MT12 - SAP solutions from Dell – from your Datacenter to the CloudDell EMC World
SAP HANA has accelerated the pace of innovation – an in-memory platform that runs analytics applications smarter, business processes faster, and data infrastructures simpler. Join this session to learn how Dell EMC offers the broadest solutions for SAP HANA for any sized customer with the best performance and the most customer choices- from on-premise to hybrid to cloud.
As companies have adopted faster development methodologies a new constraint has emerged in the journey to digital transformation: data. Data has long been the neglected discipline, the weakest link in the tool chain, with provisioning times still counted in days, weeks, or even months. In addition, most companies are still using decades-old processes to manage and deploy database changes, further anchoring development teams.
MT23 Benefits of Modular Computing from Data Center to Branch OfficeDell EMC World
IT modernization, simplified management and cost reduction initiatives have propelled an industry shift to modular computing models from "one size fits all" approaches. In this session, we discuss how you can leverage innovative Modular Infrastructure solutions from Dell EMC to transform your environment- gaining greater control and efficiency while accelerating IT services- no matter the size and location of operations.
MT11 - Turn Science Fiction into Reality by Using SAP HANA to Make Sense of IoTDell EMC World
Data collected from the “Internet of Things” is a reality, flooding data centers at a rapid pace! But how can you take advantage of that data in real-time? Join this session to examine how Connected Business with Dell and SAP puts that data to work for you - on-premise or cloud - to build solutions that glean real-time insights from IoT
MT09 Using Dell’s HPC Cloud Solutions to maximize HPC utilization while reduc...Dell EMC World
Separate the hype from the reality of Cloud in HPC.
Building upon our Dell EMC HPC Portfolio, come deep dive into Dell’s hybrid cloud model for HPC. Built on private and public cloud models, Dell EMC's Hybrid HPC Cloud Solutions can help you optimize your CapEx and OpEx costs, while creating a flexible computing environment that adapts to dynamic HPC workloads, while ensuring resource availability. Maximize your RoI through a Hybrid HPC Cloud that enables your innovation and competitiveness.
In this session, we will describe the key elements of a Dell EMC Isilon Data Lake and its key advantages including reduced IT costs, simplified management, increased operational flexibility and in-place data analytics. Dell EMC products to be featured include Isilon, ECS and Virtustream.
In this session, you will learn about the Dell EMC Isilon Data Lake and its advantages including:
• Data consolidation and increased efficiency to lower capital costs
• Streamlined management to reduce operating costs
• Improved operational flexibility and scalability to meet growing storage requirements
• Simple integration with a choice of public or private cloud storage providers
• Powerful in-place data analytics that accelerate time to insight while eliminating the need for a separate analytics storage infrastructure.
You will also hear how this solution can be easily extended to include data from remote and branch office locations with an efficient software defined storage solution.
MT12 - SAP solutions from Dell – from your Datacenter to the CloudDell EMC World
SAP HANA has accelerated the pace of innovation – an in-memory platform that runs analytics applications smarter, business processes faster, and data infrastructures simpler. Join this session to learn how Dell EMC offers the broadest solutions for SAP HANA for any sized customer with the best performance and the most customer choices- from on-premise to hybrid to cloud.
As companies have adopted faster development methodologies a new constraint has emerged in the journey to digital transformation: data. Data has long been the neglected discipline, the weakest link in the tool chain, with provisioning times still counted in days, weeks, or even months. In addition, most companies are still using decades-old processes to manage and deploy database changes, further anchoring development teams.
MT23 Benefits of Modular Computing from Data Center to Branch OfficeDell EMC World
IT modernization, simplified management and cost reduction initiatives have propelled an industry shift to modular computing models from "one size fits all" approaches. In this session, we discuss how you can leverage innovative Modular Infrastructure solutions from Dell EMC to transform your environment- gaining greater control and efficiency while accelerating IT services- no matter the size and location of operations.
MT11 - Turn Science Fiction into Reality by Using SAP HANA to Make Sense of IoTDell EMC World
Data collected from the “Internet of Things” is a reality, flooding data centers at a rapid pace! But how can you take advantage of that data in real-time? Join this session to examine how Connected Business with Dell and SAP puts that data to work for you - on-premise or cloud - to build solutions that glean real-time insights from IoT
MT09 Using Dell’s HPC Cloud Solutions to maximize HPC utilization while reduc...Dell EMC World
Separate the hype from the reality of Cloud in HPC.
Building upon our Dell EMC HPC Portfolio, come deep dive into Dell’s hybrid cloud model for HPC. Built on private and public cloud models, Dell EMC's Hybrid HPC Cloud Solutions can help you optimize your CapEx and OpEx costs, while creating a flexible computing environment that adapts to dynamic HPC workloads, while ensuring resource availability. Maximize your RoI through a Hybrid HPC Cloud that enables your innovation and competitiveness.
In this session, we will describe the key elements of a Dell EMC Isilon Data Lake and its key advantages including reduced IT costs, simplified management, increased operational flexibility and in-place data analytics. Dell EMC products to be featured include Isilon, ECS and Virtustream.
In this session, you will learn about the Dell EMC Isilon Data Lake and its advantages including:
• Data consolidation and increased efficiency to lower capital costs
• Streamlined management to reduce operating costs
• Improved operational flexibility and scalability to meet growing storage requirements
• Simple integration with a choice of public or private cloud storage providers
• Powerful in-place data analytics that accelerate time to insight while eliminating the need for a separate analytics storage infrastructure.
You will also hear how this solution can be easily extended to include data from remote and branch office locations with an efficient software defined storage solution.
Continuing to run a legacy infrastructure may be possible, but it isn’t optimal—not when new technologies like the Dell and Nutanix solution are available. By upgrading to this new hyperconverged infrastructure, you could do eight times the work of a legacy solution in just 6U and scale for more work by simply adding another node. What’s more, eliminating the need for centralized SAN storage means more space to grow, less hardware to manage, and the potential for lower power and cooling bills.
Take the first step on the path to an upgraded environment. Run DPACK in your own datacenter, and discover your performance requirements and potential bottlenecks. Then consider how the increased mixed workload performance from the hyperconverged, Intel processor-powered Dell and Nutanix solution could help your business thrive.
Accelerating Business Through Next Generation StorageDell World
Simplicity, flexibility and cost-savings are but a few of the virtues driving the rapid growth of software-defined storage (SDS) offerings. Hear how Dell’s broad x86 server portfolio enables us to deliver the most extensive range of SDS offerings in the industry—from hyper-converged appliances to software-only options to open-source solutions—helping organizations of all sizes find a storage solution that best meets their needs and objectives.
VDI with Dell EqualLogic hybrid arrays: A comparative study with the industry...Principled Technologies
Building a VDI environment requires a solid storage system capable of meeting the demands of a large number of users. Being able to support all your users with an attractively priced storage solution is ideal.
We found the Dell EqualLogic PS6110XS to be simple to set up and manage during the course of testing, and it provided significantly higher usable capacity, at 9.1 TB versus 6.7 TB for the competing similarly configured, industry-leading NAS solution.
The Dell EqualLogic PS6110XS also was more power efficient, requiring 68.6 percent less power, while providing comparable performance to the industry-leading competitor. In addition, the solution also saved roughly 51.6 percent on the initial investment in hardware, software, and support, at a cost of $102 per desktop versus $210 for the competitor. The ease of setup and management, performance capabilities, and potential savings with the Dell EqualLogic PS6110XS show that it has the potential to power your VDI environment while helping your bottom line.
The cloud is here to stay, and companies are looking to their internal applications teams to provide strategic guidance on how best to take advantage of the cloud. Find out how your peers are using business applications in the cloud to their advantage.
Key take-aways:
- Ways cloud computing can drive process transformation for your organization;
- How companies are using business applications in the cloud for competitive advantage;
- How virtual private cloud computing eliminates risks commonly associated with public cloud environments.
