High-tech manufacturer Minolta Europe is migrating to a
common global IT infrastructure based on Unisys, SQL Server and SAP
R/3, in a move that will see query processing times cut from
several minutes to less than a second.
The company is moving to a standardised environment to enable its
divisions around the world to share data more easily, as it absorbs
photo equipment company Konica following a recent merger.
It has become common for multinational companies to consolidate
their global IT systems using regional hubs, as economies of scale
can lower the cost of ownership and make it easier to support IT
assets. Performance bottlenecks can also be overcome when disparate
national operations are united.
Shell, BP Amoco and chemical company Bayer are among those
corporates that have ongoing global consolidation projects.
Minolta will standardise on Unisys ES7000 servers running Microsoft
SQL Server 2000 to support SAP R/3 version 4.5b. Three centralised
server hubs in Japan, Germany and the US will provide business
applications to more than 60 sites around the world.
Holger Mailand, team manager for system planning and support at
Minolta, said, "SAP user answering time on the previous hardware
was too long in both standard use and peak periods. With the new
configuration, response times are down from several minutes to 0.5
seconds."
The new architecture will support global sales, finance,
procurement and customer service, but not HR. In Europe Minolta is
moving from 11 Compaq Proliant servers to just two ES7000s.
The Japanese division has already replaced its 10 IBM i-Series
servers with ES7000s, which operate the company's 5.5Tbyte R/3
database.