DO2 Technologies Inc.

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Since it was founded in 2000, DO2 Technologies has seen the number of people using its Internet-based solutions double each year. Based in Calgary, Canada, DO2 started by offering electronic invoicing services to oil and gas companies and now provides software as a service (SaaS) invoicing and procure-to-pay solutions to many other industries globally. It has over 100 employees and offices in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom.

DO2 has experienced rapid growth from its inception and now serves more than 11,500 companies and 30,000 users. As a leader in SaaS electronic invoicing and procure-to-pay solutions, DO2 offers customers a comprehensive, scalable, and reliable platform delivered over the Internet. Through its OpenInvoice Platform, DO2 offers modules covering the full scope of procure-to-pay business functions, from purchase-order integration and transaction processing to discount management, price compliance, and approvals workflow.

Although DO2 customers come from a range of industries, a goal they all share is to improve efficiency by automating key business processes. In addition, many customers are global enterprises, with operations in multiple locations and time zones. These companies want to transform their workflow with DO2 solutions, but they also depend on reliable service and 24-hour availability.

To provide the necessary level of support, DO2 requires server infrastructure that can handle a high volume of transactions and a rapidly growing workload. Doug Spackman, executive vice president at DO2 Technologies, says, “Because we’re on the Web, our concerns are stability, uptime, and reliability. Also, with the number of users increasing, we need scalability.”

DO2’s choice of servers has been driven from the beginning by the design of its Web application. It considered both the Microsoft .NET Framework and the Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE), and decided that the Java platform provided better portability and scalability. Then, after evaluating servers from multiple vendors, it decided that its Java-based software would perform better on servers from Sun Microsystems.

The company’s next step was compelled by business growth. DO2 watched its number of users double annually and concluded that it needed higher throughput. In 2006, the company learned that Sun Fire T2000 servers with UltraSPARC T1 processors and CoolThreads technology would be available. The believed it could improve performance with the new servers, which provide up to 32 simultaneous processing threads on an eight-core processor.

Sun loaned DO2 the servers as part of its Try and Buy Program, which enables companies to try products for free for 60 days and then purchase them at a discount. The experiment exceeded expectation, says Spackman. “We participated in Sun’s Try and Buy Program to evaluate the Sun Fire T2000 server’s performance, and it worked out very well — it made us reevaluate how well a server can handle a large workload.”

DO2 servers support a peak workload of up to 1,000 concurrent users, and the company estimates that it can handle double that amount with the current configuration. DO2 now runs multiple instances of its Java Web application and Oracle WebLogic 10g on four clustered Sun Fire T2000 servers with the Solaris 10 Operating System. In addition, it runs a three-node database cluster with Oracle 10g on T2000 servers connected through a storage area network to Sun StorageTek 6140 and StorageTek 6130 arrays. It also runs a Sun Fire T1000 backup server connected to a Sun StorEdge L25 Tape Library with two LT03 tape drives and 24 slots. The company estimates that it has approximately 8 TB of online storage capacity.

By basing its production infrastructure on Sun Fire T2000 servers, DO2 has improved reliability and scalability. The company can continue to build on its track record for innovation and steady growth by adding more servers or by running more instances of its application on existing systems to increase capacity. In addition, the company estimates that its investment in Sun servers has reduced its total cost of ownership. “The savings go back to the inception of our company, when we decided to go with Sun servers,” says Spackman. “Cost is directly affected by reliability, and the reliability we’ve realized with Sun servers has been very good.”

And because the Sun Fire T2000 servers are installed in compact 2RU configurations, the company has doubled its available floor space. With room to expand, DO2 is confident it can deliver SaaS solutions cost effectively to a growing number of customers for years to come.