The amended unemployment insurance act in Switzerland has shifted from passive management to a proactive labor market policy focused on reintegration of jobseekers. The Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) faced performance challenges and implemented the Pivotal Greenplum database to enhance labor market statistics analysis, resulting in significant improvements in speed and flexibility. This new infrastructure allows for faster analyses and lower operational costs, positioning SECO for future big data needs.

1. The amended Unemployment Insurance Act (AVIG) marked the
beginning of new era for the unemployment insurance business
in Switzerland, Instead of passively managing unemployment
statistics, the Swiss government is now executing a proactive
labor market policy. The new principle of “reintegration before
retirement” aims at a lasting reintegration of jobseekers into the
labor market.
Up-to-date information and flexible analysis options are required
for statistical observations, which are used for various purposes,
such as short-term economic indicators or for controlling the
correct execution of the Unemployment Insurance Act. At the
same time, it must be possible to fine-tune analyses to the
relevant question in every case. For this purpose, the Labor
Market Statistics – a department of the Swiss State Secretariat
for Economic Affairs (SECO) – had been operating a business
intelligence system based on a traditional data warehouse.
Among the approximately 900 users are responsible federal
offices, the employees of 120 regional offices (RAV) of the
national employment service in the 26 Swiss cantons and more
than 40 unemployment insurance funds. The result: A complex
and heterogeneous user community with various requirements,
reflecting the federal system of Switzerland.
CHALLENGE
Managing Performance Problems
Due to increasing requirements regarding labor market statistics,
SECO initiated the LAMDA (Labor Market Data Analysis)
project. A number of business intelligence applications were
implemented for several purposes – for example, the official
labor market statistics, the statistics of payments executed by
unemployment insurers, the key performance index for regional
office executives and an application for public information
regarding unemployment. Many of these applications required
complex calculations.
AT-A-GLANCE
Challenges
• BI applications required complex calculations
• Increasing BI application performance problems
• Substantial effort and cost to solve issues
Solution
• Pivotal Greenplum Database
Key Benefits
• Greater performance
• Improved scalability
• Hardware flexibility
• Low cost of ownership
CASE STUDY
Swiss State Secretariat
for Economic Affairs
DELIVERING HIGH PERFORMANCE WITH A COST-EFFECTIVE MODEL
OVERVIEW
“ We experienced massive front end performance
increases with Pivotal Greenplum Database.
Even in case of complex queries, the results are
displayed quickly.”
— Dr. Elmar Benelli, Data Warehouse LAMDA Manager,
Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs
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2. Pivotal is a registered trademark or trademark of Pivotal Software, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners. © Copyright 2014 Pivotal Software, Inc.
All rights reserved. This document was originally published in 2012, and is being republished with limited, non-substantive updates in 2014. Published in the USA. PVTL-CS-354-01/14
At Pivotal our mission is to enable customers to build a new class of applications, leveraging big and fast data, and do all of this with the power of cloud independence.
Uniting selected technology, people and programs from EMC and VMware, the following products and services are now part of Pivotal: Greenplum, Cloud Foundry, Spring,
GemFire and other products from the VMware vFabric Suite, Cetas and Pivotal Labs.
CASE STUDY SWISS STATE SECRETARIAT FOR ECONOMIC AFFAIRS
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A more complex analysis requires a new infrastructure, as Dr.
Elmar Benelli, Data Warehouse LAMDA Manager at SECO,
explains, “We experienced increasing performance problems.
With the existing infrastructure, such problems would have been
manageable only with substantial effort and expenditures. The
limiting factors were the physical separation of the database
system and the data, as well as the data transport across the
network, which is also used by other parties.”
SOLUTION
Pivotal Greenplum Database Delivers Speed and Flexibility
As a new database solution to cover Big Data requirements,
Pivotal Greenplum Database replaced the legacy database to
handle all Swiss labor market statistics.
Pivotal Greenplum Database operates with massively parallel
processing (MPP), offers flexible scalability, and can be operated
with various hardware platforms. Utilizing Pivotal Greenplum
Database, the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs is now
able to provide analyses to the user community faster and with
greater flexibility.
“The cooperation of the team, comprising SECO employees and
partners, as well as Pivotal was excellent,” says Benelli. “Pivotal
Engineers stayed in touch constantly, were always available and
reliably solved all problems that arose.”
BUSINESS BENEFITS
Pivotal Greenplum Database delivers the following business
benefits to the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs:
Greater Performance
“We experienced massive front end performance increases with
Pivotal Greenplum Database. Even in case of complex queries, the
results are displayed quickly,” Benelli confirms.
“Copying of the database now goes extremely quickly,” Benelli
adds. “Previously, the preparation of a separate database for
test and development purposes, or special analyses with high
performance requirements, took the data warehouse team two
weeks. With Pivotal Greenplum Database, all it takes is copying,
which can be done in 20 minutes.”
Low Cost of Ownership
“Pivotal Greenplum Database provides the hardware flexibility
we needed,” Benelli points out. “It enables operation on low-
cost, industry-standard servers that can be easily acquired from
the usual government suppliers. So we will remain flexible and
independent of a specific hardware provider in the future as well.
Other solutions we evaluated included proprietary components
that would not allow such flexibility.”
CONCLUSION
The hardware flexibility and low total cost of ownership, coupled
with the scalability and performance of Pivotal Greenplum
Database, position SECO for a future in which Big Data will only
grow bigger – enabling this government entity to seamlessly
continue to deliver essential data to its user community.
LEARN MORE
To learn more about our products, services and solutions, visit us
at pivotal.io.
“ Copying of the database now goes extremely quickly.
Previously, the preparation of a separate database for
test and development purposes, or special analyses
with high performance requirements, took the data
warehouse team two weeks. With Pivotal Greenplum
Database, all it takes is copying, which can be done in
20 minutes.”
— Dr. Elmar Benelli, Data Warehouse LAMDA Manager,
Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs