EnerNOC tackles energy data volume growth with Oracle Exadata

17 Jan 2012 Redwood Shores - To improve the performance of its business-critical services, EnerNOC Inc., a provider of energy management applications and solutions for the smart grid, implemented Oracle Exadata Database Machine.

Following a multi-vendor evaluation that included extensive Proof of Concept testing, EnerNOC selected Oracle Exadata Database Machine X2-2 in April 2011.

EnerNOC went into production with Oracle Exadata Database Machine in July 2011, and has:

• Realized a 5x boost in performance of its real-time demand response database out-of-the-box;
• Realized a 2x-5x boost in performance of its current Extract Transform and Load (ETL) processing out-of-the-box;
• Dropped I/O resource utilization by over 50 percent;
• Deployed both online transaction processing (OLTP) databases and data warehouses in a single centrally managed system; and,
• Tested the Hybrid Columnar Compression feature which showed a 20x compression rate on EnerNOC's high volume historical warehouse data.

Boston-based EnerNOC helps commercial, institutional and industrial organizations use energy more intelligently, pay less for it, and generate cash flow that benefits the bottom line. Its technology-enabled energy management solutions also help meet the needs of utilities and grid operators that deliver energy and are responsible for maintaining the real-time balance between supply and demand.

With its DemandSMART solution, EnerNOC is the world expert in demand response. The company also provides three additional solutions that span the energy management lifecycle, beginning with SupplySMART for making the right energy purchasing decisions to EfficiencySMART for using energy more effectively, all the way to CarbonSMART for measuring, managing, and reporting greenhouse gas emissions and prioritizing GHG reduction efforts.

A data-driven company, EnerNOC sought a technology solution to help it better manage its data and scale to support its data growth rate of over 2x year-over-year. Beyond being able to manage and process vast amounts of historical data, EnerNOC also required a system with the flexibility to power its latency sensitive real-time OLTP databases.

After a competitive review of vendors, EnerNOC chose two half-rack Oracle Exadata Database Machine X2-2 systems. One system resides in its data centre; the second at its disaster recovery site. Oracle Active Data Guard is used to replicate data between the two systems.

EnerNOC deployed its Oracle Exadata systems on July 31, 2011 - less than two months after receiving the hardware. EnerNOC used Oracle Active Data Guard to seamlessly migrate from the old production system to the new Oracle Exadata systems.

"EnerNOC handles real-time and historical energy data for more than 11,000 customer sites worldwide, and Oracle Exadata Database Machine fit our use case best", stated Hugh Scandrett, Vice President of Engineering, EnerNOC. "The system enables us to manage both historical and real-time data in an efficient, scalable manner, and it gives us the flexibility to offer additional functionality for our customers."