system x

Description

http://www.ibm-sap.com ConAgra runs their business using SAP applications on IBM System x servers, increasing processing power 400% and running 10-15 times faster speed at a lower cost with high quality. SAP BW Accelerator on IBM System x has changed the game for business reporting of ConAgra's extremely large amounts of data. The IBM x3650 and x3850 have reduced capital costs by 60%. MSI is a local VAR providing consistent technical expertise. Transcript: Gerrit Schutté: ConAgra is one of the largest manufacturers of food here in North America. You are familiar brands such as Healthy Choice, Banquet, Marie Callenders. Terry West: SAP is an extremely important system for us here at ConAgra Foods. It is our enterprise planning and reporting system. It provides us a single source of truth to both plan and run our entire business from the financials through our production systems. Gerrit Schutté: If SAP doesnt work, our company is severely impaired. Terry West: Prior to moving to the IBM System x, we were operating our SAP instance on an Enterprise Class system from a competitor and the clustering technology and the performance was becoming a problem for us. We chose to implement SAP on the IBM platform as we moved from that Enterprise Class system to the System x. Tim Darnall: I called that a trifecta win at the time. We got speed, and I am talking 10 to 15 times more speed than we had in previous environment. We had price, much cheaper price point than we were spending before in the Enterprise Class Unix environment, and we had quality. Chris Nitchals: We were an early adopter of the SAP Business Warehouse Accelerator and we found thats transformed our business in IT in a couple of important ways. Terry West It truly changed the game for us in terms of our reporting, the ability to accelerate an extremely large amount of data here at ConAgra Foods, and do that and present it for the true business decision makers in a very timely fashion proved to be a great step for us as well. Chris Nitchals: Today we are utilizing IBM x3650s in the Application and the CI Layers. We utilize IBM x3850s in our Database Layer running Oracle Terry West: We chose the 3850 because of the substantial bandwidth capabilities, the ability to load up memory as well as the dual core/quad core configuration of those processors that we could do. Chris Nitchals: In terms of cost we saw reduction in what we spend in terms of capital cost on servers for this environment, somewhere in the neighborhood of about a 60% reduction. Terry West: The next step in our journey with the IBM System x platform is to move our application layer and central instance onto the BladeCenter HS22 blades. Gerrit Schutté: The movement to technology such as BladeCenters has helped reduce our carbon footprint and at the same time reduce the need for space, consumption of large amounts of electricity and at the same time provided more power. Gerrit Schutté: The move to IBM servers from Enterprise Class servers has enabled us to cut our cost in half and at the same time improve our processing power by 400%. Terry West: And by doing that, we are able to provide more cash, more funding back to the business to be able to really run the business, make good investments on things that we want to do, truly innovating our products rather than continuing to invest in the hardware or an operation system or an application. Terry West: MSI is a value-added reseller that we work with here in Omaha, Nebraska. Terry West: MSI provides us with very consistent technical expertise and helps our technical staff with the analysis of each platform as its coming out from a roadmap perspective, analyzing which platform would be beneficial for us to consider and then begin to leverage those platforms to go forward. Gerrit Schutté: At ConAgra, weve had a relationship with IBM that dates back to the earliest days of our companys existence. We trust IBM. We feel that we can work very closely...