The Business Case for Hosting JD Edwards in the CloudNERUG
This presentation will cover in detail the business case for hosting JD Edwards in the cloud. Hear from industry expert, John Bassett, CTO at GSI, Inc. During the presentation, John will address the following topics, comparing hosting to a more traditional in-house approach:
- Total cost of ownership (TCO)
- IT staffing and support costs
- Licensing costs
- Cost Predictability
- Security and compliance
- Scalability, performance and reliability
- Business continuity and redundancy
- System deployment
- System management, ongoing maintenance and upgrades
- Market adaptability, agility and innovation
Give Your Organization Better, Faster Insights & Answers with High Performanc...Dell World
From modeling and simulating new products to analyzing ‘Big Data’ for insights into customer behaviors, achieving better results faster can be crucial for competitive advantages and success. High performance computing (HPC), long used for academic/government research, has gone mainstream, and is now used by companies and organizations in all fields—from finance to pharmaceuticals, from marketing to manufacturing, from e-commerce to engineering, from healthcare to homeland defense. Dell is a leader in HPC and can help you get better, faster insights and answers, no matter what your organization desires to achieve.
Advanced Digital Imaging Solution Provider Reports $10K in Annual Savings fro...Jade Global
When Jade Global began working with OmniVision Technologies, the business was using Oracle Apps (Oracle E-Business Suite R12) for its ERP system and Oracle Data Guard for its disaster recovery (DR) site.
Jd edwards upgrade roundtable at innovate15 empire merchants case studyNERUG
An in-depth, interactive session addressing real world scenarios and the challenges that are often faced during an upgrade. Hear from customer and other "experts" who will share experiences, best practices and lessons learned and help eliminate "the gotchas!" If you’re planning or contemplating an upgrade, this session provides a great opportunity to understand what lies ahead -- and be much more prepared!
New era of Manufacturing. How Digitization help manufacturer improve productivity, increase revenue, achieve higher customer satisfaction, accelerate time to market and reduce cost.
An overview of the Catalan HealthCare system and the main challenges ahead regarding the implementation of IT infrastructures like PHR and third party services.
A study was conducted at a sawah site in Ghana to examine the relationship between landscape
position and some selected soil properties with the aim of generating adequate data for modeling
landscape relationships and to aid both researchers and farmers in taking critical management
decisions. Soil properties namely total porosity, moisture content, infiltration rates, hydraulic
conductivity, sand content, silt content, clay content, gravel concentration, bulk density, soil pH, total
nitrogen, soil organic matter and cation exchange capacity were collected and analysed. Data were
collected at the foot slopes, middle slopes and at the upper slopes from four major landuses (maize, oil
palm, natural vegetation and plantain) in the study area. Simple statistical parameters such as mean
and standard deviation were used to analyse the data. Moisture content, total porosity, soil pH, organic
matter and carbon and total nitrogen increased downslope whilst sand content, clay content, bulk
density occurred at upper slopes decreased downslope. Management practices appeared to have
influenced infiltration rate, hydraulic conductivity and silt content.
Continuing to run a legacy infrastructure may be possible, but it isn’t optimal—not when new technologies like the Dell and Nutanix solution are available. By upgrading to this new hyperconverged infrastructure, you could do eight times the work of a legacy solution in just 6U and scale for more work by simply adding another node. What’s more, eliminating the need for centralized SAN storage means more space to grow, less hardware to manage, and the potential for lower power and cooling bills.
Take the first step on the path to an upgraded environment. Run DPACK in your own datacenter, and discover your performance requirements and potential bottlenecks. Then consider how the increased mixed workload performance from the hyperconverged, Intel processor-powered Dell and Nutanix solution could help your business thrive.
Accelerating Business Through Next Generation StorageDell World
Simplicity, flexibility and cost-savings are but a few of the virtues driving the rapid growth of software-defined storage (SDS) offerings. Hear how Dell’s broad x86 server portfolio enables us to deliver the most extensive range of SDS offerings in the industry—from hyper-converged appliances to software-only options to open-source solutions—helping organizations of all sizes find a storage solution that best meets their needs and objectives.
VDI with Dell EqualLogic hybrid arrays: A comparative study with the industry...Principled Technologies
Building a VDI environment requires a solid storage system capable of meeting the demands of a large number of users. Being able to support all your users with an attractively priced storage solution is ideal.
We found the Dell EqualLogic PS6110XS to be simple to set up and manage during the course of testing, and it provided significantly higher usable capacity, at 9.1 TB versus 6.7 TB for the competing similarly configured, industry-leading NAS solution.
