Sony Pictures

Sony Pictures Entertainment, popularly known as Sony Pictures, is a subsidiary of Sony Corporation. It is a multinational American mass media and studio conglomerate based in Culver City, California, well known for its work across the entertainment sector.

Running a studio at that scale means running business-critical systems at that scale too. Keeping its JD Edwards environment stable, secure, and performant is essential to operations behind the scenes.

Sony Pictures encountered a number of complex problems in its JD Edwards managed support. Many traced back to how objects were managed and promoted, compounded by gaps in user management, performance, and recovery.

• Object corruption and no promotion standards. Frequent object corruption stemmed from inefficient object management, an absence of standardized promotion protocols, and unrestricted developer access leading to inappropriate promotions.
• Security audit failures. A lack of an organized user management process caused repeated security audit failures.
• Performance issues. UBE execution and overall report run times were slow.
• No PROD backup and restore spec. There were no defined specifications for backup and restore in the production environment.

Velaura evaluated the challenges Sony Pictures faced and delivered a robust, governed approach to object promotion and management, along with a redesigned security and user model and disciplined maintenance.

• Governed object promotion. A robust promotion and management process, including an approval process, a defined promotion life cycle, and permissions, that simplified the procedure and reduced spec corruption.
• User and security redesign. A complete user management solution with strict access limits, plus a full analysis and redesign of the existing security architecture, aligned to evolving business expectations.
• Scheduled maintenance. Cleanup and configuration tasks scheduled weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly to remove old or unused data, reduce application size, and improve performance.
• Break-fix and recovery. A break-fix environment and a changed object promotion mechanism so any spec corruption in PROD can be readily mitigated and rectified.

With Velaura's managed support in place, Sony Pictures gained a stable, governed, and better-performing JD Edwards environment.

• Improved object management and promotion lifecycle across both World and WorldSoft.
• Stronger user management. Controlled access mechanisms eliminated unintentional and unauthorized activities.
• Better performance. An improved UBE execution process lifted overall user satisfaction.
• Reliable recovery. The PROD environment can be restored easily in the event of an interruption.