City of Los Angeles Chooses IBM DB2 9 Viper to Improve Geographic Information System

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that the City of Los Angeles has selected the DB2 9 Viper data server to replace its existing database management system. DB2 9 was selected to increase performance and lower costs of running the city’s geographic information system (GIS), which provides the ability to store and access comprehensive geographic information the Los Angeles area, as well as Orange, Ventura, Riverside, San Bernardino and other counties.

Facing rising licensing costs and limited storage capacity from its existing Oracle database, the city decided to replace it with a higher performing, cost-efficient DB2 9-based solution from IBM.

“If we were to expand our existing infrastructure, licensing fees would have been beyond our budgetary requirements. By migrating to DB2 9, we’ve dramatically reduced licensing costs and were able to afford the growing capacity we needed to meet our business needs,” said Jose Alvarez, Information Systems Manager, the City of Los Angeles. “We now have more data available to us, which enables us to make critical decisions more quickly.”

Home to more than 3.8 million people, Los Angeles encompasses 407 square miles and accounts for 38 percent of the population in Los Angeles County. The IBM solution provides the city with the ability to help staff identify hazards, assess potential impact and coordinate efforts for fires and homeland security initiatives in Los Angeles and its surrounding counties.

The new capabilities of DB2 9 will help the city’s IT staff fine-tune database performance as more applications are migrated to the new GIS repository -- critical in helping speed decision making. DB2 9 also has provided significant savings through lower licensing fees and faster integration of data.

Today’s announcement builds upon the global momentum DB2 9 has rapidly generated among customers and business partners. In just over six months after its launch, thousands of new customers have embraced the groundbreaking technology in DB2 9 to them better manage and extract value from an avalanche of business information.

DB2 9 marks the culmination of a five-year IBM development project that has transformed traditional, static database technology into an interactive, vibrant data server that enables clients to improve their ability to manage varied types of information, such as documents, Web pages and digitally signed XML transactions. IBM’s new data server provides an industry first seamless and simultaneous information flow of both XML and relational data, regardless of format, platform or location and incorporates the most significant database technology enhancements introduced to the industry in more than two decades.

The IBM solution for the City of Los Angeles is composed of DB2 9, DB2 Connect Enterprise Edition V9, DB2 Performance Expert for Multiplatforms v9 and IBM WebSphere Information Integrator V8 software, plus a GIS application from the Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI).

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