The Dell EqualLogic PS6110XS also was more power efficient, requiring 68.6 percent less power, while providing comparable performance to the industry-leading competitor. In addition, the solution also saved roughly 51.6 percent on the initial investment in hardware, software, and support, at a cost of $102 per desktop versus $210 for the competitor. The ease of setup and management, performance capabilities, and potential savings with the Dell EqualLogic PS6110XS show that it has the potential to power your VDI environment while helping your bottom line.
The cloud is here to stay, and companies are looking to their internal applications teams to provide strategic guidance on how best to take advantage of the cloud. Find out how your peers are using business applications in the cloud to their advantage.
Key take-aways:
- Ways cloud computing can drive process transformation for your organization;
- How companies are using business applications in the cloud for competitive advantage;
- How virtual private cloud computing eliminates risks commonly associated with public cloud environments.
The Business Case for Hosting JD Edwards in the CloudNERUG
This presentation will cover in detail the business case for hosting JD Edwards in the cloud. Hear from industry expert, John Bassett, CTO at GSI, Inc. During the presentation, John will address the following topics, comparing hosting to a more traditional in-house approach:
- Total cost of ownership (TCO)
- IT staffing and support costs
- Licensing costs
- Cost Predictability
- Security and compliance
- Scalability, performance and reliability
- Business continuity and redundancy
- System deployment
- System management, ongoing maintenance and upgrades
- Market adaptability, agility and innovation
Give Your Organization Better, Faster Insights & Answers with High Performanc...Dell World
From modeling and simulating new products to analyzing ‘Big Data’ for insights into customer behaviors, achieving better results faster can be crucial for competitive advantages and success. High performance computing (HPC), long used for academic/government research, has gone mainstream, and is now used by companies and organizations in all fields—from finance to pharmaceuticals, from marketing to manufacturing, from e-commerce to engineering, from healthcare to homeland defense. Dell is a leader in HPC and can help you get better, faster insights and answers, no matter what your organization desires to achieve.
Advanced Digital Imaging Solution Provider Reports $10K in Annual Savings fro...Jade Global
When Jade Global began working with OmniVision Technologies, the business was using Oracle Apps (Oracle E-Business Suite R12) for its ERP system and Oracle Data Guard for its disaster recovery (DR) site.
Jd edwards upgrade roundtable at innovate15 empire merchants case studyNERUG
An in-depth, interactive session addressing real world scenarios and the challenges that are often faced during an upgrade. Hear from customer and other "experts" who will share experiences, best practices and lessons learned and help eliminate "the gotchas!" If you’re planning or contemplating an upgrade, this session provides a great opportunity to understand what lies ahead -- and be much more prepared!
New era of Manufacturing. How Digitization help manufacturer improve productivity, increase revenue, achieve higher customer satisfaction, accelerate time to market and reduce cost.
An overview of the Catalan HealthCare system and the main challenges ahead regarding the implementation of IT infrastructures like PHR and third party services.
A study was conducted at a sawah site in Ghana to examine the relationship between landscape
position and some selected soil properties with the aim of generating adequate data for modeling
landscape relationships and to aid both researchers and farmers in taking critical management
decisions. Soil properties namely total porosity, moisture content, infiltration rates, hydraulic
conductivity, sand content, silt content, clay content, gravel concentration, bulk density, soil pH, total
nitrogen, soil organic matter and cation exchange capacity were collected and analysed. Data were
collected at the foot slopes, middle slopes and at the upper slopes from four major landuses (maize, oil
palm, natural vegetation and plantain) in the study area. Simple statistical parameters such as mean
and standard deviation were used to analyse the data. Moisture content, total porosity, soil pH, organic
matter and carbon and total nitrogen increased downslope whilst sand content, clay content, bulk
density occurred at upper slopes decreased downslope. Management practices appeared to have
influenced infiltration rate, hydraulic conductivity and silt content.
