Microsoft SQL ServerCustomer Solution Case Study

Services Company Moves to Latest Database, Improves Developer Productivity 50 Percent

OverviewCountry or Region: United StatesIndustry: Professional services—Other services

Customer ProfileInsperity™, based in Houston, Texas, provides an array of human resources and business performance solutions that support more than 100,000 businesses and 2 million employees. It employs 1,900 people.

Business SituationThe company wanted to standardize its varied Microsoft database solutions on a single platform that offered mission-critical scalability and reliability with centralized database management tools.

SolutionIT staff migrated 10 applications to Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise in a weekend. Insperity will continue to migrate current and future applications to SQL Server 2008 R2.

Benefits Top-tier business continuity Flexible, centralized data management Improved developer productivity Adaptable platform for innovation

“At Insperity, our mission-critical applications support nearly 6,000 client companies and more than 110,000 employees. SQL Server 2008 R2 is our database platform of choice.”

Eric Fontaine, Director of Business Applications, Insperity

Insperity™, a leading provider of human resources and business performance solutions, sought to consolidate its Microsoft data management solutions on a single, extensible data management platform to support mission-critical applications and gain administrative efficiencies. It chose Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 data management software and migrated 10 business applications and more than a terabyte of data—on a single weekend. IT staff used the latest features of the solution to consolidate and better manage their data-driven applications, improving productivity by 50 percent, reducing data storage costs, and significantly increasing performance for some applications. They also migrated departmental Microsoft Access databases to a single instance of SQL Server to ensure reliability and performance, while still allowing business owners to retain control over their applications.

SituationBased in Houston, Texas, Insperity™, a trusted advisor to America’s best businesses for more than 25 years, provides an array of human resources and business solutions designed to help improve business performance. Insperity Business Performance Advisors offer the most comprehensive Workforce Optimization Solution™ in the marketplace that delivers administrative relief, better benefits, reduced liabilities, and a systematic way to improve productivity.

The company delivers its Workforce Optimization Solution through a co-employment relationship with a customer and its existing employees, including the business owner. Under this arrangement, Insperity assumes many of the responsibilities of being an employer, providing value-added benefits and services not typically available at small businesses.

Clients also have access to the Employee Service CenterSM, a web-based self-service platform to maximize the benefits of Insperity services, and MarketPlaceSM, an e-commerce portal that offers products and services from third-party providers, such as AT&T, Dell, FTD.com, and Staples.

The company’s additional offerings to improve business performance include MidMarket Solutions™, Performance Management, Expense Management, Time and Attendance, Organizational Planning, Recruiting Services, Employment Screening, Retirement Services, Business Insurance, and Technology Services.

The 175 employees in the IT department at Insperity work diligently to maintain a lean, efficient IT infrastructure to support the company’s business operations. The Business Applications Group has recently taken steps to standardize on IT vendors that deliver the most value for the money with powerful, flexible, and interoperable technologies rather than buying single-purpose products. The company’s recent database migration project is a case in point.

Heterogeneous Database EnvironmentInsperity has an IBM Informix database for its online transaction processing (OLTP) payroll and human resources systems that have been online since 1988. Additionally, many departments managed their own Microsoft Access databases for small numbers of employees to track departmental business processes. Within the Business Applications Group, five database administrators (DBAs) managed approximately 21 business applications supported by Microsoft SQL Server 2000, 2005, and 2008 data management software in development, test, stage, and production environments.

Given this situation, Insperity DBAs needed skills that would enable them to work in diverse environments, using different sets of management tools, and ensuring interoperability among disparate systems. Insperity management decided to streamline the IT environment by standardizing on cost-effective technologies that offered the requisite level of functionality, flexibility, and reliability for its mission-critical systems. To move ahead with those objectives, the Business Applications Group decided to take a

27

“We needed to standardize on a database solution reliable and scalable enough for our mission-critical workloads and flexible enough to meet our departments’ needs.”

Alex Cheng, Supervisor of Database Architecture, Insperity

critical look at its existing database solutions before choosing a standard vendor.

Goals for the Business Applications GroupThe Business Applications Group wanted to address three main projects. The first was the large number of proprietary applications developed on the SQL Server 2005 data management software that needed to be upgraded. These included 10 critical applications, such as the Benefits Studio that administers 401(k) accounts and health insurance policies for Insperity customers’ employees and the Employee Service Center web portal, where 70 percent of customers enter their payroll data. The second project involved upgrading a customized version of Siebel CRM software that the company renamed OneVoice, which ran on SQL Server 2000. The third project involved 10 department databases based on Microsoft Access.

“It had become obvious to the IT department that some of these Access databases had grown in size and significance to the point where they were mission critical,” says Eric Fontaine, director of business applications at Insperity. “These databases had grown beyond the range of Microsoft Access capabilities, and departmental staffs were having difficulty with indexing and managing them correctly.” Fontaine challenged the DBA group to bring some enterprise-grade functionality to these databases, such as scalability, reliability, health monitoring, resource governance, and disaster recovery capabilities in such a way that the department heads and business staff could retain control over their applications’ data.

