Case Studies

As one of the largest appliance manufacturers in Europe, Turkey’s Arçelik uses SAP enterprise resource planning (ERP) to help manage its global operations. When Arçelik needed to refresh its software and hardware infrastructure, it faced the question of whether to update its existing Sun/Solaris/Oracle technology stack or migrate to a new solution. After analyzing options, including conducting onsite proof of concept testing of an IBM/DB2 stack and the Microsoft® Application Platform hosted on HP servers, Arçelik decided to migrate to the Microsoft/HP solution, including a forthcoming upgrade to Microsoft SQL Server® 2008 Enterprise database software running on the Windows Server® 2008 Enterprise operating system. The software is hosted on HP Integrity rx8640 and HP ProLiant DL380 server computers. Arçelik has enjoyed 3 times faster performance and a lower total cost of ownership.

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.

Baltika Breweries, the largest producer of beer in Russia, has about 12,000 employees and 11 breweries. Its popular brands have been the market leader in Russia for more than a decade and are exported to 46 countries. The company coordinates enterprise resource planning (ERP) across its operations using an ERP solution created by Microsoft® Certified Partner Monolit-Info. To enhance management of several geographically dispersed ERP databases holding more than 2 terabytes of information, the company deployed them as a 6-node multi-server configuration. Baltika is upgrading to Microsoft SQL Server® 2008, from the earlier version, to take advantage of new features introduced in SQL Server 2008. Baltika’s lab testing demonstrated that SQL Server 2008 provides the efficient replication required for its operations, as well as reliability.

Sports enthusiasts around the world place up to 1 million bets per day using the online sports betting services of Gibraltar-based bwin International. Performance is paramount at bwin which hosts more than 100 terabytes of information on some 100 instances of Microsoft® SQL Server®. The company was very happy with its deployment of SQL Server 2005, but it enjoyed 3-digit annual growth in 2005 and 2006 and is eager to take advantage of new technological advancements to help it keep pace with growth. The bwin Data Management Systems group has started upgrading its database infrastructure to SQL Server 2008 to take advantage of Backup Compression, management tools, and other new features. During peak gaming periods SQL Server processes 30,000 database transactions per second, while supporting the reliability required by the bwin database group’s motto: “Failure is not an option.”

CareGroup Healthcare System is responsible for protecting the privacy and integrity of 2 terabytes of patient information and related data. Based in Boston, CareGroup is the corporate parent of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School, and three other area hospitals. CareGroup hosts its data on 390 databases on 30 instances of Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005. The organization is updating databases to SQL Server 2008 to take advantage of new features including advanced auditing and transparent encryption to help it meet HIPAA and other regulatory requirements. CareGroup is using Policy-based Management, new for SQL Server 2008, to enforce policy and schema across its operations, and is centralizing reporting using SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services accessed through a portal created using Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007.

CyberSavvy believes in using software automation to make life easier for its customers. Its Software as a Service solution, DataPlace, which it terms a “database factory,” enables technical and business oriented customers to create and modify their own databases, hosted by CyberSavvy. The company needed a rock-solid database with a faultless data transfer mechanism to support communication between its client-side SmartClient and backend databases. CyberSavvy deploys its solutions on the Microsoft® Application Platform, using Microsoft SQL Server™ 2008 Enterprise on the hosted server side, and SQL Server 2008 Express on the client side. CyberSavvy has enjoyed a number of benefits from using SQL Server 2008 including an integrated development environment, reduced storage needs with Backup Compression, easier automation using SQL Server Service Broker, and scalability.

Energizer Holdings manufactures batteries, flashlights, and other consumer products that are sold in more than 160 countries. Operating in diverse types of markets, Energizer needed a low-cost, localized, easy-to-use enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution for some of its global locations. It chose a solution from Epicor, a Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner. Energizer implemented the Epicor solution for one-third to one-half the cost of a typical ERP system. The solution came ready to handle country-specific languages, regulations, and controls. It is tightly integrated with Microsoft products, which means that Energizer employees can access its information in the Microsoft tools they use every day. Energizer also gained a productive partnership with the Epicor product development group and has used the Epicor solution’s enhancements to improve its decision making.

