Case Study: Progressive Insurance quadruples database performance with Microsoft SQL Server 2014 In-Memory OLTP

Progressive Data Performance Grows by Factor of Four, Fueling Business Growth Online Experience

Progressive Insurance, a large US auto insurer, needed to handle a significantly increased workload for its policy-serving web application without undertaking a prohibitively expensive hardware upgrade. They were concerned that adding new business lines would overtax their session-state database, potentially leading to outages and a poor online customer experience. To address this, they turned to Microsoft and its SQL Server 2014 with the In-Memory OLTP feature.

Microsoft's solution involved implementing the In-Memory OLTP technology, which hosts databases in server memory to eliminate disk bottlenecks. This implementation, which required minimal code modification, resulted in a 320 percent performance increase, boosting transaction processing from 5,000 to 21,000 per second. This allowed Progressive to support business growth on existing hardware and ensure a consistent online experience. Microsoft also provided its Analytics Platform System, which achieved a 1,900 percent query processing gain and enabled advanced predictive analytics to help increase sales and retain customers.

Progressive Corporation

Craig Lanford

IT Manager