Case Studies: Professional Services

Dimension Data has operations in 36 countries as it provides IT services to a global customer base that includes 125 of the U.S. Fortune 500 and 32 of the top 100 listed companies in the UK. The company, which generated 2006 revenue of U.S.$3.1 billion, initially deployed its SAP R/3 enterprise resource planning solution using Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2000 database. It upgraded to SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition running on Intel® Xeon® processor based servers to gain the high availability benefits of SQL Server 2005 Database Mirroring, which creates a continually updated copy of data to a separate server for disaster recovery. The company is using the SQL Server 2005 Database Snapshot feature to create a dedicated copy of the database for reporting so that queries aren’t run against the production servers. The Online Indexing feature reduces the need for scheduled downtime.

Recall Corporation, a full-service information management company, wanted to make it easy for customers to track and request documents. Recall developed a Web-based application that worked with a Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2000 database solution to provide full-text search (FTS) capabilities. It wasn’t long before the company’s growing databases were too much for its FTS service to handle, leading to downtime, the forced rebuilding of search indexes, and increased customer care costs. To remedy the situation, Recall upgraded to Microsoft SQL Server 2005, which delivered 50 percent faster FTS capabilities, increased the solution’s scalability, and provided improved management tools. With SQL Server 2005 in place, Recall now can serve customers more quickly and without a negative effect on its financial performance.

Germany’s TUEV NORD Group, one of that countries largest technical service providers, offers a wide range of consulting, testing, and servicing activities with its Systems, Mobility, Certification, Energy and Systems Engineering, Academy and International Divisions. The company serves customers in 36 countries in Europe, Asia, and North and South America. The TUEV NORD Group needed to replace its 32-bit system with a 64-bit solution. The company upgraded its database supporting the SAP BW to Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005 Enterprise Edition. The company saw a 15 percent performance increase after upgrading to SQL Server 2005, enhanced availability with Database Mirroring, readiness for 64-bit architecture, and enterprise-grade stability.

Acosta provides retail sales and category management services to more than 1,000 manufacturers, including giants such as Clorox, Heinz, and Nestle. To better manage its information, Acosta created a 2.2 -terabyte enterprise data warehouse based on Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005 Enterprise Edition (64-bit) SP2, and hosted on an HP 9000 Superdome computer with 12 Intel® Itanium® 2 processors. SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services was used to create more than 50 client-specific multidimensional databases. Deployments of the enterprise data warehouse and multidimensional databases are providing Acosta with a number of benefits including rapid ROI through product differentiation, better data view for clients, easier data management with Table Partitioning, enhanced performance with Dynamic Management Views, and 70 percent faster aggregations.