BMC Software, Inc. (NYSE: BMC), a leader in enterprise management, today announced that The Vanguard Group, the nation's second-largest mutual fund firm, has chosen BMC Software for its DB2 data management needs.
BMC Software was recognized as a vendor that could provide the high level of support needed for Vanguard's aggressive technology initiative. The initiative, which allowed Vanguard to provide even greater service to its shareholders by streamlining its complex data environment into a single repository, required a technologically advanced solution that further eased the management of its data while providing continuous availability. BMC Software's Log Master for DB2 was deemed an appropriate solution for meeting the Company's stringent requirements.
Serving 18 million shareholder accounts and managing about $800 billion in U.S. mutual fund assets, Vanguard is responsible for an enormous amount of data. In the past, this data was stored across many application-specific data stores. These data stores could be in different databases, files, tapes, and even across multiple platforms. To provide better service to its shareholders, Vanguard created one large repository to house all of its shareholder data. This enabled Vanguard to eliminate duplicate data, improve data quality, and react to shareholder trends more quickly. The end result for Vanguard was improved customer service as well as the opportunity to increase revenue by providing additional services to its shareholders. To obtain this level of success, Vanguard had to overcome some major technology roadblocks. Vanguard looked to BMC Software for a software solution that would meet its data integrity requirements.
With the advent of a single data repository, an enhanced set of database tools was required. In the event of processing failure, some DB2 UDB for z/OS databases would typically require a point-in-time recovery of the data, rendering applications that use these databases unavailable during a recovery and introducing the potential to lose data unassociated with the update. Neither of these scenarios was acceptable to Vanguard.
"From the beginning Vanguard has maintained a sharp focus on serving its clients. Part of our success is ensuring the data which our shareholders rely on is always accurate and continuously available," said Bob Yale, principal Technology Operations, The Vanguard Group. "BMC Software's Log Master for DB2 has streamlined a number of rather intensive, time consuming tasks for our DBAs, freeing them up to work on more pressing issues."
Vanguard was looking to increase availability of its critical shareholder data by expediting DB2 recoveries, ensuring data integrity, migrating data changes, and routinely auditing activity on critical data assets as required by new government regulations. However, access to and analysis of native DB2 log data requires complex programming because the information is not available in a format that most administrators can readily use. BMC Software's Log Master for DB2 increases data availability by providing a non-invasive technique to process data on the DB2 log in support of Vanguard's initiative.
Log Master for DB2 allows companies to automatically analyze and back out problem transactions using reports and historic SQL statements generated from the information in the native logs. Manual methods are too timely and costly, and point-in-time recovery means elongated down time and the potential loss of data. Log Master for DB2 is able to gather information from the DB2 log to "undo" changes successfully, eliminating hours of manual work and preventing downtime. In addition to recovering specific transactions without affecting other data updates, it also audits database activity and generates reports to track the data changes (an important consideration in light of the Sarbanes- Oxley legislation).