Plusnet

Plusnet Supports Rapid Growth of Customer Base
by Improving Visibility, Performance, and Scalability

"MySQL Enterprise Edition will give us the functionality, scalability, and security we need to support our rapidly growing customer base and expansion of telecommunications services. In addition, MySQL Enterprise Monitor provides us with real-time granular visibility across our database landscape and should lead to improved performance."

Richard McRae
Infrastructure Operations Manager
Plusnet Plc

Introduction

Plusnet is a British quad play internet service provider delivering broadband, landline, Internet Protocol television (IPTV), and mobile services to more than 1.5 million residential and business customers. Having experienced significant year-on-year growth of its customer base-achieved by offering great value deals and high-quality customer service-Plusnet needed to improve the scalability, manageability, and security of its database architecture to meet current and future business needs.

Challenges

  • Improve overall database efficiency efficiency to enable easier systems scaling in light of annual growth in telecommunications and internet customers
  • Enhance monitoring capability capability across our database estate in order to rapidly identify abnormalities and reduce system bottlenecks
  • Ensure that all Plusnet databases can be backed up by transitioning to a database solution which is fully compatible with third-party backup software
  • Ensure a high level of technical and consultative support and training to improve in-house database knowledge and IT project planning

Business Results & Metrics

  • Increased database architecture scalability and maintainability by deploying 23 MySQL Enterprise Edition databases to underpin customer relationship management (CRM) system and other applications essential for delivering first-rate telecommunications services to more than 1.5 million customers
  • Improved visibility of database estate which in total comprises 155 instances and 45 terabytes of data by deploying MySQL Enterprise Monitor-enabling database administrators (DBAs) to view platforms from a single screen, rapidly detect problems, minimize bottlenecks, and enhance overall system performance
  • Enhanced database support by upgrading to MySQL Enterprise Edition, so that Plusnet's DBAs can leverage high-level 24/7 expertise from My Oracle Support to address all database concerns and minimize business risk
  • Saved DBA and system administrator's time previously spent on documentation by using MySQL Enterprise Monitor across database replicas and sources-meaning that IT staff no longer need to update documentation after failover or switchover because they can instantly review the replication topology on intuitive dashboards
  • Leveraged on-site consulting services provided by MySQL's technical team to improve Plusnet's IT roadmap planning-for example, helping the database team to decide how best to leverage InnoDB Cluster to enable automatic failovers; how to upgrade a range of databases to MySQL Enterprise Edition 8.0; and what the best approach is for moving tables stored in MyISAM to InnoDB
  • Enabled Plusnet to perform backups across its key database infrastructure by upgrading to MySQL Enterprise Edition-providing the compatibility and interconnectivity with third-party backup software which was not possible with MySQL Community Edition
  • Simplified maintenance and administration by enabling DBAs to instantly assess the health metrics of the entire database infrastructure-including database, query, host, and storage performance-without needing to log into each individual platform and type in multiple commands

Why MySQL Enterprise Edition

Previously a MySQL Community Edition customer, Plusnet selected MySQL Enterprise Edition to gain much-needed support for its rapidly expanding business and IT landscape-including 24/7 telephone support and access to MySQL expertise and specialists on key topics, in addition to on-site consultative support and future technical training sessions.

Additionally, Plusnet chose MySQL Enterprise Edition due to its improved database functionality, particularly in terms of monitoring, scalability, and tooling for database backups.

"We considered using Oracle Enterprise Manager with the MySQL plug-in but following an on-site consultation session with Oracle MySQL representatives it was suggested that the plugin would only offer about a quarter of the functionality of MySQL Enterprise Monitor. Furthermore, MySQL Enterprise Edition enables us to scale much easier and perform backups across our key database estate," Richard McRae said.

About Plusnet Plc

Plusnet was born in 1997 with a simple plan - to think and act differently from other communications providers and save consumers and businesses money. That's not changed since the day it launched; 21 years later it's still providing great value phone, broadband and mobile services nationwide, from its HQ in Yorkshire.

Priding itself on offering the best customer service out there; and with a stack of awards to prove it, it seems our customers and industry professionals agree. Recently awarded ‘Best Broadband Provider', Best Broadband Provider, Best Customer Care, Most Reliable Broadband Provider, Most Trustworthy Provider and Most Recommended Provider' at the 2018 Broadband Genie Awards and ‘Best Provider of Customer Service' and ‘Best SIM Only Network' at the uSwitch Broadband Awards 2019.

For more information visit: http://www.plus.net.