Virgin Mobile France launched in 2006. Its business involves purchasing, repackaging, and selling wireless services. Leveraging the Orange infrastructure, Virgin Mobile France relied on a LAMP platform (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP/Perl/Python) to drive its business. Even though the MySQL Community Edition performed well, Virgin Mobile France began to consider its options when its number of subscribers approached 1 million.

“The MySQL database has powered Virgin Mobile France from the beginning, delivering great performance and the cost benefits of open-source technology,” said Xavier Nicolle, chief technology officer at Virgin Mobile France. However, he said, "We wanted to ensure that the database continued to support our business over the long term at low cost.”

With that in mind, Virgin Mobile France decided to subscribe to Sun's MySQL Enterprise Unlimited commercial offering. This subscription-based service includes regular MySQL Enterprise software updates, proactive database monitoring tools and access to full 24x7 technical support. Like other customers subscribed to the solution, Virgin Mobile France can support an unlimited number of database applications across the organization for a single, set price – which is a fraction of the price of comparable enterprise licensing agreements.

"Compared with other database technologies, we can reach the levels of performance we want at a lower cost," Nicolle said. "With MySQL, we believe that we have the best ratio for performance, availability, and cost on the market."

Virgin Mobile France now has 40 MySQL Enterprise databases running across 12 servers, managing 2.5 TB of customer data. All of these applications are supported by Sun technical staff, regular software updates, and MySQL Enterprise Monitor - an advanced GUI tool which proactively scans production systems for potential problems and performance bottlenecks.

With MySQL Enterprise, Virgin Mobile France:

• maximized database performance with 24x7 technical support,
• reduced costs with unlimited support for MySQL Enterprise, and
• received access to monthly updates and quarterly service packs automatically.

Reflecting on the move, Nicolle commented, “Our company will continue using MySQL Enterprise Unlimited in the long term because it comes with the level of technical support a growing business requires.”

More Information

Customer Snapshot: Virgin Mobile France

MySQL Enterprise Unlimited [...read more...]

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