1. Company Overview

China Telecom, one of China’s three major telecom operators and a Fortune Global 500 enterprise for many consecutive years, plays a core role in driving the development of China’s telecommunications industry and digital economy. Its Human Resources (HR) platform manages massive volumes of data including employee payroll, positions, and organizational structures. This imposes stringent requirements on database performance, cost efficiency, and compatibility with China’s localization ecosystem.

2. Customer Challenges

As the scale of HR data expanded (977 GB total, including 25 million payroll entries and 3.65 million employee work records), the SAP HANA database originally supporting the HR platform exposed three major bottlenecks:

• Low query efficiency: With 30 million records, multi-scenario queries were slow (e.g., calculating total payroll by category across all levels required 29 seconds). Monthly and annual reporting created significant pressure.

• High operating costs: SAP HANA, an in-memory columnar RDBMS, required 10 servers (each 90 cores, 3 TB). To sustain performance, future scaling would demand additional hardware, resulting in soaring yearly hardware and maintenance costs.

• Limited localization compatibility: SAP HANA showed insufficient support for domestic operating systems (e.g., Kylin, UnionTech UOS) and CPUs (e.g., Phytium, Kunpeng), falling short of China’s trusted IT (信创) requirements.

3. Solution: YMatrix Database Localization Replacement

To overcome these challenges, China Telecom chose to upgrade its HR platform with the YMatrix database. YMatrix, a high-performance and scalable enterprise-grade database, not only supports efficient processing of massive datasets but also offers deep integration with China’s localization ecosystem. It provides China Telecom with a one-stop solution for cost reduction, efficiency improvement, and security assurance.

4. Customer Benefits: Proven Value Across Three Dimensions

(1) Significant Cost Efficiency Gains

With YMatrix, hardware resource requirements for the HR platform were substantially reduced:

• Number of servers reduced by 30% (from 10 to 7)

• Storage per server reduced by 90% (from 3 TB to 128 GB)

• Total hardware costs reduced by 80% (saving nearly RMB 10 million annually)

(2) Breakthrough Query Performance

For datasets with 30 million records, YMatrix delivered up to 15x faster query performance than SAP HANA:

• Total payroll by all levels: SAP HANA 29s → YMatrix 6s (4.8× faster)

• Contract staff payroll by job level: SAP HANA 29s → YMatrix 3.4s (8.5× faster)

• Safety compliance staff statistics: SAP HANA 25s → YMatrix 1.7s (14.7× faster)

(3) Deep Localization Compatibility

YMatrix is fully compatible with domestic OS (Kylin, UOS, OpenEuler, Anolis) and CPUs (Phytium, Kunpeng, Hygon, Zhaoxin). This enabled China Telecom to successfully complete its database localization upgrade, securing a trusted and controllable foundation for digital transformation.

5. Conclusion

The SAP HANA replacement project for China Telecom’s HR platform is a landmark case of YMatrix supporting localization in large state-owned enterprises. By delivering the triple value of cost reduction, performance enhancement, and ecosystem compatibility, YMatrix not only addressed traditional database challenges but also ensured secure, autonomous control for mission-critical systems in the digital economy era.

Looking forward, YMatrix will continue deepening industry-specific adaptations, helping more enterprises achieve efficient, economical, and secure database upgrades, and driving large-scale adoption of domestic databases across diverse industries.