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High-Availability Solution Maximizes Returns Processing During Business-Critical Tax Season

Strategic Insights

— 1 min read

Universal Tax Systems, Inc. (UTS) has standardized on the Oracle Database and Oracle Real Application Clusters and NetApp unified storage solutions for business-critical production systems to ensure uninterrupted data processing during the tax season. UTS publishes the popular TaxWise suite of professional tax preparation software, used by six million tax returns and e-filing transactions annually. The high-availability Oracle Database on NetApp storage architecture provides UTS with the reliability and high performance necessary to support 250 customer service representatives and over 100 simultaneous processes constantly pounding production databases.

Key Takeaways:

  • UTS uses Oracle Database and Oracle Real Application Clusters and NetApp unified storage solutions to ensure uninterrupted data processing during tax season.
  • The high-availability architecture supports 250 customer service representatives and over 100 simultaneous processes.
  • The NetApp unified storage system serves as a store for corporate home directories, a development platform, and storage for business-critical TaxWise software builds.
  • The Oracle products provide scalable performance to handle UTS processing spikes and increasingly large data volumes.
  • The Oracle and NetApp partnership provides collaborative business support, including a joint escalation team for product support.
  • The partnership also enables UTS to leverage its existing infrastructure, eliminating the need for a separate SAN structure and reducing hardware and administration costs by nearly $200,000.

Statistics:

  • UTS processes six million tax returns and e-filing transactions annually using the TaxWise suite of professional tax preparation software.
  • The high-availability Oracle Database on NetApp storage architecture supports over 100 simultaneous processes constantly pounding production databases.
  • The NetApp unified storage system has enabled UTS to consolidate shared company files, reducing costs and eliminating the need for RAID-configured "superserver" systems.
  • The partnership between Oracle and NetApp has resulted in a 50% reduction in hardware administration costs for UTS.
  • UTS employs over 300 people.

Sources:

  • Universal Tax Systems, Inc.
  • Oracle Corporation
  • Network Appliance, Inc.
  • Oracle PartnerNetwork
  • Network Appliance (www.netapp.com)

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