BAT considers Cast Iron System's low-cost lightweight hardware to
be risk free
Using a small start-up supplier for vital integration projects is
almost unheard of for large businesses, but British American
Tobacco believes the benefits will outweigh the risks.
Last week, Computer Weekly revealed that BAT expects to save up to
75% on the costs of low-level integration projects by using a
specialist hardware device from Cast Iron Systems, instead of
middleware from main suppliers.
The decision to go with Cast Iron Systems - which launched in 2001
and does not expect to break even until the middle of next year -
would be viewed by many as a high-risk strategy, but BAT believes
its investment will be safe.
"We do not often buy products from start-ups, but the upside [with
Cast Iron] is significant enough to mitigate any potential risk,"
said Kevin Poulter, application technology manager at BAT.
The Application Router costs £40,000 per box and has none of the
complexity associated with typical enterprise application
integration (EAI) projects, so it was easy to justify to the board,
Poulter said.
"Because of the way Cast Iron is packaged and priced, we can
justify it on a project-by-project basis," he said. "I do not have
to go the board demanding a big cheque for the whole
architecture."
BAT undertook a thorough risk analysis before opting for Cast Iron,
part of which saw Poulter flying to the US to meet Solectron, one
of only three other reference customers, in late 2003.
The company concluded that the risks were mitigated for a number of
reasons, Poulter said. "The product is based on standards, so we
could switch to another platform if we had to; the software is
being put into escrow; and the appliance is based on a Dell
platform - so even if Cast Iron ceased trading, the integrations we
have deployed with it would be sustainable for an indefinite
period."
BAT put a proof-of-concept test together, which involved
integrating data between internal SAP and Siebel systems to prove
the technology could drive savings. A business case was then
written by BAT's IT team in South Africa which revealed that Cast
Iron was 25% of the cost of rival integration offerings from the
mainstream suppliers.
"This is really just an example of how we develop strategy,"
Poulter said. "My team carries out proof-of-concepts using a number
of technologies to validate strategy direction and building the
business case is a natural consequence of that work."
The appliance model was a good fit for BAT's overall strategy for
two main reasons, Poulter said.
"It fits well with one of our key strategy objectives - to leverage
simple, low total cost of ownership, replicable solutions wherever
possible," he said.
"The second aspect is that Cast Iron is completely aligned with the
service-oriented architecture strategy we have set in terms of
supporting web services and business process execution language
standards."
In essence, Poulter said, Cast Iron had the ideal blend of meeting
immediate cost-cutting objectives while at the same time enabling a
longer-term strategic vision.
BAT has yet to decide which technologies will support its long-term
plan to link all its distributed markets using web services, but
Cast Iron will fill in the gaps, Poulter said.
"Our integration backbone is IBM, but rather than extending that we
are adding Cast Iron," he said.
"Our infrastructure is quite federated with disparate datacentres
using different software, such as Computer Associates and Tivoli.
We are using Cast Iron as an interface for those systems."