Motus - desempenho acelerado com Adabas & Natural

Software AG didn’t just deliver, it massively improved our response times while also modernizing, simplifying, and improving our underlying system architecture. Together we reduced our slow quote issuance rate by close to 99 percent!

Koketso Mannya, Senior Manager, Core Systems Development, Motus—Europcar South Africa

The need for speed

In the rental car business, speed matters.

“When a customer goes online to book a vehicle for business or pleasure, they expect a comprehensive list of options, details, and prices in an instant,” says Koketso Mannya, Senior Manager, Core Systems Development. “Those in our industry that cannot deliver quotes right away won’t stay in business long.”

Motus—Europcar South Africa has always lived by that rule. From in-office bookings to online reservations, the company has kept speed at the forefront, maintaining robust internal systems while adopting and leveraging modern technology. Along the way, Motus has relied on a Adabas & Natural as the backbone for everything from customer management to vehicle operations to financial systems.

That solid foundation lets Motus track every online quote and act fast when problems arise—like when its SLA target of under three seconds per quote started slipping.

Motus needed help. And it needed experts who understood the unique technical and social requirements of the car rental business. “Software AG didn’t just deliver, it massively improved our response times while also modernizing, simplifying, and improving our underlying architecture,” says Mannya.

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From stalling in first to firing on all cylinders

“The events of the past few years pushed everyone online, leading to our quote volume exploding so suddenly that response times just couldn’t keep up,” says Mannya. “We started struggling with SLA compliance issues. And at one point, nearly 40 percent of our quotes were taking over 10 seconds.” 

At this point, Motus called Software AG. Motus’s account executive, Odette Barnard, and pre-sales architect, Ilan Hirschowitz, were soon on site for a deep dive. Working together, they found the culprit: Massive API call volumes peaking at 100,000 database queries per second. Next, Hirschowitz identified a solution—splitting the load across multiple databases.

“Software AG suggested setting up a test environment with the help of our expert DBA, Derrick Meyer.  In less than 30 minutes we implemented a proof-of-concept fix using a special load-splitting parameter—cutting response times to less than one second and easily handling 100 concurrent users like it was nothing,” says Mannya. 

Motus decided to go into production immediately, with great results. And that’s where most vendors would have stopped. After all, the project looked like a success.

But the experts at Software AG saw room to take the initial solution to the next level. While the load-splitting parameter worked, it still required manual management of read-only and update access. To address this, the team suggested making the relatively easy transition to Adabas Cluster—a simple change that boosted performance, improved availability and recovery, and streamlined hardware management.

As for those very slow response times? Now they are virtually non-existent, and customers can expect sub-second average response times. 

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It takes a responsive team

On the road to success, Motus came up against two technical issues that could have derailed their progress. But with help from their Software AG expert team, they quickly surmounted these challenges, proving that a winning solution requires a full team effort.

The first obstacle came when the newly responsive system hung (and on a Sunday, no less). When this happened, the Software AG team was quick to identify the problem—a patch that had not been applied—and implement a quick solution. A week later, TCP/IP errors appeared after hitting correction limits. Again, Software AG stepped in—adding a simple, custom-tuned limit parameter.

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On the road to the future

What’s great about taking a modern approach and moving to Adabas Cluster is that the development and product management teams at Software AG are always working towards continuous improvement.

With load balancing and high availability now onboard thanks to this new architecture, Motus is considering other areas for performance and stability streamlining — splitting physical disks, batch encryption, and Docker for safer testing and version management.

The result is that Motus is staying true to its principles, offering the most comprehensive car rental services for the people of South Africa—quickly, securely, and without a hitch. And now that response times are blazingly fast again, customer satisfaction and retention are way up. 

“What I think this project really highlights is that working with a partner that understands your business really lets you get the most out of your systems,” says Mannya. “For us, getting to the ultimate technical solution was a process—and only part of the job. The most powerful benefits came from the work we did with Software AG to tune that system to our exact constraints, needs, and customer considerations.”

The road to the future for Motus is paved with cross-team collaboration, innovation, and teamwork. And that’s the stuff that keeps customers happy and coming back.