Customer Solution Case Study
/ / Egypt’s Bavarian Auto Group Deploys SAP On SQL Server 2005 to Support Rapid Growth
Overview
Country or Region: Egypt
Industry: Manufacturing – Automotive & Industrial and Retail - Automotive
Customer Profile
Bavarian Auto Group has exclusive rights for import, assembly, distribution, sales and after-sales support of BMW products in Egypt. The company also has exclusive rights to import and support MINI, Rolls-Royce, and other premier brands.
Business Situation
Bavarian Auto Group, preparing to deploy an SAP enterprise resource planning solution, sought the best operating system and database software for deployment.
Solution
After considering several options, including using an existing DB2 database on an AS400 system, or hosting SAP data on an Oracle solution, the company chose Microsoft® SQL Server® 2005.
Benefits
n Ease of integration
n Reliability and high availability
n Lower total cost of ownership
n Efficient development environment / “We felt that our integration efforts would be more difficult if we were working with DB2 or Oracle as our SAP database. We already knew we could easily integrate using SQL Server.”
Dr. Zakaria Elnaggar, IT Director, Bavarian Auto Group
Egypt’s Bavarian Auto Group, which is sole distributor of BMW, MINI, Rolls-Royce, and other top automotive lines in Egypt, had a problem many companies would love to have: how to cope with 400 percent growth over the last five years. The company, which also operates an assembly line for BMWs in Egypt, chose SAP as its enterprise resource planning solution, and after considering several options decided to deploy SAP on the Microsoft® Application Platform, including Microsoft SQL Server® 2005 Enterprise Edition (64-bit) database software. Bavarian Auto Group chose the solution over an existing IBM AS400 system with an IBM DB2 database, and over an Oracle-based solution, because it wanted the ease of integration it enjoys with the Microsoft Application Platform, and determined that it would gain enterprise-grade performance while enjoying a lower total cost of ownership.
Situation
In Egypt, Bavarian Auto Group is the sole agent of BMW, MINI, Rolls-Royce, and other great automotive brands. In addition to selling new vehicles and providing after-sales support, the company also operates a BMW assembly plant.
Based in Cairo, Bavarian Auto Group has enjoyed rapid growth, which serves as a sign of success yet also places pressure on the company’s IT infrastructure. To better support its growing business, which now includes 4,000 employees, Bavarian Auto Group needed a powerful and comprehensive enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution.
After studying its ERP options, the company decided to move its operations onto SAP software. But before deployment could begin, Bavarian Auto Group needed to determine what was the best technology stack for hosting SAP. It required an operating system and database that provided exceptional performance, high availability, and the ability to scale to keep up with the company’s rapid growth.
“We have enjoyed tremendous growth—in excess of 400 percent over the past five years,” says Dr. Zakaria Elnaggar, IT Director at Bavarian Auto Group. “To keep up with such rapid growth we needed a platform with exceptional scalability and reliability.”
Bavarian Auto Group considered these deployment options:
n Deploy SAP application modules on the company’s existing IBM AS400 system and host SAP databases on the AS400’s IBM DB2 database that supported an internal BMW dealer-support application.
n Deploy SAP application modules using the Windows Server® 2003 operating system and host SAP databases on its DB2 database.
n Deploy SAP application modules using Windows Server 2003, and host SAP databases on Microsoft® SQL Server® 2005.
n Deploy SAP application modules using a UNIX operating system and host SAP databases on an Oracle database.
The Oracle option was ruled out early. Dr. Elnaggar notes, “We saw Oracle as being expensive to license and support, without offering performance beyond what we could get with SQL Server.”
The company was reluctant to deploy using its existing AS400/DB2 infrastructure because it liked the ease of integration and internal development it had found in other areas of its operations working with the Microsoft Application Platform. After speaking with Microsoft reference companies with similar deployments, and studying white papers and other documents, the company decided to deploy SAP on the Microsoft Application Platform.
“We had plenty of capacity on our AS400 and DB2,” says Dr. Elnaggar. “But over the years we have moved more and more of our operations onto the Microsoft Application Platform, and been impressed with its enterprise-grade performance, including the power of SQL Server.”
Solution
Bavarian Auto Group deployed SAP ERP on the Microsoft Application Platform, including SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition (64-bit). The company, which has already deployed SQL Server 2008 in other parts of its enterprise, plans a rapid upgrade of its SAP database to SQL Server 2008.
“We have used SQL Server from version 7 onward, so we are eager to move SAP to SQL Server 2008,” says Islam Farrag, IT Development Team Leader at Bavarian Auto Group. “We really like SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services, and so are eager to upgrade just to take advantage of that.”
SAP modules deployed include Financial, Controlling, Material Management, Sales and Distribution, and Production Planning. The SAP modules should help Bavarian Auto Group reduce costs, monitor shop floor activities online, easily control finished products, and consolidate financial statements.
Bavarian Auto Group used Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007 to create an intranet portal giving employees centralized, role-based access to applications and data stores, including SAP.
The company has a general enterprise architecture that includes:
n Presentation Tier. Bavarian Auto Group employees access SAP and most other applications through an intranet portal created using Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. The presentation tier is supported by Window Server 2003 Internet Information Services (IIS) Web server technology.
n Application Tier. The company hosts all of its SAP application modules on computers running Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition for 64-Bit Systems R2. Bavarian Auto Group has also created internal applications, some of which access SAP applications. All internal development is performed using Microsoft Visual Studio® 2008 and the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0. The company uses its AS400/DB2 infrastructure to host a BMW dealer-support application.
n Database Tier. All SAP data is stored on servers running SQL Server 2005, soon to be updated to SQL Server 2008 Enterprise. SQL Server also supports a data mart for BMW dealer-support information imported from that application’s DB2 data store on the AS400.
n ETL Tier. All extract, transform, and load (ETL) processes are performed using SQL Server Integration Services.
n Analytics Tier. The company performs analytics on data, including information from the BMW dealer-support application hosted on the AS400/DB2 stack. After being imported into a SQL Server data mart, using SQL Server Integration Services to perform ETL, information is structured into multidimensional data cubes for faster analytics using SQL Server Analysis Services.
n Reporting Tier. Recurring and ad hoc reporting of non-SAP data is supported using SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services. Microsoft ProClarity® business analysis software is used for reporting against the data mart.