Inland valleys are being used under the Sawah technology for rice production to reduce rice imports to
Ghana. Sawah technology is assumed to benefit from geological fertilization. However, there is no
quantitative information on runoff and sediment flows in the agricultural watershed of Ghana. This
study was carried out at Biemso in the southern part of the country. The aim was to estimate runoff and
sediment transport using the water erosion prediction project (WEPP) model (version 2006.500), from
hillslope to the valley bottom where rice is cultivated using the Sawah technology. A digital elevation
model (DEM) was created from ground survey and used to select the various plots (hillslopes) and to
select slope input parameters. Four plots (hillslopes) were selected for the model simulation. Data on
local daily values of rainfall and on minimum and maximum temperatures were used to set a CLIGEN
model station file to determine climate input parameters for the model. Rainfall characteristics (erosivity
and distribution) were analysed. Soil erodibility was also determined. Soil and crop management input
parameters required by the model were identified and or estimated from field measurements and
secondary sources. The model was run for two management scenarios: Fallow and continuous maize
systems. The results of the simulation showed that 2.9 to 3.9 and 6.8 to 10.2 t/ha/year of sediments were
eroded from upper catchment to valley bottom under fallow system and maize, respectively. The range
of values for runoff produced under fallow was 17.4 to 40 mm whereas that under maize system is 158.7
to 233.62 mm. The study has shown that land use system in the study area has a great influence on
geological fertilization. In addition, the valley bottom where rice is produced under the Sawah system is
enriched with organic matter from upslope.
DIPACO Diesel Parts is a known and trusted name throughout the diesel fuel injection repair industry. Historically, they provided distribution of high quality parts for diesel engines such as pumps, injectors, seals, and gaskets. In the last few years, they have expanded from wholesale distribution to also manufacturing their own pumps and injectors. This expansion was creating phenomenal growth. The
challenge was their IT systems were not keeping pace.
Value Journal, a monthly news journal from Redington Value Distribution, intends to update the channel on the latest vendor news and Redington Value’s Channel Initiatives.
Key stories from the September Edition:
•Oracle Autonomous Database Cloud Service Now Available
•Dell EMC introduces latest Integrated Data Protection Appliance
•Oracle Autonomous Database
•Capitalizing on Cloud Success - Cherian John, Vice President,Converged Infrastructure Systems,Redington Value
•Talend appoints Redington Value as Middle East and Africa VAD
•Huawei, Ivanti partner to maximize endpoint security for enterprises
•Veritas unveils NetBackup 8.1.2 with improved user interface
•Symantec offers free checkup for VPNFilter menace on routers
•Cisco announces intent to acquire Duo Security
•Check Point research reveals how criminals take over networks through fax machines
•Fortinet report reveals home IoT devices are latest cryptojacking targets
•Mimecast unveils second-annual state of email security report
•SonicWall report raises alarm on encrypted threats and chip-based attacks
•Red Hat announces Ansible Engine 2.6 availability
DELL EMC: IT transformation & the impact on the datacenterMarketing Team
In het huidige economische klimaat staan innovatie, flexibiliteit en klantenbinding centraal. Hoe blijf je als bedrijf relevant in deze snel veranderende wereld, hoe kan de informaticadienst aan de basis staan van meer efficiente processen en nieuwe bronnen van inkomsten en welke rol speelt het datacenter in deze evolutie? Een sessie rond digitale transformatie voor kleine en middelgrote bedrijven.
Solix EDMS and Oracle Exadata: Transitioning to the Private CloudFrank Morris
"Many companies have reached a critical point where their dependence on information technology and the internal IT organization’s ability to rapidly deliver new IT services are no longer in alignment. This white paper discusses how Solix Enterprise Data Management Suite (EDMS) has been adapted for the cloud computing model and how it can assist organizations to make the transition to a private cloud such as Oracle Exadata and maintain efficient utilization of the cloud infrastructure over the long-term.
"
In the past, many organizations invested heavily in the development and growth of enterprise data warehouses (EDW). Today, the EDW is often at or over capacity. As EDWs hit their limits, many forward-looking organizations are shifting data warehouse processing functions to Hadoop for its scalability and economic benefits.
With a robust EDW offload solution, an organization can accelerate ETL processing, work easily with a wide range of new data sources and formats, and make better use of existing EDW investments.
Thought leaders from Dell EMC, Cloudera and Syncsort discuss how best to begin a big data journey by taking control of all data, controlling costs, and identifying the first use case, so you can move forward with confidence to transform your business.
1. S P E C I A L A D V E R T I S I N G S E C T I O N
S1
Reordering
Order Management
With industry-standard technology, Oracle® Database 10g, and Oracle
eBusiness Suite 11i, Dell’s IT group is accelerating processes, keeping orders
flowing smoothly, and cutting its total cost of IT ownership by 75 percent.
