“You buy one piece of software and it’s all there— integration, analysis, and reporting, with a consistent GUI. It lets me sync with our Exchange Server so our reports go out daily to stakeholders who need them.” Tim Lum, Head of Business Intelligence, Kelkoo The previous business intelligence tool used by Kelkoo prevented its decision makers from getting all the information they needed to run the company. After considering MySQL and Oracle alternatives, Kelkoo selected Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 data management software because it included reporting and analysis tools, as well as core database functionality. It also represented the best value choice. The business-critical application copes with huge volumes of data—Kelkoo is now storing nearly twice as much data—giving the company’s decision makers powerful business insight. Business Needs Kelkoo is one of Europe’s largest e- commerce websites, with 6.5 million offers listed from more than 1,000 online merchants. With 10 million unique visitors a month, keeping track of what people do on the site is both essential and demanding. In fact, it’s “at the very heart of our business,” says Tim Lum, Head of Business Intelligence at Kelkoo. The company was using a hosted business intelligence solution that was becoming difficult to manage. And because of expensive data storage charges, the system held only 13 months’ worth of data at any time, making year-on-year comparisons difficult. Kelkoo was already generating the maximum amount of data that could be stored each year under the existing contract. Adding more capacity would have been prohibitively expensive—as would the time-consuming process of adding new reports. Kelkoo needed a new system that would help it store a higher volume of historical data without limits on updates. It also needed to be able ‘slice and dice’ the data and produce reports on demand. Price was an important factor but it also had to be sure that any replacement was scalable. Solution Like many dot-com companies, Kelkoo uses a lot of open source software, such as MySQL, and Lum considered this as an alternative. The problem was that “it is definitely limited in terms of what you can develop reporting-wise.” And while the initial software was free, the cost of adding reporting and analysis functionality was high because it required third-party products and in-house development resources. These costs, over time, negated the fact that there was no initial cost for the software. Lum also looked at Oracle, but this option proved more expensive than open-source software—and the Microsoft alternative— and lacked built-in reporting capabilities. The compelling choice was Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 and SQL Server Reporting Services. Lum explains the logic behind the selection: “You buy one piece of software and it’s all there—integration, analysis, and reporting, with a consistent GUI. It also lets me sync with our Exchange Server so our reports go out daily to stakeholders who need them.” The costs were far more Customer: Kelkoo Website: www.kelkoo.co.uk Customer Size: 100+ Country or Region: United Kingdom Industry: e-commerce Partner: Contemporary Customer Profile Kelkoo is a one-stop shopping service that helps shoppers find, research, and buy products online with confidence. As Europe's largest e-commerce advertising platform and third-largest e-commerce website, it lists 6.5 million offers from more than 1,000 online merchants, and attracts around 10 million unique users per month. Software and Services Microsoft Server Product Portfolio − Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 For more information about other Microsoft customer successes, please visit: www.microsoft.com/casestudies Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Customer Solution Case Study E-Commerce Platform Improves Business Insight with New Business Intelligence Tool