In addition, the IT staff had to decide what to do about its aging Informix database and the payroll and human resources applications that it supported. The Business Applications Group also wanted to build up their business reporting and data analysis capabilities, perhaps eventually replacing two existing third-party solutions. Finally, a series of recent corporate acquisitions underlined the value of standardizing on a single, manageable, and flexible database platform.“As we acquired more companies, it was a challenge to integrate their data with our existing systems,” says Alex Cheng, supervisor of database architecture at Insperity. “We needed to standardize on a database solution reliable and scalable enough for our mission-critical workloads and flexible enough to meet our departments’ needs. And for IT, it would be nice to have a set of centralized management capabilities to reduce time spent on database chores.”

SolutionInsperity decided to standardize all the databases managed by the Business Applications Group on Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise data management software. “We chose SQL Server 2008 R2 because it’s much more than a database, it’s a platform,” says Cheng. “Unlike the solutions of other companies that only offer database software, a Microsoft solution delivers core infrastructure resiliency for our mission-critical applications, a flexible application development environment, and centralized management tools. We also chose Microsoft for its technical leadership, with new and enhanced features in SQL Server

37

“SQL Server 2008 R2 gave us a weekend deployment to a platform with the latest and greatest development and management capabilities.”

Eric Fontaine, Director of Business Applications, Insperity

2008 R2, such as Transparent Data Encryption, Data Compression, Resource Governor, and Master Data Services. The third reason is total cost of ownership [TCO]. Any time we talk about TCO, we look at performance and cost. Year after year, SQL Server has been number one.”

While the new features and capabilities in the R2 version provided an incentive for Fontaine and Cheng to formalize a strategic move to SQL Server 2008 enterprisewide, they also based their decision on long-term experience working with Microsoft database technologies. “We started using SQL Server at Insperity when we began to build web-based applications,” says Fontaine. “When it came to doing development that was simple and effective, SQL Server was a logical choice. We had standardized on the Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 development system for our development environment and we liked the integration with SQL Server back then as much as we do now. Because SQL Server offered competitive scalability and reliability with other database vendors, we gradually expanded the solution to the point where it’s now the standard platform for the Business Applications Group.”

A Weekend MigrationInsperity wanted to achieve a quick database consolidation and upgrade to reduce disruption to the business. “We made the migration in a weekend because it was logistically simpler for us and the fallout of doing it all at once with SQL Server 2008 R2 was low compared to other database solutions,” says Fontaine. ”We ended up migrating 80 percent of the Business Applications Group’s applications in that one weekend.”

These applications include the Benefits Studio, with 53 gigabytes of data and 182 tables, the Employee Service Center web portal, and the OneVoice solutions. IT staff used the test and development environments as an arena for regression testing, application compatibility testing, and troubleshooting breakages. “It’s a credit to SQL Server that very few applications needed any modification,” reports Fontaine. “Nor did we need huge amounts of resources to get the job done: only a small amount of time was required from our software developers who collaborated closely with our business analysts.”

Cheng credits the DBAs on his team for the project’s success. They used their programming skills in C# to create scripts for every step of the upgrade process. With this script-driven approach, Insperity has standardized the upgrade process for a large number of SQL Server databases. The team decided not to do an in-place upgrade, instead scheduling the migration to coincide with the company’s hardware refresh program. By August 2010, the DBA team had new HP production servers up and running, with zero defects, at principal and mirror sites.

“With SQL Server, we can take advantage of lower cost server hardware and still gain the performance and scalability that we need,” says Cheng. “Our Microsoft account rep called us on Friday and asked if there was anything he could do, but we were ready to go. When he called again on Monday, I was able to say it went without a hitch.”

47

“Any time we talk about TCO, we look at performance and cost. Year after year, SQL Server has been number one.”Alex Cheng, Supervisor of Database Architecture, Insperity

In just one weekend, the Business Applications Group upgraded and standardized its mission-critical business applications that were accessed by thousands of users. These databases store 1.5 terabytes of data and can support up to 6,000 concurrent connections at a peak transaction rate of 90,000 transactions per minute.

With all business applications running on the latest version of Microsoft database technologies, Insperity gained a valuable platform to proactively manage its applications and database environments. Several new features and technologies within SQL Server 2008 R2 are of particular interest to Cheng’s DBA group. These include Data Compression, Resource Governor, and Performance Data Collector. Data Compression will help to reduce storage costs on the large archived databases; Resource Governor optimizes workloads by controlling CPU and memory resources to ensure that mission-critical workloads maintain higher priority over other database activities, and, finally, Performance Data Collector will be used to troubleshoot and monitor all instances of SQL Server 2008 R2 from one location.

