Customer Solution Case Study
/ / Electronics Wholesaler Overcomes Disastrous Linux Implementation with Stable Microsoft
Overview
Country or Region:Australia
Industry: Consumer Electronics
Customer Profile
Crest Electronics (Crest) began in 1975 and is the market leader in sound and vision accessories for the Australian consumer electronics market. Crest supplies more than 4,000 retail outlets across Australia. The company employs around 100 staff and has 60 PCs and 25 laptops.
Business Situation
Crest was facing huge cost blowouts after a SAP installation running on Red Hat Linux went horribly wrong. Unable to go live for seven months, the company needed to fix things—fast.
Solution
Crest pulled the plug on Red Hat Linux and moved to Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 Enterprise Edition. SAP was operational in two days.
Benefits
Stable platform for SAP system.
Improved productivity.
Ease of management.
Automatic updating reduces server administration time. / “We had Windows Server up and running and SAP operational on the new operating platform in just two days. After the drama of a seven-month Linux installation, this really was a pleasant surprise.”
Anthony Horton, IT Manager, Crest Electronics
Imagine the stress when a major technology project does not go according to plan. That’s the situation Crest Electronics’ IT Manager Anthony Horton faced when a routine SAP enterprise resource planning (ERP) installation went horribly wrong. Crest’s IT environment comprised disparate systems, resulting in poor stock visibility, questionable data accuracy and a lack of cohesion across the company. It decided to implement SAP ERP running on Red Hat Linux, which took IT consultants two weeks to install and configure. The SAP system crashed at random but frequent intervals, wreaking havoc on Crest’s development schedule. After seven months of testing, Red Hat engineers still couldn’t solve the problem. Horton took drastic action: he pulled the plug on Linux and switched the operating system to Microsoft®Windows Server™ 2003 Enterprise Edition. This implementation took only two days and it has been plain sailing for Crest ever since.
Situation
Founded in 1975, Crest Electronics supplies sound and vision accessories to the Australian consumer electronics market. The market leader in this area, Crest services more than 4,000 retail outlets across the country. It employs 100 staff who use around 60 PCs and 25 laptops. The remaining staff work in the company’s distribution center.
Crest runs a lean operation, so efficient technology is essential to keep the business rolling. The company’s technology environment was a hodge-podge of older applications, many developed in-house, running on a variety of operating systems. These applications were not integrated, meaning stock visibility was poor and the accuracy of data was questionable. In addition, running home-grown systems meant that when staff left the company, crucial knowledge often walked out the door with them.
Staff would create spreadsheets and ad hoc database reports in an attempt to gather useful information from the company’s systems. However, the information used to create these was often out of date so there was no guarantee these documents presented an accurate view of company operations.
“Running so many different systems made it difficult for management to make informed decisions,” says Anthony Horton, IT Manager at Crest Electronics. “Inventory control was a nightmare. Everyone was looking at different figures, depending on which system they extracted the figures from.”
Crest decided to install an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to integrate and standardize its business systems. The company chose to install SAP on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.0—the operating platform recommended by Crest’s IT consultants at the time.
“We didn’t foresee any problems with running SAP on Linux, as SAP is quite independent of the operating system,” says Horton. “We simply wanted a platform that was stable and didn’t require a lot of maintenance.”
The implementation began in November 2004. Crest’s IT consultants worked on site to install Red Hat and configure it according to SAP standards, a process that took two weeks.
Then the trouble started.
“Once SAP was installed, we started doing some development work,” says Horton. “The machine constantly core dumped or blue screened at random intervals so we called in our consultants and Red Hat technicians to figure out what was going on.”
As the server was running on an IBM xSeries 635 server, IBM technicians were called in to check the hardware but they found no problems with the machine.
After seven months, Red Hat technicians were still unable to find a solution.
“The implementation had become a cost blowout,” Horton says. “We had already lost about A$15,000 [US$10.965] in technology costs and the massive amounts of time we were spending with consultants. That figure doesn’t even include the cost of our IT team’s time.
“The inconvenience was also a factor. We lost valuable time during the critical development phase—time we should have spent on the SAP system.”
Crest’s IT environment is critical to the effective functioning of the business. “A lot of our business with major retailers such as Big W and Coles Myer is done through electronic data interchange,” says Horton. “If our systems aren’t running, we can’t take orders. No orders means no money.”
Certification and update management was another consideration. “With Red Hat, as well as certifying the kernel, you have to certify device drivers,” says Horton.
“Certification can become quite an ordeal. Although SAP doesn’t demand this level of certification, Red Hat recommends it to ensure you receive immediate attention if you experience a problem.
“Certification and patching took up too much of our time that could have been spent on other important work.”
