage much smaller transaction volumes and could no longer deliver consistently fast performance during peak processing times. “When trading volumes increased, database queries were beginning to take more time to complete,” says Mr. Hoshino. As a result,

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the company was not always able to meet its SLAs.

The company began to evaluate database solutions that could scale to deliver mission-critical availability and performance despite rapid growth. In addition, it wanted to implement the new solution by the end of March 2009—before its hardware lease expired.

SolutionAfter carefully considering available database solutions, kabu.com decided to upgrade its ordering system to Windows Server 2008 Enterprise and SQL Server 2008 Enterprise. By doing so, the company would minimize changes to its existing infrastructure. For example, the ordering system interoperates with a customer database and numerous other informational databases, application servers, and content servers to process transactions. ”Changing our applications to use a different database management system would generate a lot of production costs that we could avoid by upgrading our databases to SQL Server 2008,” Mr. Hoshino says. “Rather than switch to another platform, we chose to deploy SQL Server 2008 so that we could take advantage of existing IT skills and accelerate system performance by an estimated 30 percent at the same time.”

Two database administrators from kabu.com thoroughly tested SQL Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 to collect data before finalizing the design and implementation schedule for the new solution. “While we made use of Microsoft documentation, we also received a lot of help from Microsoft Premier Support in

understanding how we could use new features in our solution,” says Mr. Hoshino. “Thanks to the meticulous support from Microsoft, we were able to simplify the implementation process and avoid needless circuitousness.”

The design and implementation plan involved just six IT personnel working over two months. “After verification tests, we were able to confirm the ease and reliability of migrating to SQL Server 2008,” says Mr. Hoshino. “And so rather than just upgrading the processing part of the ordering database as we had planned, we decided to take the plunge and upgrade the backbone of our infrastructure including the entire ordering system.”

In February 2009, IT personnel implemented two HP ProLiant DL785 G5 server computers that run Windows Server 2008 Enterprise and SQL Server 2008 Enterprise to support the ordering system. Each server features 256 gigabytes of random access memory and two quad-core AMD Opteron processors that run at 2.40GHz. IT personnel also upgraded other databases to SQL Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008, including the archive server that stores backups of the ordering system.

The new solution takes advantage of features in SQL Server 2008 to help speed performance, simplify IT processes, and increase availability. For example, features such as backup compression and page compression minimize disk space. Capabilities such as logging, data trace access, dynamic management views, and performance counter provide detailed information about system processes and

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“Thanks to the meticulous support from Microsoft, we were able to simplify the implementation process and avoid needless circuitousness.”

Mr. Masataka Hoshino,System Operations Manager,

kabu.com Securities

events. IT personnel can also use indexing and query optimizer to help simplify database tables and boost data processing.

In March 2009, the new solution went into production as scheduled. “We conducted extensive compatibility and performance tests before the solution went into production, but I still lost sleep the night before worrying what would happen if there were more transactions than expected,” says Mr. Hoshino. “However, when I went back to work, I was actually almost disappointed because there were absolutely no problems at all.”

With the implementation of SQL Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008, kabu.com also shifted its development environment from the Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 development system to the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5. The company has since expanded its solution to facilitate corporate growth, launch new offerings, and support 750,000 users, For example, in October 2009, kabu.com Securities used its new infrastructure to offer round-the-clock trading of Nikkei 225 Futures on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. In August 2010, the company also implemented two more ordering databases to manage currency margin trading through the Osaka Securities Exchange.

In 2011, kabu.com upgraded its customer database to SQL Server 2008, and it is now migrating its informational database to SQL Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008. This system supplies pricing information and news articles to customers. As it deploys new hardware, kabu.com plans to upgrade other systems to the new platform.

BenefitsBy upgrading its mission-critical systems to Windows Server 2008 Enterprise and SQL Server 2008 Enterprise, kabu.com Securities cut costs by increasing hardware utilization by up to 91 percent, improves service with faster performance and high availability, boosts the efficiency of IT personnel, and facilitates both agility and peace of mind.