A New Database Platform for the DepartmentsCheng and his DBA team used SQL Server 2008 R2 to address the challenge set by Fontaine to find an alternative database platform for the company’s departments. They consolidated the data from 10 departmental Microsoft Access databases into a single SQL Server 2008 R2 database and still ensured compliance with corporate security policies. They used SQL Server Audit to delegate certain database

administration permissions to specific business users. Meanwhile, DBAs use SQL Server monitoring and alert tools to stay informed whenever any of the departments’ business users encounter problems managing the new environment.

“It was a seamless process to migrate the Microsoft Access databases to SQL Server 2008 R2, department by department,” says Fontaine. “We worked with designated power users on the business side to reassure departmental users that they would not have to relinquish control over their data.”

BenefitsInsperity already benefits from its strategic decision to migrate to SQL Server 2008 R2 to run its most demanding mission-critical applications, streamline application maintenance, improve developer productivity, and gain a flexible platform for future innovation. “Our biggest motivation for this project was to build a common, easily managed database infrastructure,” says Fontaine. “SQL Server 2008 R2 gave us a weekend deployment to a platform with the latest and greatest development and management capabilities. We have experienced substantial performance improvement on some databases since the upgrade. We’ve improved performance for some databases by 100 percent; we’ve used data compression to reduce support costs 40 percent; and we’ve used the latest tools to increase developer productivity 50 percent. And we’ve only just begun to take advantage of all the new features in the platform.”

57

“Operations that used to take one minute now take less than a second, and we’ve seen 100 percent improvements in certain operations.”

Eric Fontaine, Director of Business Applications, Insperity

Top-Tier Business Continuity, PerformanceSince the Business Applications Group standardized on SQL Server 2008 R2, the IT staff reports that performance and reliability easily match their expectations for top-tier applications. “At Insperity, our mission-critical applications support nearly 6,000 client companies and more than 110,000 employees. SQL Server 2008 R2 is our database platform of choice.”

Business users in different departments have noticed a significant increase in performance since Cheng and his DBAs migrated their data to SQL Server. “We are hearing about orders of magnitude performance improvements with some of these databases,” says Fontaine. “Operations that used to take one minute now take less than a second, and we’ve seen 100 percent improvements in certain operations.”

Flexible, Centralized Data Management The performance improvement can be partially attributed to the fact that Insperity used SQL Server 2008 R2 to centralize previously distributed, unmanaged databases, and took advantage of the new management tools to provide the business users with suggestions on how to improve performance.

“When we centralized the Microsoft Access databases on a common server, we ran the risk of one department causing an issue on the server that would affect other departments’ data,” says Fontaine. “We wouldn’t have been able to take this risk before, but SQL Server 2008 R2 provides us with the flexibility to work around the problem and return an acceptable level of

control to the business users. It was a win for the business, and it was a win for IT.” Improved Developer ProductivitySQL Server works with Visual Studio 2010 to provide an interoperating development experience from the client to the data-tier. “With Microsoft, everything works together—the Microsoft .NET Framework 4, Visual Studio, and the latest SQL Server 2008 R2 features,” says Cheng. “There’s a lot of programming and integration that you can do against SQL Server from an administration standpoint and an application standpoint. Even my hardcore Oracle DBA is impressed! Conservatively, I’d say everything is 50 percent faster, easier, and quicker to do in the SQL Server environment compared to Oracle or Informix.”

Adaptable Platform for InnovationInsperity IT employees are looking forward to adopting the many features within SQL Server 2008 R2 at their own pace, according to business needs. The company’s first priority was to develop a database platform that delivers scalable, failure-resistant database services for both mission-critical and other business applications. Now it can begin to expand on the benefits of its investment. With a Microsoft database solution, Insperity benefits from robust product innovation to help it gain tactical and strategic advantages. According to Fontaine this was one of the main motivators for upgrading to SQL Server 2008 R2.

“We plan on using SQL Server Reporting Services, which is already built into our SQL Server licensing to expand our business

67

“Microsoft does a good job of making sure we have options on the table that are built in and available to us at all times. How can you put a value on that?”

Eric Fontaine, Director of Business Applications, Insperity

intelligence capabilities,” Fontaine says. “Also, we plan on using Master Data Services to help us onboard new companies and integrate their data. Microsoft has a cloud-based SQL Server solution, Microsoft SQL Azure, which we could use if we decide to expand our software-as-a-service business and need to store data in the cloud. Microsoft does a good job of making sure we have options on the table that are built in and available to us at all times. How can you put a value on that?”

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 delivers higher scalability for mission-critical environments, more efficient IT, and expanded reporting and analytics through self-service business intelligence.

For more information about Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2, go to: www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/R2-editions.aspx

77

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 Insperity products and services, call (800) 465-3800 or visit the website at: www.insperity.com

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

Document published June 2011

Software and Services Microsoft Server Product Portfolio− Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2

Enterprise Microsoft Visual Studio− Microsoft Visual Studio 2010

Technologies− Microsoft .NET Framework 4− Microsoft SQL Server Reporting

Services