FWBS, a leading United Kingdom software developer and Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner, specialises in IT solutions for corporate professionals, including law firms. The company aims to enhance the business value of its case management software by integrating the latest Microsoft technologies and delivering new feature sets to its customers. To stay ahead of its competitors, FWBS integrated Microsoft Visual Studio® Team System 2008 development system, Microsoft SQL Server® 2008 database software, and the Windows Server® 2008 operating system with its core OMS Matter Centre product. The company has reduced development time by 20 per cent and increased programmer productivity. It can also deliver new features to clients more efficiently, enhancing the user experience and simplifying IT management.

Turkey’s Garanti Technology, which is owned by the Doğuş Group, a large Turkish conglomerate, was asked to create an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution for Doğuş Automotive Group, an importer and distributor of passenger cars, light commercial vehicles, spare parts and accessories for Volkswagen, Audi, Porsche, and other manufacturers. Garanti Technology created an ERP solution linking Doğuş automotive dealers, part suppliers, and other key partners using the Microsoft® Application Platform. The ERP solution, which includes a data warehouse, will soon be upgraded to Microsoft SQL Server® 2008 database software to take advantage of new features that make it easier to manage data, better utilize resources, and enhance information security. The solution was developed using Microsoft Visual Studio® 2008 (and earlier versions) and the Microsoft .NET Framework.

Genexis Consulting, a Microsoft® Registered Partner, offers custom software solutions in the areas of mobility, Web, infrastructure management, and design. To enhance its solutions’ value and to improve flexibility and overall user experience, Genexis increasingly uses a software-plus-services approach. Genexis has seen a trend toward these flexible solutions, leading to its increased growth and revenue potential.

Customers of Hitachi Consulting, a global organization recognized for delivering proven business and IT solutions to a wide range of industry leaders, asked for assistance in migrating from Crystal Reports to Microsoft® SQL Server® Reporting Services. The customers had originally deployed business intelligence solutions using SQL Server for the relational data store but Crystal Reports for reporting, and wanted to gain the efficiency and savings of a single-vendor integrated solution. In response, Hitachi Consulting, which is deploying SQL Server 2008, created a tool that automates conversion of reports to the Report Definition Language that Reporting Services uses. The company has found that moving to Reporting Services can help reduce complexity, enhance visibility, and lower reporting costs.

Infosys Technologies Ltd. is an IT transformation leader for its clients around the world. With over 95,000 employees in more than 64 offices around the world, the company constantly searches for the best technology to help its customers meet their business goals. As Infosys began designing a solution to let automobile dealers share information on inventories and other resources, it wanted to offer a cloud-based solution that would be simple to deploy, easy to scale, and require zero maintenance from the customer. To create its hub-in-the-cloud solution it needed a cloud-based database, which it found with Microsoft® SQL Data Services, part of the Microsoft Services Platform. Infosys is using SQL Data Services to create a solution for auto dealers, which it can easily replicate to meet similar integration needs for healthcare, hospitality, insurance, and other industry verticals.

Diversified manufacturer Kimball International wanted to reduce the total cost of ownership of its 10-terabyte SAP BW and ECC 5.0 systems. An analysis showed it could reduce overhead by more than $500,000 a year in ongoing software licensing and hardware servicing costs by migrating from the Oracle/UNIX stack to the Microsoft® Application Platform. But the migration would have to be seamless not to disrupt its operations. Working with Microsoft Gold Certified partner RealTech, Kimball migrated each of its three SAP systems in three separate projects. All three migrations were completed over weekends, and Kimball is enjoying a lower total cost of ownership while gaining 30 percent to 50 percent faster processing. Migrating from Oracle/UNIX to Microsoft SQL Server® 2005 and the rest of the Microsoft Application Platform has also helped the company achieve easier systems management.

