Oracle Magazine - January/February 2011

“One of the great beauties of MySQL is that it’s backed by
an amazing company like Oracle, which has deep pockets
and basically wrote the book on databases.”

—Veronika Burnett, Manager of Database Engineering, Gorilla Nation Media

MYSQL FOR BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE

MySQL is particularly powerful when it comes to Web applications, but companies are putting the open source database to plenty of other uses as well. Take, for example, the Los Angeles, California–based global online ad sales firm Gorilla Nation Media.

“Gorilla Nation relies on MySQL to power
its advertising network business intelligence
platform,” says Alex Godelman, chief technology
officer for Gorilla Nation. “As a fast-growing
company, we need strong technology so we can
operate quickly and efficiently. MySQL is truly in
a league of its own.”
Gorilla Nation, part of Evolve Media, provides
integrated media and promotional programs
to Fortune 500 brand advertisers, including
clients such as Fox Television, Best Buy, and
more. Its customers demand advanced business
intelligence (BI) and targeting methods to reach
the perfect online audience for their advertising or
brand campaigns. Reaching more than 66 million
unique visitors per month—as Gorilla Nation
does—requires Websites and an I T infrastructure
that can scale effectively and efficiently.

That’s why Gorilla Nation chose MySQL as the foundation of its BI platform. The organization has more than 500 servers running MySQL, 20 of which are replicated. Its sites get approximately a quarter-billion page views per month, and MySQL manages more than 1 TB of data for Gorilla Nation while providing near-real-time traffic and advertising campaign performance information to Gorilla Nation’s publishers and advertisers. In addition, Gorilla Nation uses MySQL to capture all the clickstream data and transactions required for back-office accounting and billing functions.

PHIL SALTONSTALL

“One of the great beauties of MySQL is that it’s backed by an amazing company like Oracle, which has deep pockets and basically wrote the book on databases,” says Veronika Burnett, manager of database engineering at Gorilla Nation. “Also, unlike other open source databases, MySQL is highly scalable. That allows us to do things in our business that are

oracle.com/mysql
facebook.com/mysql

Veronika Burnett and Alex Godelman of Gorilla Nation Media rely on MySQL to serve 66 million unique visitors monthly. “As a fast-growing company, we need strong technology so we can operate quickly and efficiently. MySQL is truly in a league of its own,” says Godelman.