REDWOOD CITY, USA: C&K Market, supermarket chain servicing Oregon and Northern California customers has recently adopted the open source version of the Ingres Database. 

Ingres Corporation, provider of open source database management software and support services, counted C&K Market as a customer back when the supermarket chain was barely a chain – it had just three stores. In 2008, C&K moved to the open source version of the Ingres Database.

"Ingres is very scalable and gave us the ability to add more stores, so as our accounts payable system grew, we were able to grow with it," said Alan Nidiffer, vice president of information technology, C&K Market. "C&K Market now uses Ingres as the central data source for mission-critical applications across our 60 retail stores."

C&K Market has relied on the Ingres Database to build complete financial and retail operations systems including payroll, 401(k), accounts payable, and inventory reporting. A wide variety of end users tap into the database, from manual data entry clerks, to people at the stores maintaining pricing, as well as payroll and financial analysts accessing information. C&K Market expects to leverage the benefits of the open source model, including cost savings and integration with other open source applications, such as graphical reporting tools.

"The biggest driver for us is the ease of transition," said Mike Swigert, application development manager at C&K Market. "The transition to open source has created absolutely no down time and has not affected our ability to continue to operate smoothly. That is huge for us."

"We are proud that organizations who want an open source solution that can scale across the enterprise have made Ingres their database choice," said Deb Woods, vice president of product management at Ingres. "While many of the world's largest companies rely upon Ingres to help grow their business, Ingres is also helping smaller companies like C&K Market grow over the years and reach their business goals."