2 page Case Study - Posted 4/14/2009

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Mantrac Group

Multinational Dealer Gains Efficient Business Intelligence Solution

Mantrac Group, a multinational dealer that represents many leading companies including Caterpillar, deployed Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 data management software to enhance its business intelligence (BI). With this solution, Mantrac has accelerated data extraction, the building of multidimensional online analytical processing (OLAP) cubes, and reporting. The company is phasing in this flexible, scalable, and more secure BI solution.

Business Needs

Mantrac Group, founded in 1977, is the sole authorized dealer for Caterpillar in Egypt, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Iraq and parts of Russia. Based in Cairo, the company has 48 offices and branches and represents many other global suppliers in several industries, including IT. Mantrac is part of the Mansour Group of companies, which employs more than 12,000 professionals worldwide.

With Microsoft SQL Server 2008, we not only have a solution that is flexible, scalable, and highly secure, we also have a foundation that we can build on.  Sherif El Henawy Business Information Services Manager Mantrac Group

In the past, the company’s IT staff had exclusively used Microsoft Office Web Components controls—which support the exchange of documents and data over the Web—and the Microsoft Office FrontPage® 2003 Web site creation and management tool to publish reports over the company intranet. Reports were created and published using SQL Server 2000.

Mantrac had created many OLAP cubes using SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services along with dozens of reports based on those cubes for more than 100 users. However, to become even more competitive, Mantrac sought a new solution to enhance its business intelligence (BI).

Solution

As a longtime Microsoft customer, Mantrac contacted Microsoft Egypt to explore its options. “When we learned about the BI capabilities of Microsoft SQL Server 2008, we decided to move ahead with it,” says Sherif El Henawy, Business Information Services Manager, Mantrac.

Mantrac would have liked to upgrade its entire operation to SQL Server 2008. However, it lacked the resources to do that, especially because it would have to migrate the existing OLAP cubes that are used for many vital reports, which could be time-consuming.

Instead, Mantrac deployed SQL Server 2008 Enterprise with Integration Services, Analysis Services, and Reporting Services on a new server computer, keeping SQL Server 2000 on its existing hardware. The solution provides efficient extract, transfer, and load (ETL) capabilities for both structured and unstructured data taken from many diverse sources and systems. With the ETL capabilities, Mantrac can easily get access to the information in the DB2 database and use it in multidimensional OLAP cubes to provide multiple views of the data for analysis and reporting.
 
For now, Mantrac is using SQL Server 2008 for new projects while it continues to rely on SQL Server 2000 as well as SQL Server 2005. The company plans to migrate completely to SQL Server 2008 by the end of 2009.

Benefits

Mantrac now has a foundation for an efficient, comprehensive BI solution. “With Microsoft SQL Server 2008, we not only have a solution that is flexible, scalable, and highly secure, we also have a foundation that we can build on,” says El Henawy.  The solution has also accelerated reporting.

Provides a Foundation for Comprehensive Business Intelligence

Mantrac has just begun to see the benefits of its SQL Server 2008 solution. It will deploy three applications in May 2009 that will provide reports on Caterpillar sales, parts, and services to 50 users—executives and others—at offices in 10 countries.  And there are more applications on the way.

El Henawy plans to extend the solution to create a dedicated data warehouse for analysis and reporting. SQL Server 2008 will extract data from both the DB2 and SQL Server 2005 databases to give a full companywide view of key data. El Henawy expects that the data warehouse may reach 120 gigabytes from its current 60, which SQL Server 2008 can easily accommodate.

Delivers Exceptional Flexibility, Scalability, and Security

Mantrac appreciates the improved flexibility, scalability, and security of its new BI solution. “It’s a big advantage to be able to upgrade to SQL Server 2008 in phases,” says El Henawy, noting the flexibility—something that would probably not be possible with a non-Microsoft solution. The Microsoft solution also means the company does not have to retrain users or IT staff. What’s more Mantrac can easily add users as it grows.

In addition to the built-in security features of SQL Server 2008, such as data encryption and security management, Mantrac also increased the security of access to the iSeries server. “In the past, changing the password on the iSeries server to allow data access was lengthy and cumbersome. We had to write scripts to do it.” Now, the IT staff just changes a configuration file. It’s so easy that the password is changed weekly to reduce security threats.

Accelerates ETL and Reporting

Mantrac reports that the ETL processes provided by the Integration Services is up to 10 times as fast with SQL Server 2008 than with SQL Server 2000. “Although some of that speed is due to our new server hardware, it is still impressive,” says El Henawy. “We have dramatically shortened the time to extract data from our DB2 database with the simplified interface. Creating OLAP cubes and generating reports is faster, too. ”

Offers Extensible Solution

Finally, by adding other Microsoft software—or integrating non-Microsoft systems—Mantrac can continue to expand its BI solution. “We see a lot of potential for future uses,” says El Henawy. “For example, we may set up Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007 for report publishing and distribution, or we may set up access for mobile users. This is a solution we can build on for a long time.”

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Document published April 2009