In the Netherlands, municipal budgets have been under intense pressure. Since more must be done with less money, IT managers are looking for alternative database solutions to control IT costs. One of EnterpriseDB’s (EDB) partners in the Netherlands, PinkRoccade Local Government, helps governments develop their cloud-based applications on Postgres Plus to cut costs.
Local governments generally speaking have two primary goals when it comes to applications: they must be able to share data and they must be cost effective. That’s not an easy task when you consider that an organization’s data load grows by 10% each year, according to popular estimates. The expansion of data is driving up costs, both for data management and storage. Because of this, CIOs face two major challenges: they must keep up with growing data loads, and at the same time cope with decreasing budgets.
PinkRoccade Local Government, the leading provider of business software to governments and healthcare institutions in the Netherlands, has developed a solution for the problems of rising costs and expanding data loads. Working in close cooperation with the city of Amsterdam, PinkRoccade developed the so-called ‘Makelaarsuite’, where data can be transferred between apps in a secure and convenient manner. This platform, bundled with similar applications-as-a-ervice, help governments realize substantial savings. Already more than 40 government agencies and national organizations in the Netherlands use the hosting platform, called the Pink Private Cloud. It’s now much easier for agencies like Child Protection Services and other national ministries to share information.
Call for Open Source
PinkRoccade started developing the Pink Private Cloud in 2001, with Oracle comprising the database but later moved to EDB Postgres Plus for the database. After a call from the national government to actively consider open source software for government projects, PinkRoccade began exploring alternatives. An important requirement of the government in using open source is that these solutions have the same quality and functionally as traditional software. PinkRoccade discovered Postgres Plus Advanced Server from EDB was a compelling alternative.
PinkRoccade has been using Red Hat JBoss and Red Hat Enterprise Linux for many years. The addition of EDB's Postgres Plus Advanced Server to the open source software stack was a logical step. Moreover, new cloud functionality performed better with EDB Postgres Plus than with Oracle technology. For that reason PinkRoccade Local Government switched to EDB Postgres Plus for the Pink Private Cloud and has since decided to develop all future cloud-based applications with EDB Postgres Plus.
In addition to the functional benefits, local governments in the Netherlands can now also benefit from lower costs. By using EDB Postgres Plus, they no longer pay the substantial licensing fees from other suppliers and can dramatically reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) of their IT solutions.
Jeannot Bos is Sales Director, Europe at EnterpriseDB.