SOA Case Study
How R.L. Polk Revved Its Data Engine
In the fall of 2004, Kevin Vasconi, chief information officer of R.L. Polk & Co., met with other top executives of the company. It was a state-of -- the company meeting to discuss Polk's strategy to enter the future. The consensus was that its information systems would not be able to support the business into the next decade. "If you have that discussion honestly," Vasconi says, "it will scare the crap out of you."
The Southfield, Michigan-based company's business is automobile data. The company compiles vehicle registration and sales data from 260 sources that include motor vehicle departments in the United States and Canada, insurance companies, automakers and lending institutions. Polk then repackages that data and sells it to dealers, manufacturers and marketing firms -- anyone who wants detailed information about car-buying trends, such as the top-selling SUV for a particular ZIP code. For years, Polk's process of consolidating data ran on IBM mainframes that queued data before they were processed in order to maximize mainframe resources. This data was processed in daily or weekly batches, which slowed down the time that customers could receive it. Polk's entire database already compromised more than 1.5 petabytes or 1.5 quadrillion pieces of data.
Customers had been anxious to get sales data more quickly. Paul C. Taylor, chief economist for the National Automobile Dealers Association says that Polk's vehicle registration data by state is typically available 30 days after car makers release their national sales data. That prevents dealers from one state from immediately comparing trends in their area with nationwide trends and adjusting their inventories accordingly. "Ideally, you would have the state breakdown when you have the national sales figures," Taylor says, "But if Polk could shave off even a week from the cycle, that would be a vast improvement."
Actually, Polk had tried twice before to move off the mainframe, but those projects ended up being scaled back. "It's the mother of all databases for automotive intelligence," says Joe Walker, president of Polk Global Automotive, the division of that sells data to businesses. "It seemed too daunting a task to try...
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