Essilor Uses AllegroGraph to Build a Knowledge Graph Solution for Global Supply Chain Risk Management

AllegroGraph Empowers Essilor to Address Rapid Change and Growth During COVID-19 Pandemic

Lafayette, California, September 14, 2021 — Franz Inc., an early innovator in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and leading supplier of Graph Database technology for Knowledge Graph Solutions, today announced that Essilor, the world’s leading ophthalmic optics company, built an order fulfillment system based on AllegroGraph, Franz’s Graph Database platform, in only a few months after engaging the Franz team. AllegroGraph enables Essilor to quickly evolve its data model, easily connect complex supply chain relationships, seamlessly add new applications, and confidently rely on a stable, highly scalable platform.

“Tracking product packaging and fulfilling orders efficiently had always been difficult in the past,” said Mel Yuson, Director Enterprise Architecture, Essilor AMERA. “We tried to modernize our product tracking system with 3rd party software solutions and in-house relational database applications but without success because relational databases lack the ability to model complex relationships. We needed the freedom of a schemaless graph database, like Franz’s AllegroGraph, which uniquely provides us the flexibility to evolve our data model and seamlessly add new applications to address rapid growth and changing needs at Essilor.”

Essilor, part of the EssilorLuxottica SA group, which sells global brands such as Ray-Ban, Oakley and Varilux among many others, is a French-based vertically integrated, multinational ophthalmic optics company and the world leader in the design, manufacture and distribution of lenses to correct or protect eyesight. Including sundries, Essilor carries hundreds of thousands of stock and finished products that are fabricated at many different labs in different countries and are sold all over the world.

“The recent shortage of semiconductors and other globally sourced materials exemplifies how emergencies such as COVID-19 can adversely affect supply chains,” said Dr. Jans Aasman, CEO of Franz Inc. “But a Supply Chain Risk Management system based on AllegroGraph can capture important product and supply chain information, along with new events in real-time and deliver AI-driven predictions to significantly improve risk management. This is difficult to do with traditional supply chain applications, which are based on relational databases that can’t model the complex connections. Companies like Essilor can mitigate risks to critical supply chains by utilizing AllegroGraph, which is ideal for complex data modeling, seamless application integration, and real-time AI.”

“We developed and deployed to production our first AllegroGraph based application in only a few months after engaging Franz,” said Yuson. “We found AllegroGraph’s W3C standard SPARQL query language is much easier to use than SQL but most importantly, AllegroGraph is a very stable and highly scalable platform with its Multi-Master Replication cluster feature. Today, we deploy several AllegroGraph servers in the cloud, which easily handle 100,000 concurrent queries per minute at peak hours. We are very pleased with our partnership with Franz Inc. and are believers in the power of Semantic Graph Database technology.”

“Graph relates everything,” according to Gartner. “Graphs form the foundation of many modern data and analytics capabilities to find relationships between people, places, things, events and locations across diverse data assets. D&A leaders rely on graphs to quickly answer complex business questions which require contextual awareness and an understanding of the nature of connections and strengths across multiple entities. Gartner predicts that by 2025, graph technologies will be used in 80% of data and analytics innovations.” (Source: Gartner Press Room, Gartner Identifies Top 10 Data and Analytics Technology Trends for 2021, March 16, 2021.)

Industry Awards

In September 2021, Franz Inc.’s AllegroGraph was recognized by KMWorld as a Trend Setting Product for 2021.  This annual award acknowledges leaders in AI, natural language processing, machine learning, knowledge graphs, blockchain, and low- and no-code development, industry topics which are shaping the capabilities of products and services for 2021 and beyond.

Franz Inc. was also selected as one of the Big Data 50: Companies Driving Innovation. This Database Trends and Applications (DBTA) award is given to companies delivering data-driven insights by expanding what is possible in terms of collecting, storing, and extracting value from data.

AllegroGraph

AllegroGraph is a Knowledge Graph platform that allows infinite data integration through a unique approach that unifies all data and siloed knowledge into an Entity-Event Knowledge Graph solution that can support massive, big data analytics. The FedShardä capability within AllegroGraph utilizes patented federated sharding functionality that drives holistic insights and enables complex reasoning across a distributed Knowledge Graph. AllegroGraph is utilized by dozens of the top Fortune 500 companies worldwide and enables businesses to extract sophisticated decision insights and predictive analytics from highly complex, distributed data that cannot be uncovered with conventional databases.

About Franz Inc.

Franz Inc. is an early innovator in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and leading supplier of Graph Database technology with expert knowledge in developing and deploying Knowledge Graph solutions. The foundation for Knowledge Graphs and AI lies in the facets of graph technology provided by AllegroGraph and Allegro CL. AllegroGraph is a graph based platform that enables businesses to extract sophisticated decision insights and predictive analytics from highly complex, distributed data that cannot be uncovered with conventional databases. Unlike traditional relational databases or other NoSQL databases, AllegroGraph employs graph technologies that process data with contextual and conceptual intelligence. AllegroGraph is able run queries of unprecedented complexity to support predictive analytics that help organizations make more informed, real-time decisions. AllegroGraph is utilized by dozens of the top Fortune 500 companies worldwide.

To learn more about Franz and AllegroGraph, go to franz.com.