Microgen Demonstrates Aptitude to Deliver Massive Transaction Processing Speeds

LONDON & NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Raising the bar even further for processing “Big Data” transaction volumes, Microgen Plc (LSE: MCGN) today announced that Microgen Aptitude, the enterprise application platform, has achieved the result of processing 7 billion transactions per hour performing in-memory processing on IBM System x. Further tests, involving Oracle database to database processing running across a combination of IBM System x and IBM Power Systems, resulted in Microgen Aptitude processing over 800 million transactions per hour. The tests were conducted over a three week period at the IBM Innovation Centre at Hursley in Hampshire, UK.

“Performance is at the heart of our software because we’re aware that for many enterprises, delivering new products and operational processes requires IT systems to process, manage and manipulate an exponentially increasing volume of data. There are products now addressing “big unstructured data”

The test results demonstrate that Microgen Aptitude and the Microgen Accounting Hub (“MAH”) are able to exploit the large number of processors, sophisticated storage systems and the high performance of the IBM platforms and consolidates Microgen Aptitude’s leadership in delivering the high transaction-processing performance required in sectors such as finance, telecom, utilities and digital media.

Microgen’s ability to exploit the processing power of IBM’s hardware provides a route for enterprises to deliver services fast, increasing both the speed at which systems can deliver business insights and the pace at which new applications can be implemented. Higher performing systems enable businesses to achieve superior economics through the rapid delivery of new applications, consolidation of legacy systems and by lowering the cost of maintenance and support.

Neil Thomson, CTO of Microgen said: “Performance is at the heart of our software because we’re aware that for many enterprises, delivering new products and operational processes requires IT systems to process, manage and manipulate an exponentially increasing volume of data. There are products now addressing “big unstructured data” but the majority of a company’s critical data consists of structured transactions. Microgen Aptitude is designed to process these at speeds which make “impossible things possible” - intra-day P&L’s, dynamic pricing treatments, daily product and customer profitability analyses. Businesses increasingly need an agile infrastructure that not only delivers high raw performance but which also scales to meet the inevitable increase in global transaction and data volumes.

Notes to editors

Test Details

The tests were carried out using Microgen Aptitude Version 3.11 and Microgen Accounting Hub Version 3.05 Running on the following configuration of hardware, operating system and database:

Application Server

System Information
Manufacturer:				IBM
Product Name:				IBM System x3850 X5 / x3950 X5 -[7143RHX]-

OS Information:
Distributor ID:				SUSE LINUX
OS:				SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 (x86_64)
Release:				10

CPU Information:
CPU model name :				Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E7- 8870 @ 2.40GHz
Physical CPU :				4
CPU Cores :				10
Sibling:				20 (Hyperthreading ON)

Memory Information:
Memory Size :				132060340 kB

Database Server

System Information

Manufacturer:				IBM
Product Name:				IBM Power 750 Express (8233E8B)

OS Information:
Distributor ID:				IBM
OS:				AIX 1 7 00F61EF94C00 (64)
Release:				7.1
CPU Information:

CPU model name :				IBM PowerPC_POWER7
Physical CPU :				24
Processor Clock Speed :				3550 MHz

Memory Information:
Memory Size :				65636 MB

Software installation:
Database:				Oracle Enterprise Server 11.2.0.1 upgraded to 11.2.0.3
Client:				Admin client installed on application server: version 11.2.0.1

About the tests:

Three main tests were undertaken using the following scenarios:

1. Using in-memory data

The source data was generated in-memory and the targets were in-memory buffers. The results indicated good scaling up to 7 billion transactions per hour. This test shows the raw processing speed of Microgen Aptitude unconstrained by slower input/output devices, it measures the upper limit of the processing speed of the current version of Microgen Aptitude.

2. Using data from file on a SAN

In this case Microgen Aptitude read source data from a file, performed some processing and then wrote the output back to a file. The files were located on the SAN. Each input/output record contained 50 columns and was about 370 Bytes long. The results delivered some noteworthy observations, notably that the absolute performance levels were very high – over one billion transactions per hour.

3. Using an Oracle 11g database

When the Oracle database was used for source data and target data, Microgen Aptitude was still able to deliver a very impressive result of around 800 million transactions per hour. This was achieved using the same data and business processes as for the previous tests.

Microgen Aptitude

The Microgen Aptitude platform was designed and built from the ground up as a single product to enable CIOs, Enterprise Architects and Business Heads to efficiently create new products and services (or to automate critical business processes) while reducing the cost and complexity of software development and maintenance.

Microgen Aptitude addresses the typical inefficiencies associated with software development processes, providing an intuitive method to graphically define and control a complete software application. With this approach, business and IT teams can to build applications quickly and collaboratively and can easily change business logic as new requirements surface.

Microgen Aptitude is a rapid application development approach that also enables the integration of Big Data into business applications, not just processing it in a data warehouse. This gives enterprise teams a new option for mission-critical or transaction-intense applications such as in digital media, telecom, utilities or the financial services industries.

About Microgen

Founded in 1974 and listed on the London Stock Exchange (MCGN) from 1983 Microgen is headquartered in London with offices worldwide.

Microgen provides innovative, enterprise class software platforms that help its customers to differentiate their capabilities and rapidly exploit new business opportunities. Microgen software solves problems including the creation of new software systems, the automation of complex business processes, the management of a high-volume or complexity of transactions, and the integration of existing legacy systems and data across the enterprise.

Microgen® Microgen plc. Microgen Aptitude® Microgen Aptitude Limited

Microgen Aptitude - US and European Patents Pending (for more information please refer to our website: http://www.microgen.com/uk-en/company/patents-and-trademarks)