- Industry
- Supply Chain & Distribution
- Capability
- Applications & Data
- Decision
- Platform modernisation
- Outcome
- Inventory searches reduced from about 15 minutes to about 15 seconds
A business-critical inventory system had become so slow that a routine search across hundreds of thousands of items could take around fifteen minutes.
The incumbent support team could not establish the cause. The application developers understood the bespoke software but did not have the infrastructure and database engineering depth needed to diagnose the platform as a whole.
The client was left with an application that technically worked but no longer supported the pace of the business.
We assessed the Microsoft Dynamics application, SQL Server environment, storage path and underlying compute resources together. The review showed that the existing hardware did not provide enough headroom for the changes required, so meaningful improvement could not be achieved safely in place.
A fit-for-purpose platform was designed and supplied. The application and database were migrated, after which the SQL workload was reviewed using query execution behaviour, indexing strategy and the way data was being retrieved from storage.
The improvement came from treating the application, SQL Server, storage and compute as one platform. New hardware provided the necessary headroom, while the query and indexing changes made proper use of it.
Inventory searches that had taken about fifteen minutes now completed in around fifteen seconds.
By the time Praetorian was called, poor performance had already damaged users' trust in the service. Restoring it was a technical success, but the delay had carried a real commercial cost.
Engineering lessons
- Application, database and infrastructure performance cannot be diagnosed responsibly in isolation.
- Database indexing and query behaviour must be assessed in the context of the platform carrying the workload.
- A different engineering perspective is most valuable before prolonged technical failure becomes a business problem.
Read the engineering principles behind this work →
Confidentiality: Engineering Notes are based on real engagements. Client identities, timelines and identifying details may be changed to protect confidentiality. The engineering decisions and lessons remain representative of the work undertaken.