The solution is deployed on an HP ProLiant DL380 G5 server with 16 gigabytes (GB) of RAM. Storage is on a storage area network (SAN) with 1 terabyte of space. The company also has two HP ProLiant DL380 G5 servers, each with 8 GB of RAM, dedicated to testing and quality assurance.
Benefits
Deploying SAP on the Microsoft Application Platform has helped the company gain the ease of integration it wanted in order to make best use of SAP information across the enterprise. The company is enjoying system stability, having experienced zero unscheduled downtime for SAP. Additional benefits include a lower total cost of ownership than other platforms considered, and an efficient development environment.
Ease of Integration
When Dr. Elnaggar speaks of the decision to host SAP on SQL Server, the first reason he gives is integration. “It would have been easy for us to have simply used our AS400 and DB2 for SAP, but we knew that when we deployed SAP it wouldn’t be just a stand-alone system,” Dr. Elnaggar says. “We knew that we would be integrating our own internal applications with SAP to make best use of the information. We felt that our integration efforts would be more difficult if we were working with DB2 or Oracle as our SAP database. We already knew we could easily integrate using SQL Server.”
The company appreciates the ease with which it can integrate SAP with its SharePoint Server portal, which also provides access to the company’s extensive reports created using SQL Server Reporting Services and with the data mart analytics created using SQL Server Analysis Services and queried against using Microsoft ProClarity.
“We are using SQL Server Analysis Services and Reporting Services to create BI [business intelligence] and then making all of this accessible through our SharePoint Server site,” says Dr. Elnaggar. “The Microsoft Application Platform makes it easy to create integrated solutions that otherwise could be quite difficult to piece together using other databases and third-party applications.”
Reliability and High Availability
Bavarian Auto Group has enjoyed flawless stability hosting SAP on the Microsoft Application Platform. The company wasn’t surprised by this, as it has steadily moved nearly all of its IT infrastructure to the Microsoft Application Platform in recent years.
To help enhance reliability and high availability, Bavarian Auto Group used Windows Server clustering technology to deploy SAP on a two-node active-active cluster. The nodes are configured for failover, so if one of the physical servers fails, the other continues to provide service until the other node is brought back online.
“We’ve enjoyed faultless performance with Windows Server and SQL Server,” says Dr. Elnaggar. “We haven’t had any unscheduled downtime.”
Lower Total Cost of Ownership
Bavarian Auto Group could have enjoyed an initial savings on hardware by deploying SAP on its existing AS400 system. Even though his group had to purchase new server computers to deploy SAP on the Microsoft Application Platform, the company determined that the Microsoft option provided a lower total cost of ownership because of lower licensing and system administration costs.
“We had to look beyond having to purchase hardware for the deployment, because everything else is less expensive with the Microsoft Application Platform,” says Dr. Elnaggar. “From our perspective SQL Server has more attractive licensing than does Oracle. We find that UNIX boxes cost about twice what a similarly equipped Intel-based server computer does. And it is more difficult to find Oracle administrators here in Egypt, and once found they can be considerably more expensive.”
The company also felt that its internal application development and systems integration would be more expensive if it had brought in a new type of operating system and database. “We are very comfortable creating solutions with the Microsoft Application Platform,” says Farrag. “And in regards to ongoing systems administration, SQL Server 2005 is very easy to manage.”
Dr. Elnaggar notes, “Every way we looked at alternatives, we determined that our lowest total cost of ownership would come from deploying SAP on the Windows Server operating system and the SQL Server database.”
Efficient Development Environment
The company’s internal developers enjoy working with Visual Studio 2008, the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0, SQL Server 2005, and SharePoint Server 2007 in creating better solutions for their users at Bavarian Auto Group.
“We have excellent internal developers who are adept at using Microsoft development tools and SQL Server to give our internal users the information they need,” says Farrag. “We use SQL Server Integration Services extensively to move data to wherever it is needed, and then use Analysis Services and ProClarity to perform analytics and Reporting Services, and SharePoint Server to provide access to the results. We feel we have the tools to give our users whatever IT solution they may need.”
Summary
In summary, Bavarian Auto Group gained an optimal infrastructure for hosting SAP, and a lower total cost of ownership compared to other options it explored, by deploying its solution on the Microsoft Application Platform, including SQL Server.
Microsoft Server Product Portfolio
For more information about the Microsoft server product portfolio, go to:
www.microsoft.com/servers/default.mspx
Microsoft SQL Server 2005
Microsoft SQL Server 2005 is comprehensive, integrated data management and analysis software that enables organizations to reliably manage mission-critical information and confidently run today’s increasingly complex business applications. By providing high availability, security enhancements, and embedded reporting and data analysis tools, SQL Server 2005 helps companies gain greater insight from their business information and achieve faster results for a competitive advantage. And, because it’s part of the Microsoft server product portfolio, SQL Server 2005 is designed to integrate seamlessly with your other server infrastructure investments.
For more information about SQL Server 2005, go to:
www.microsoft.com/sqlserver