SESCO Enterprises Improves Performance with Red Hat and JBoss

Industry: Electricity and natural gas trading

Geography: New Jersey and Pennsylvania

Opportunity: Build an internal infrastructure to provide maximum development flexibility and high-system reliability and performance for fast-paced trading business

Solution: Hardware: IBM Power PCs with Intel Dual P5 Processors, IBM xSeries with Intel Dual Xeon Processors
Software: Red Hat Enterprise Linux versions 3, 4 and 5, JBoss Enterprise Application Platform , MySQL databases, SESCO database application

Benefits:

• Facilitated the creation of a high-performance infrastructure that supports rapid database growth; flexible application development and high levels of Red Hat support translate into huge cost-savings and a competitive advantage

• Read the press release

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SESCO Enterprises is a leading electricity and natural gas trading company founded in 2002 by a group of financial management, energy operations, and technology professionals. The company provides risk-reduction strategies that consistently result in large returns on investment for investors, stakeholders, and shareholders. SESCO’s founders and associates have more than 100 years of combined experience in trading and risk management, covering the full range of energy markets, including power, natural gas, oil, refined products, coal, and emissions.

Opportunity

To provide its traders with the most up-to-date information, SESCO Enterprises needed to build a development infrastructure that combined high reliability with ease of use. “Traders depend on our production databases to gather and analyze information on a number of trends and then formulate their buying and selling decisions. The databases are critical for them to gain the best market advantage,” said Gene Meier, Systems Administrator for SESCO Enterprises. When Meier first joined SESCO in 2003, the year-old company had two developers on staff and relied on an external company to manage its databases. To support the future growth of the company, Meier knew he needed to put the right systems in place internally. “We wanted to gain more control over our server environment, increase processing speeds, and facilitate development of SESCO’s database programs,” said Meier.

Solution

In 2003, the database company that SESCO worked with was already utilizing Red Hat solutions, making the company’s Red Hat implementation easy. “When we decided to move our database servers in-house, Red Hat was the natural choice. We needed a solution that ensured easy installation, excellent support, and the highest availability possible. Our databases have to stay up at all times, and we knew Red Hat solutions would give us peace of mind,” said Meier. The decision to implement the JBoss Enterprise Application Platform was equally simple. SESCO developers were already writing Java-based applications and using MySQL databases. “JBoss supports the Java versions we were already working with, making it seamless for our developers to integrate the new solution,” said Meier.

Today, twelve IBM servers with Intel dual processors run Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, 4, and 5 at SESCO. One of these servers also runs the JBoss Enterprise Application Platform. For redundancy, SESCO created identical backup servers running JBoss technology in the company’s Pennsylvania and New Jersey offices. The traders have the ability to access these backup servers from their homes as needed. “Using Red Hat and JBoss solutions, we’ve built a redundant, reliable infrastructure that minimizes downtime, provides failover capabilities, and keeps our traders up and running,” said Meier.

Using Red Hat and JBoss solutions facilitates program development and customization for SESCO. The company’s database application is designed to gather information from multiple websites including weather, utility company, and consortia sites. The JBoss Enterprise Application Platform automates the process by funneling data into the company’s databases and then serving the specific information traders query in real time. “To assess power usage, traders need to look at a wide range of current and historical data, such as specific weather incidents and patterns. JBoss enables our developers to customize the presentation tier easily so traders can view the information they need, in the way they need it. Plus, Red Hat support for MySQL makes it possible for our application to run seamlessly without extra work on the part of our developers,” said Meier.

SESCO also leverages the JBoss Enterprise Application Platform’s messaging feature to support transaction-driven messaging. “We need to manage and track every information-gathering transaction completed by our application. JBoss messaging technology enables us to configure the transactions and update them regularly. As the transactions take place, JBoss messaging automatically informs us of their status.”

Benefits

Implementing Red Hat solutions translated into huge cost-savings for SESCO, and the company now enjoys the high levels of support required for its business. “The Red Hat support team has become acquainted and comfortable with our environment, so their ability to resolve issues specific to our system is excellent. And because Red Hat doesn’t charge us per call, our total cost of ownership has decreased,” said Meier. Eliminating licensing fees also helped SESCO drive costs down. “Red Hat doesn’t charge licensing fees either, so the TCO is much less than that of an enterprise version of Windows. Using Red Hat has resulted in big cost-savings for us,” said Meier.

The flexibility and support provided by JBoss and Red Hat solutions give SESCO a competitive edge in a time-sensitive market. “In our market, we can make or lose money in seconds. Red Hat and JBoss support enables us to respond more quickly to changes in the market and gain a competitive advantage,” said Meier. Now, developers have complete flexibility to create applications that meet the specific needs of SESCO traders. “Working with JBoss open source code means we can customize our software with the functionality we require, writing code as quickly as we need it. We’re not under the control of Windows coding,” said Meier.

The ease of use of Red Hat and JBoss solutions also facilitated the creation of a high-performance, scalable infrastructure for SESCO. “Before joining SESCO, I was a Windows developer, but transitioning to Red Hat was easy. Implementing Red Hat and JBoss simplified system administration and application development for the company from the very beginning,“ said Meier, adding, “In three years, our database more than tripled in size. Because Red Hat and JBoss solutions can support this type of growth, we’ve been able to increase the reliability and performance of our servers as our database continues to expand.” To ensure continued high performance, SESCO upgrades its Red Hat servers with the latest releases, and most recently migrated to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.

Meier is looking forward to continuing to implement new Red Hat capabilities, such as clustering and virtualization, to increase the reliability of SESCO systems further. “Working with JBoss and Red Hat ensures our team doesn’t get calls at two o’clock in the morning,” said Meier.