Nebraska Furniture Mart's database migration from mvEnterprise to Reality

…goes so smoothly, staff fail to notice the change.

IRVINE, California. February 24th, 2008
Northgate Information Solutions and the Nebraska Furniture Mart (NFM) today announced the successful migration of NFM's retail applications to Reality, a MultiValue relational data management system provided by Northgate. The migration, which took only 12 months to complete, went without a hitch. During that period, Northgate assisted NFM in migrating nearly a billion data records together with the suite of sophisticated in-house retail applications used by NFM, the largest furniture retail outlet in the U.S. Before switching to Reality, NFM had been using mvEnterprise from Raining Data.

"Going live was a non-event," says David Ragan, NFM's Senior Database Administrator. "We came in at 6.00am the morning of the cutover expecting a flood of panic calls, but the phones never rang. When we asked people how they were getting on with the new system, they replied 'What new system?' They had no clue we'd switched products overnight."

An even tougher test of Reality's resilience came on Black Friday, when sales volumes are ten times greater than on any other day of the year, and peak-time crowds can reach 3,000 in a single store.

As David explains: "We sailed through with only a handful of issues. The fact that senior management had no concerns with doing this upgrade just a few weeks before Black Friday and heading into the busy holiday season demonstrates the faith we had in Reality."

In the beginning, however, Reality was not even a contender for NFM's database upgrade. NFM sent an RFI to Northgate 'as a courtesy'. But the NFM team soon noticed that Reality had a lot to offer and their staff showed a unique readiness to adapt to NFM's requirements. By the end of the first-round of evaluations, Northgate was on a shortlist of two. Feedback from existing users helped with the selection process.

"Everyone we spoke to was thrilled with the performance of their database," says David. "It was only when we delved deeper that differences emerged. Users of other MultiValue products seemed satisfied that crashes were as infrequent as one a month; Reality users couldn't remember the last time their system crashed."

NFM saved time and money on the upgrade process. David believes that it would have taken two years to get where they are now if they had chosen another database provider.

He adds: "We saved on staff resources too. We thought we would have to throw the entire IT team into this project. In the end, a large portion of the work was done by just two people. Other than a couple of months of intense testing, the majority of the team was able to continue with their normal day-to-day business tasks."

When NFM first chose Northgate, many industry observers thought the retailer was making a mistake. Some were skeptical that Reality could even scale to the size that NFM needed. David himself admits he had some reservations. At every stage in the process, however, Northgate proved their worth. One of their earliest successes was to identify and resolve an NFM system hardware issue. The problem was so well hidden, NFM was not even aware of it themselves.

Northgate engineers also speeded up the data change-over process. They pioneered a new technique that took completed transactions from the live mvEnterprise system and dropped them into the waiting Reality database. The result was a ready-made, near-real-time copy of the live database. It cut switchover down-time from over 24 hours to less than an hour.

John Seaman, Reality Sales Director, was aware that Northgate was the underdog in the race to secure the NFM contract. "That kind of challenge doesn't worry us," he says. "Over the years, we've upgraded dozens of MultiValue database sites of all flavors and sizes. We never say that the upgrade path will be painless, but we can say that no customer who has gone down that route has ever regretted their choice."

– ends –

About Nebraska Furniture Mart
Nebraska Furniture Mart was founded in 1937 in Omaha, Nebraska by Rose Blumkin. She set up in the basement of her husband's jewelry store with a $500 investment. In 1983, Warren Buffett purchased a majority interest in NFM and made it part of the Berkshire Hathaway family of companies.

For more than 60 years, NFM has sold a wide range of goods including furniture, appliances, electronics, computers and flooring. NFM continues to maintain its tradition of selling cheap, telling the truth and providing the greatest selection and service.

When billionaire investor Warren Buffett bought 90% of the business, he sealed the $60 million deal with a simple handshake with NFM founder, Rose Blumkin. He later said: "I would rather have her word than that of all the Big 8 auditors…it's like dealing with the Bank of England."

About Northgate
Northgate Information Solutions is a major supplier of software applications and outsourcing solutions to the public services, human resources and corporate markets. Founded in 1969, the company has over 6,000 staff and operates in 46 countries across five continents. By getting to the heart of application-specific processes, Northgate helps organizations increase their business-process efficiency. Northgate also manages customers' key systems, providing a broad range of outsourced solutions available at client sites or hosted at its own secure sites.

Further information
To find out more, call John Seaman on 866-473-2588, or email him via realityusa@northgate-is.com.
To learn more about Reality, visit www.northgate-is.com/reality.

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