A
few years ago, IT executives at Dell were
making long-term plans for supporting the
company’s robust growth in the Europe,
Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) region. They
looked carefully at what growing sales would
mean for their IT infrastructure—and they were
troubled by what they saw.
The central back-office system that supported
the processing of incoming customer orders for
EMEA was a powerful UNIX server—but it was
not powerful enough for Dell’s rapidly growing
business. The IT group’s projections showed that
the company’s volume of orders would outstrip
the system’s capacity in just over two years. “The
system had limits in terms of the throughput it
could achieve, and there was little room left for
growth,” says Liam McCarthy, production support
manager at Dell IT EMEA. “We calculated that it
Built for speed: With
its new standards-based
platform, Dell’s EMEA
region has cut order-
processing time from four
hours to less than one.
2. could ultimately handle about 25,000
orders a day, and no matter what we did,
it wasn’t going to be able to scale. And
we had requirements from the business
in terms of the transactional volumes that
would grow far beyond that.”
In addition to the looming capacity
gap, there were other problems. The sys-
tem handled computing tasks in batches,
rather than real time. As a result, says
Dragan Vuksanovic, architecture lead at
Dell IT EMEA, “there were fundamental
problems with the velocity of key trans-
actions, which of course is very important
to the Dell direct model, and to customer
satisfaction. We need to get incoming
orders processed through the system to
fulfillment within an hour, and we could
see that we were going to have increas-
ing trouble achieving that service level.
So we realized that it would be very dif-
ficult to go on with this platform.”
There was a time when Dell’s course
of action would have been more or less
predetermined: Replace the large UNIX
box with an even larger one. But Dell’s IT
executives felt that there were intrinsic
shortcomings with this kind of single-
server, proprietary architecture, such as
high licensing and maintenance costs—
and scaling to a larger UNIX server would
be relatively expensive, as well. At the
same time, the group wanted more relia-
bility and flexibility in IT to better support
the business, and speed up processes
as cost-effectively as possible. “Unless
we could meet these challenges, our
continued growth in EMEA would be
jeopardized,” says Pat Leahy, director of
Dell IT EMEA. “Our ability to process and
deliver orders to our customers with the
velocity they have come to expect from
Dell would be affected. So we needed
a different approach.”
Getting on the grid
Dell’s IT group explored a number of
potential solutions and weighed the
projected return on investment of each.
Ultimately, this process took them to
an entirely different kind of infrastruc-
ture—a grid architecture based on
standard Intel-based Dell™ PowerEdge™
servers, running Oracle Database 10g
with Oracle Real Application Clusters
(Oracle RAC), Oracle eBusiness Suite 11i,
and Red Hat Linux®
.
With an eye toward the vital impor-
tance of the system and the large work-
loads it would have to handle, the IT
group planned the implementation care-
fully, using an innovative conference
room pilot methodology that let IT archi-
tects, developers, and people from the
business side work together with several
iterations of the system to fine-tune and
test the configuration, processes, and
procedures. “IT and our business part-
ners were able to work side by side,
right from the beginning. That was key,
because it helped ensure that the system
really supported the business,” says
Henrique Manhao, program manager
at Dell IT EMEA. With that close col-
laboration, the team was able to not only
support existing business processes, but
also reengineer and streamline many of
the processes involved in the customer
order life cycle.
Dell also worked closely with Oracle
support and development experts
throughout the implementation. The
S P E C I A L A D V E R T I S I N G S E C T I O N
S2
Dell EMEA’s Solution
at a Glance
Business system
Critical back-office order-management
system:
• Supporting operations
in 23 countries
• Ability to handle more than 80,000
orders per day
• Ability to process 400,000 order
lines per hour
• One of the world’s largest order-
management systems running
on Oracle
Old environment
Sun®
Solaris UNIX server
New environment
• Dell PowerEdge servers
• Oracle Database 10g with
Oracle Real Application Clusters
• Oracle eBusiness Suite 11i
• Dell/EMC storage devices
• Oracle Application Server 10g
Benefits
• Consolidation of multiple
applications
• Processing throughput increased
by at least 100 percent
• Invoicing time reduced 66 percent
• Order-processing time cut from
four hours to less than one
• Enablement of new approaches
to the market
• Total cost of IT ownership reduced
75 percent
• Annualized business benefit
of more than $18 million
“People have paid
a growing amount of attention
to grids and clusters in the
Oracle database world, but
the idea was new in the
applications world.… So we
partnered very closely with
Oracle to make it all work.”
