Oshkosh, known for making some of the toughest trucks in the world, selected an ITTIA (www.ittia.com) database solution and joined Club ITTIA, the ITTIA database community. Oshkosh is using db.* for ARM/Linux in an upcoming version of their A3 HEMTT (Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck) military vehicle.
No matter if you need to plow your way through Saharan sands or Arctic snow – Oshkosh offers a vehicle. The company makes heavy-duty vehicles for the defense, fire emergency and commercial industries. Oshkosh’s vehicles include concrete carriers and refuse trucks, snow blowers and fire trucks.
Oshkosh spent significant time and resources to evaluate various embedded databases before they selected ITTIA database solutions. For Oshkosh, the winner was db.* because of the database’s performance, ITTIA’s support (including on-line training and technical support), and the fact that there was zero licensing fee.
Jim Bomkamp, development manager from Oshkosh, was in charge of database selection. Bomkamp explained that the company took many factors into account before choosing a database, including footprint size and autonomy. As a component of a military truck currently used in Iraq and Afghanistan, reliability and simplicity are paramount.
Oshkosh’s decision to select ITTIA and db.* “came down to the economics of it,” according to Bomkamp. “There were some other database companies that would do what we wanted to do and would provide training and so forth – but they were far more expensive than ITTIA database solutions.”
Over the product lifetime, Oshkosh will likely save hundreds of thousands of dollars in training costs and licensing fees with ITTIA.
ITTIA’s db.* is free to download, develop and distribute. There are no licensing or development fees whatsoever. That, coupled with the maturity of the code and documentation and the low-cost online and on-site training and technical support, places the total cost of ownership (TCO) of db.* and ITTIA solutions far below that of any competitor.
“The training was excellent,” said Bomkamp. “It was very very good. The instructor was very knowledgeable and stepped us through the program. I really believe that we learned everything we needed through the training.”
After the training, the Oshkosh engineers optimized their code using the superior methods they learned. Oshkosh continues to utilize ITTIA professional technical support as their needs evolve and new challenges arise. Bomkamp said that their experience has been very positive, and that they intend to work with ITTIA for other projects.
“Oshkosh is a very smart company, and we are proud to announce that they chose our solutions over that of all our competitors,” said Sasan Montaseri, president of ITTIA. “They did their research, and made their decision based on performance and cost. I encourage others to look at our offerings before they settle on a second-class solution, or one that will cost them tens of thousands or even millions more in licensing and development costs.”
For more information about db.* go to www.ittia.com/dbstar/dbstar.html. For more information about Club ITTIA go to www.ittia.com/club_ittia/