As part of its quest for continuous product improvement, Manhattan Associates tested its ILS 2008 integrated logistics solution running on Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008. The testing, which its engineers performed at the Microsoft SQL Server test labs in Redmond, Washington, found that the combination of ILS 2008 and SQL Server 2008 enabled the company to set new internal benchmark records compared to its previously released ILS 2007, running with the same database software. The company found that ILS 2008 running on SQL Server 2008 provided the performance and scalability needed to stay ahead of the requirements of even its largest global customers. Manhattan Associates has found that the ease of use of its solution running on the Microsoft Application Platform enables its customers to get up and running swiftly, providing what it terms faster “speed to value.”

McLaren Electronic Systems, part of a family of companies that includes the McLaren Racing organization, is a leader in developing specialized motor racing products including the engine control unit (ECU) that manages the complex engine, transmission, and other key elements of Formula One race cars. After the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), motor sport’s world governing body, awarded McLaren Electronics and Microsoft the contract to provide the ECU solution that will be used in all Formula One race cars, McLaren Electronics sought a more efficient way to manage the terabytes of ECU data that a team generates in a year. After performing a proof of concept study, McLaren Electronics found that Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 provided the solution it needed for storing data while providing Formula One type retrieval speeds.

Microsoft runs its worldwide operations on SAP ERP. With 92,000 employees and operations in 89 countries, the largest software company in the world has plenty of data to track, running some 19 million SAP transactions a month against its 6.5-terabyte database. The company was happy with how well its SAP deployment was hosted by Microsoft® SQL Server® 2005 running on Microsoft Windows Server® 2003 Enterprise Edition, but it upgraded to the beta edition of Microsoft SQL Server 2008 to take advantage of new features, including Data Compression, Backup Compression, and some enhancements to existing features like Database Mirroring. Microsoft found it easy to upgrade to the new version of SQL Server, requiring extremely short downtime and no need to manually synchronize the disaster recovery site. The solution provides enterprise-grade stability and performance, even in its beta release.

Everything about MySpace boggles the mind—from its 130 million monthly active users, to the 300,000 new users who sign up each day; and from its 8 billion friend relationships it manages, to the 34 billion e-mail messages it stores while adding 41 million more each day. The site’s 1 petabyte of data is managed by 440 Microsoft® SQL Server® instances and resides on 3PAR® Utility Storage. When MySpace needed a message queuing and delivery solution to help ensure data changes were correctly and atomically executed on all affected physical database instances, MySpace created an internal solution, called Service Dispatcher, using the Service Broker feature of SQL Server 2005. Service Broker has helped MySpace ensure data integrity across its distributed infrastructure, resulting in a better user experience. Service Broker also helps MySpace developers to roll out new services faster.

Austrian Broadcasting Corporation Radio & Television (ORF) has an IT group that helps its sportscasters and other reporters provide exceptional live sports coverage by providing nearly instantaneous analytics and other sports information from its sports database and related data warehouses. Looking ahead to the live coverage it will provide for the 2008 Euro Cup soccer championship games, which will be held in Austria and Switzerland, ORF wanted to ensure it had the best database infrastructure possible. After testing Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2008, ORF decided to upgrade from SQL Server 2005 even before the official release of SQL Server 2008. The organization has seen even faster data processing since upgrading, and is enjoying enhanced data management through using new SQL Server 2008 features such as Policy-based Management and Change Data Capture.

Having been in the business since the 1860s, Australia’s QR Limited knows how to run a railroad. As the company prepared to upgrade its SAP R/3 enterprise resource planning (ERP) software it decided to move its SAP applications and databases from a mainframe and DB2 environment to the Microsoft® Application Platform, including Microsoft SQL Server® 2005 database software running on a geocluster supported by the Windows Server® 2003 Enterprise Edition operating system. The company estimates it is saving about U.S.$100,000 per month in mainframe costs, since moving its SAP infrastructure to a cluster of commodity servers running the Microsoft Application Platform. QR Limited reports 20 to 40 percent faster SAP transactional response times and up to 8 times faster batch processing since moving SAP to SQL Server 2005.