—Dragan Vuksanovic,
architecture lead, Dell IT EMEA
3. EMEA group was able to draw on its
experience with a project called GEDIS—
a Dell and Oracle cluster platform that
the group had implemented previously
to handle the front end of the order-
management process. This new effort
built on the experience from that project
to take the grid concept further, says
Dragan Vuksanovic. “People have paid
a growing amount of attention to grids
and clusters in the Oracle database
world, but the idea was new in the appli-
cations world. There were no similar
implementations in place anywhere at
that time. So we partnered very closely
with Oracle to make it all work.” When
design and testing was completed, Dell
rolled out the new system in stages to
23 business units over a 12-month period;
overall, the entire implementation, from
concept to completion, took two years.
Now, the EMEA back-office order-
management system runs on a seven-
node cluster of Dell PowerEdge servers,
with Oracle Grid Control tools being used
to monitor and manage the cluster, and
Oracle J2EE Application Server delivering
an SOA (Service Oriented Architecture)
platform to support system integration.
This architecture offers high levels
of availability and reliability—which of
course are basic requirements for such a
critical system. “With the cluster, we can
afford to take down two or three nodes at
a time without any loss of functionality,”
says Andy Blay, lead production DBA at
Dell IT EMEA. Individual nodes can be
brought down one at a time for mainte-
nance without affecting the operation of
the overall system—a far cry from the old
approach, in which the entire UNIX server
had to be taken down for maintenance.
In addition, a backup site with another
seven-node cluster of Dell servers can
take over if the entire main data center
goes down.
The Dell and Oracle platform also
provides the high levels of performance
needed to handle the company’s growing
workloads. Where the legacy system
could handle about 25,000 orders per day
and 150,000 order lines per hour, the new
platform can process more than 80,000
orders a day and 400,000 order lines
per hour. Based on total order lines pro-
cessed, the solution is one of the largest
order-management systems in the world
running on Oracle. It’s also the largest
Oracle eBusiness Suite Oracle RAC
implementation and one of the world’s
largest Linux/Oracle transactional data-
bases—and it is supporting one of the
most critical processes at Dell. “This
architecture quite clearly demonstrates
the power and value of the combination
of industry-standard servers, Linux, and
Oracle,” says Alan Goodall, infrastruc-
ture architect at Dell IT EMEA.
Cutting costs,
increasing opportunities
For the IT department, the Dell and Oracle
platform has helped rein in system and
maintenance costs, and it has provided
the flexibility needed to continue to meet
the evolving needs of the business. The
Dell and Oracle platform has also elimi-
nated the IT group’s concerns about
capacity constraints for the foreseeable
future, because the architecture supports
capacity and performance scaling
through the simple addition of more
nodes and storage.
The IT group has also been able to
consolidate a number of former third-
party applications onto the system,
which also helps keep costs down. “All
customer-facing documents—invoices,
order confirmation, and so on—are
processed on the platform,” says Camille
Voisin, lead business analyst at Dell IT
EMEA. Using Oracle XML Publisher, the
company produces and prints these
documents efficiently, in real time.
The move to the new architecture
has also had a clear, positive impact on
the business. For example, the platform,
in combination with the front-end GEDIS
platform, has enabled Dell to consolidate
its once-fragmented quote-to-collect
processes across the 23 countries in
its EMEA operations into one common,
standard process. The Dell and Oracle
platform has also shortened cycle times
for a number of processes. Invoicing
time has been reduced 66 percent to
one hour; orders are now processed in
less than an hour rather than four hours;
and information is exchanged across
S P E C I A L A D V E R T I S I N G S E C T I O N
S3
“This is a wonderful
example of technology
enabling not only growth and
improvement in our existing
lines of business, but also
entirely new business
lines that would not have
been possible using our
legacy systems.”
—Pat Leahy,
director, Dell IT EMEA