Banijay: Good Times with Managed Services

With the centralization of the Banijay Germany companies, the subsidiary Good Times needed a reliable partner to optimize and maintain their error-prone – yet essential – database in the long term.

Outdated database with insufficient disk capacity

Increased occurrence of issues during usage

Lack of internal resources for database expansion and maintenance

Support based on a managed services contract

Assistance with migrating the MS SQL Server to a virtual infrastructure

Customized adjustments & optimization of the existing database

Relief for the internal IT team

Procurement of external resources with scalable capacity

Quick resolution of emerging system issues and requests

Optimization of the existing database (speed, usability, etc.)

After the centralization of the subsidiaries and IT of Banijay Germany, Good Times faced the challenge of finding a new partner for their essential casting database. The casting database contains more than 120,000 protagonists for various television shows and film projects, supporting employees in the search and selection process. When a system, such as the daily used database, experiences issues, similar questions often arise from many users: we need help deleting protagonists, existing forms need to be adjusted, images aren‘t loading, and so on. This can burden the capacity of the internal IT team. It was clear to Banijay and Good Times that the historically developed and self-programmed system would remain in place, and external support would relieve the IT team. “We chose novaCapta as our partner and utilized their Managed Services for the optimization and maintenance of our casting database,” explains Sebastian Menge, Director of Information Technology, Banijay Germany GmbH.

Before novaCapta‘s Managed Service took over support, there were various problems with the database that could no longer be managed by the internal IT support. Support began immediately — even before the contract started — as the situation was urgent and the database’s capacity was exhausted.

At the start of the collaboration, there were significant performance issues with the database. Since data queries were almost entirely handled through ElasticSearch, multiple issues occurred there. Additionally, there were problems with the index, which frequently failed or was set to “read-only” due to a full hard drive. It quickly became evident that the hard drive was insufficient. As a result, the database was migrated and transferred to a Microsoft SQL Server. Now, all necessary information that Good Times requires in their daily operations is stored virtually.

Clients of a Managed Services contract, such as Good Times, have the option to submit their inquiries and cases through three channels: email, phone, and our Jira customer portal. Ultimately, all inquiries end up in the ticketing system, e.g. when a support call is made, all necessary information is collected and recorded in a ticket by the respective service staff. The next step involves the First Level Support reviewing and qualifying the request: either it can be resolved immediately or is transferred to our expert teams. Through transparent collaboration via the portal,

Good Times always has full cost control and can track the status of all tickets, including the time spent, with full transparency. Good Times also appreciates the collaboration at eye level: “Open and trust-based communication is important to us. With our colleagues from novaCapta, we not only have experts on our side who relieve our internal IT, but also a service provider that works quickly and solution-oriented,” explains Sebastian Menge the collaboration.

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