Quanta Computer has a global workforce of 30,000 generating annual revenue of U.S.$25 billion as one of the world’s largest manufacturers of laptop computers and other computing devices for the biggest names in the industry ranging from Apple iPods to notebooks, laptops, and other devices for Dell, HP, Lenovo, Sony, Toshiba and other pillars of the computing industry. With its SAP database supporting its global operations growing by more than half a terabyte a month, Quanta needed to either replace its SAN infrastructure or find a compression solution. The company upgraded to Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 Enterprise (64-bit) to take advantage of new SQL Server compression technology. SQL Server 2008 Database Compression has reduced some tables by as much as 90 percent, while SQL Server 2008 Backup Compression has provided compression of 85 percent.

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software from SAP has won a foundational place in the IT infrastructure of organizations around the world. REALTECH, based in Walldorf, Germany, is an international consulting firm with more than 700 SAP-certified specialists that have developed a specialized practice in helping organizations migrate SAP from UNIX/Oracle and other operating system/database stacks to the Microsoft® Application Platform. REALTECH, which is platform-neutral, reports that its customers are migrating SAP deployments to the Microsoft Application Platform, including Microsoft SQL Server®, to enjoy a lower total cost of ownership and ease of use. Customers migrating to SQL Server 2008 can take advantage of new compression technology which will be especially appreciated by organizations performing Unicode conversions which can double the size of existing databases.

With customers in all 50 states and 15 countries, ServiceU is a leader in the field of supporting online and on-demand event management. Its software services, created and deployed using the Microsoft® Application Platform, are used by churches, schools, universities, theaters, and businesses to manage concerts, conferences, and other events. As a Payment Card Industry Level 1 Service Provider, the company is interested in security and performance, which is why it is upgrading to Microsoft SQL Server® 2008. ServiceU is using a number of new SQL Server 2008 features including enhanced auditing, and Policy-based Management to enforce configuration policies. The company is also using the new Performance Data Collection and Plan Freezing features to enhance performance, and the Data Compression and Backup Compression features to reduce the cost of disk-based storage.

Siemens PLM Software scales to 5,000 concurrent users and gains 50 percent compression for database files running on SQL Server® 2008 and Windows Server® 2008 and Intel®-based hardware.

SunGard creates solutions for 41 of the world’s top 50 banks, so it wants the best platform on the planet to support its massively scalable asset and liability management (ALM) solution—Ambit BancWare ALM. The company recently completed testing that found that the Microsoft® Application Platform, including Microsoft SQL Server® 2008 database software hosted on a server computer with four Intel® Quad-Core Xeon® 7300 series processor cores could support a computing grid created from 512 Intel Quad-Core Xeon 5400 series processor cores. Testing complex simulations with up to 20,000 variables found near-linear scalability in moving from a 128-core grid to the 512-core grid. This scalability benefits SunGard customers by enabling more complex simulation models to be processed, which helps enhance predictive accuracy. The scalability can also be used to generate predictions more quickly.

As the world looks for new ways to conserve fuel, electricity, and water, France’s Vertelis has created an application that collects information from thousands of automation devices to enable organizations managing large buildings, industrial plants, and other facilities to more carefully monitor resource consumption. An enterprise-grade database is required because large customers may need to record thousands of monitoring readings per second, while supporting near-real-time reporting. Historical data accumulates in multi-terabyte relational data stores to support trending and timeline reporting. Vertelis builds and deploys its solution using the Microsoft® Application Platform including Microsoft SQL Server® 2008 Enterprise and SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services. The solution helps customers reduce energy consumption by up to 30 percent.

Financial technology provider Xenomorph built its TimeScape data and analytics management suite on proprietary time-series database technology. This was to meet the industry’s extensive performance needs in the management and analysis of market data. But given the expertise needed and cost involved in managing proprietary database solutions for many institutions, the company sought to find a way to deliver the same performance using a standards-based technology approach. The company chose to support its time-series technology on Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 database software. This hosts Microsoft .NET Framework Common Language Runtime, helping developers to optimize SQL Server to create a repository for time-ordered data. SQL Server 2008 not only offers the proven performance levels needed to support trading and risk management, but also boosts IT productivity with advanced in-house management tools.