Crest also needed a more effective way for staff on the road to enter orders. The company wanted to remove the delay from mobile staff receiving orders from customers and those orders entering the system for processing.
Solution
Horton knew he had to take drastic action. He decided to abandon Linux and switch to a Microsoft®environment, switching the SAP system over to MicrosoftWindows Server™2003 Enterprise Edition.
“We could have continued discussions with Red Hat to resolve the issue, but the simple fact was that we were out of time and way over budget,” says Horton.
Horton says that from past experience he knows the Microsoft environment is stable and reliable. Crest already used Microsoft Project Server, Windows® SharePoint® Services and Exchange Server in its environment, so the company didn’t hesitate when it needed an alternative operating platform.
“We do run other systems on Red Hat,” says Horton. “We’re not biased one way or another. We just want a product that works.”
The smooth implementation of Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition was a stark contrast to the Red Hat fiasco.
“We had Windows Server up and running and SAP operational on the new platform in just two days,” Horton says. “After the drama of a seven-month Linux installation, this really was a pleasant surprise.”
Benefits
Moving to Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition enabled Crest Electronics to realize the benefits they initially expected from the implementation, as well as some added bonuses resulting from the ease of management of Microsoft products.
Stable, Reliable Operating Platform
The old adage ‘children should be seen and not heard’ also applies to operating systems. Ideally, they should run quietly and efficiently in the background, allowing applications to work reliably and keep the business functioning.
With Microsoft, Crest has achieved this ideal. One of the chief benefits of Microsoft Windows Server 2003 is that it requires virtually no maintenance.
“It’s fantastic,” says Horton. “We’re no longer spending valuable time fussing about with the operating system.
“We can forget about it and go on with using IT to solve business issues, confident that it is quietly doing its job.”
A stable operating platform is also important for the effective functioning of Crest’s EDI order processing system, ensuring all orders are processed quickly and without errors.
Impressive Results with SAP
Crest has experienced impressive improvements in efficiency and productivity with SAP.
“SAP has been a godsend for the business,” says Horton. “The list of benefits is endless.”
Integrating the company’s disparate systems provides a single view of company data. More effective report generation has reduced the time the IT team spends developing customized systems and creating ad hoc reports for business units.
“Now that we’re using SAP, each time a change is made to the system, it ripples right through the whole product,” says Horton. “We’re all on the same page when it comes to financial reports, stock reports and order status. It’s a completely different way of doing business.”
Implementing such a sophisticated system also allowed Crest to re-engineer its business processes in ways that would otherwise have been impossible.
Crest has abandoned the majority of its custom applications, whose operations are now centralized on the ERP system. It has also removed unnecessary duplication of data between disconnected systems.
Simple Update Management
Crest now uses Microsoft Windows Server Update Services to automatically update the server overnight. This has made managing and maintaining the system incredibly easy for Crest’s IT staff.
Microsoft Windows Server Update Services enables Crest’s IT administrators to manage and automatically deploy the latest Microsoft product updates using a Web-based tool.
“Microsoft patching is a piece of cake compared to the patch compliance process for Red Hat,” Horton says. “Microsoft’s strong relationship with SAP means that as soon as Microsoft releases a patch, it’s certified.”
Mobile Order Entry System
In 2003, Crest developed a mobility solution using Microsoft .NETconnection software technology that has transformed the way the company processes orders.
Staff on the road use iMate hand-held computers to send orders to the warehouse instantly via GPRS. The mobility solution requires a stable operating platform to ensure that all remotely entered orders can be processed quickly and efficiently.
“We have halved the time it takes to process orders—from 48 hours to 24,” says Horton. “The Microsoft .NET Framework was the only technology sophisticated enough for our requirements.
“Even though our in-house developer is a real open source advocate, he couldn’t find anything that came near Microsoft .NET for developing an order entry solution for mobile devices.”
Crest is also using Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 2003 to manage internal documents that were previously stored on shared drives. This technology has been especially useful for mobile staff, who can now access documents on a SharePoint site without having to wait for them to be posted onto the company’s intranet or Web site.
The Real Cost of Open Source
Crest has learned first-hand that open source technology is not always ‘free’.
“Open source products work well until you need support,” says Horton. “If you have a critical system down, you don’t have time to wait for a member of the open source community to post a reply. You need a fast result and a way to escalate the problem.
“The biggest advantage of using Microsoft technology is that it works. It’s as simple as that. You don’t have to spend a lot of time sorting out interoperability issues or updating patches. And if we do have a problem, we know we’ll always get a fast response.”
Windows Server 2003
The Microsoft Windows Server 2003 family helps organizations do more with less. Now you can run your IT infrastructure more efficiently, build better applications faster and deliver the best infrastructure for enhancing user productivity. And you can do all this faster, more securely, and at lower cost.
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