Boosts Hardware Utilization by up to 91 Percent and Cuts Costs by 50 Percent By taking advantage of compression features in SQL Server 2008, kabu.com decreased the size of its ordering database. As a result, the company increased hardware utilization by up to 91 percent and, in turn, reduced its hardware costs by approximately 50 percent. “In the past, our backup file was the same size as the database itself,” Mr. Hoshino explains. “With SQL Server 2008, we can compress a 140 gigabyte database backup file into just 12 gigabytes.”

The company also takes advantage of page compression in SQL Server 2008 to minimize redundancies within tables, which saves disk space and streamlines processes. Mr. Hoshino says, “The effect of upgrading our archive database to SQL Server 2008 and implementing page compression was tremendous: we compressed 1.8 terabytes of data into 500 gigabytes.”

Improves Service with Fast Performance and High AvailabilityToday, kabu.com can deliver consistently fast performance to its customers regardless of the time of day and number of concurrent system users. “Since we upgraded our order database to SQL Server 2008, we have been able to achieve 100

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“In the past, our backup file was the same size as the database itself. With SQL Server 2008, we can compress a 140 gigabyte database backup file into just 12 gigabytes.”

Mr. Masataka Hoshino,System Operations Manager,

kabu.com Securities

percent compliance with our SLAs,” says Mr. Hoshino. “Our system can process transactions rapidly around the clock, which has helped increase customer satisfaction.”

In addition, Mr. Hoshino says, “With SQL Server 2008, query responses no longer decline temporarily during peak transaction periods and operations are stable. Our goal is for the system to run without incident, and we are proud to have achieved this.”

Increases the Efficiency of IT PersonnelBy upgrading databases to SQL Server 2008, kabu.com has simplified IT processes and increased database insight. “Index management in our databases that run SQL Server 2008 now requires less time and effort from IT personnel,” says Mr. Hoshino. “IT issues are easier to resolve by using features such as logging and data access tracing. Administrative tasks have also become much easier with the performance counter and dynamic management view capabilities in SQL Server 2008.”

IT personnel also take advantage of the SQL Server query optimizer to analyze and accelerate database queries with less effort. “I greatly appreciate query optimizer because it suggests the optimum process for retrieving and updating data. Query review prior to a new release is also much easier with query optimizer—and with it, we can rebuild indexes online in less time.”

Delivers Agility and Peace of MindBy choosing to run its mission-critical infrastructure on the Microsoft platform kabu.com maintains the agility it needs to rapidly modify and scale its infrastructure to meet changing business requirements. This ability gives employees peace of mind.

“Upgrading our ordering system was simple and the process was trouble-free; the migration of the order database went very smoothly,” explains Mr. Hoshino.

Because its initial implementation of SQL Server 2008 was so successful, the company has had no concerns about deploying SQL Server 2008 on other mission-critical databases. “SQL Server 2008 offers seamless compatibility with the rest of our IT infrastructure, which greatly minimizes any changes that need to be made to applications that interoperate with databases,” says Mr. Hoshino.

With its solution, kabu.com also has the scalable mission-critical infrastructure it needs to continue to expand its business and rapidly develop innovative services. Mr. Hoshino says, “The fact that we can build mission-critical databases on the user-friendly Microsoft platform makes SQL Server 2008 very attractive. We expect that SQL Server 2008 will continue to be a strategic asset for kabu.com Securities because it delivers the speed and reliability that satisfy our customers.”

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Microsoft Server Product PortfolioFor more information about the Microsoft server product portfolio, go to:www.microsoft.com/servers

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For More InformationFor more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers in the United States and Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:www.microsoft.com

For more information about kabu.com Securities products and services, call +81 3355 15111 or visit the website at: www.kabu.com

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Document published January 2012

Software and Services Microsoft Server Product Portfolio− Windows Server 2008 Enterprise− Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Enterprise

Services− Microsoft Premier Support

Technologies− Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5

Hardware− AMD Opteron processors− HP ProLiant DL785 G5 server

computers