How Innoval ensures data availability for livestock farming with DEEP
In a context where data plays an increasingly central role in the management of agricultural operations, the availability and reliability of IT systems have become critical. To ensure service continuity and support innovation in livestock farming, Innoval has relied for several years on the expertise of DEEP France for database monitoring.
A leading cooperative group in agricultural livestock services, Innoval supports nearly 30,000 cattle farmers across a large territory, particularly in Western and Northern France.
“With around 2,000 employees and 90 local agencies, we are now leaders in bovine genetics and reproduction,” explains Laurent Buc, Head of Digital Production at Innoval.
“We offer our farmers, who are also our cooperative members, a diversified range of services. Our core business focuses on reproductive support, including the sale of insemination doses and insemination services. We also provide a wide range of services to support farm management, such as milk recording and the deployment of application solutions addressing various monitoring needs at the heart of agricultural operations.”
Critical systems and data for farming operations
Over the years, the livestock sector has undergone profound transformation. Farms now rely on digital tools and increasing volumes of data to manage operations, improve production quality, and optimize herd management.
In this context, Innoval’s information system has become a strategic lever to support the digital transformation of livestock farming.
“To effectively support farms, it is now essential to provide both our employees and farmers with easy access to data and systems,” explains Laurent Buc. “These tools are used daily to place orders and schedule interventions that often need to be carried out within very short timeframes—typically within half a day.”
Responsiveness is essential. IT systems enable the management of field technicians’ interventions, the processing of milk recording analyses, access to genetic data and bovine reproduction catalogs, as well as the technical and health monitoring of farms.
“One of our main challenges as IT leaders is to ensure this responsiveness while facilitating the exchange of information across our various services, whether for sample analysis in milk recording or access to our extensive bovine genetics catalog.”
At Innoval’s scale, this represents significant volumes of data that must be continuously accessible to internal teams, field technicians, and farmers.
A major challenge: ensuring data availability
In this context, database availability and resilience have become critical challenges.
“Our members’ activities run continuously, 24/7. Our mission is to support them at all times. Therefore, it is essential for us to operate proactive 24/7 database monitoring in order to react quickly in case of incidents,” continues Laurent Buc.
To meet these requirements, Innoval has relied for several years on the expertise of DEEP France (formerly DIGORA).
DEEP teams provide continuous database monitoring, regardless of the technology used—Oracle, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, or MongoDB—to ensure security, performance, and 24/7 availability.
Thanks to this continuous monitoring, anomalies can be quickly detected and resolved, minimizing the risk of service disruption for teams and farmers.
A technology partner supporting transformation
Beyond database monitoring, Innoval and DEEP have built a long-term partnership contributing to the modernization of the cooperative’s IT environment.
“On a regular basis, DEEP, as a leading data management provider, helps us evolve by providing recommendations and advice to improve our overall system environment,” explains Laurent Buc.
DEEP teams have supported Innoval in several key projects aimed at modernizing IT infrastructures, improving system performance and reliability, and supporting the development of new digital services for farmers.
“Our partner’s teams have supported us throughout our structuring and modernization projects over the past three years. We operate in an innovation-driven environment that requires a high level of agility.”
DEEP’s support allows Innoval teams to focus their efforts on new innovative projects aligned with business needs.
A collaboration built on trust
Beyond technology, the success of this partnership also relies on strong team proximity.
“I believe that good collaboration is above all about people. Between our teams, communication works well—we speak regularly and understand each other,” emphasizes Laurent Buc.
This mutual understanding allows technical solutions to be tailored to the criticality level of systems and data.
“DEEP teams are fully aware of our challenges and the critical nature of the data we handle. This shared understanding allows us to strike the right balance and deploy appropriate resources to meet stakeholders’ expectations.”
Through this long-term collaboration, Innoval and DEEP share a common goal: leveraging data and technology to drive innovation in livestock farming while ensuring reliability and continuity of essential services for agricultural operations.
Over the years, DEEP has supported our technological transformations by anticipating our needs and proposing innovative solutions that support our growth. concludes Pascal Nourry.
