albaad wipes away international businessmanagement challenges with sap and ibm

8/3/2019 Albaad wipes away international businessmanagement challenges with SAP and IBM

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The Challenge

Fast-growing company Albaad,

which specializes in cosmetic,

hygienic and medical wipes,

needed to control costs

and understand business

performance as the company

expanded internationally. Central infrastructure, though, was not

keeping pace with business needs.

Users suffered from long wait

times to produce reports, and in

some cases application failures.

Little by little, the advantages of

a centralized ERP solution were

being lost as users resorted to

locally created databases and

spreadsheet-based analysis.For example, without accurate

inventory data, manufacturing

planning was no longer meeting

sales expectations, and production

efficiency was impacted.

Albaad wipes away international business

management challenges with SAP and IBM

we know

they know

Overview

The Solution

Albaad refreshed its server

infrastructure, selecting IBM

System x including x3650 M2,

x3550 M3, x3550 and x3400

servers, powered by Intel Xeon

Processor 5000 series processors,

IBM System Storage disk and tape data storage. The infrastructure

runs SAP ERP solutions, including

financials, controlling, materials

management, purchasing

management, production planning,

and sales and distribution

components, hosted, maintained

and managed by IBM Global

Technology Services under a five-

year contract.

The Benefits

Technical performance, reliabili ty

and scalability issues have been

solved, boosting staff productivity

and ensuring the availability of

precious company information.

New corporate acquisitions can be

migrated easily and swiftly to the

standardized SAP application and infrastructure landscape, ensuring

integrated business information is

available for improved business

control and management.

Key Solution Components

Industry: Manufacturing,

Healthcare

Applications: SAP ® ERP

components, including financials,

controlling, materials management,

purchasing management,

production planning, and sales and distribution

Hardware: IBM ® System x ®

including x3650 M2, x3550 M3,

x3550, x3400, x346, x335, and

x336 servers powered by Intel ®

Xeon ® Processor 5000 series

processors, IBM System Storage ®

DS3400 and IBM System Storage

TS3100 tape server

Software: Microsoft ®

Windows ®

Server, Microsoft SQL Server

Services: IBM Global Technology

Services



capacity. The company needed to solve

these technical problems, which were

impacting business users.

The central infrastructure was not

keeping pace with business needs.

Little by little, the advantages of a

centralized ERP solution were being

lost as users resorted to locally

created databases and spreadsheet-

based analysis. For example, without

accurate inventory data, manufacturing

planning was no longer meeting sales

expectations, and production efficiency

was impacted.

Rafi Shamir, Operational and IT

Manager, explains, “Productivity was

affected, and valuable insight on

company performance was potentially

being lost. Users were sometimes

losing their connection to the SAP

applications, and the ability to extractuseful business information was

severely constrained.”

Rethinking the IT strategy

Albaad had chosen to outsource its

IT infrastructure, maintenance and

application support for its SAP ERP

solutions, in a five-year contract. At

renewal, the company was able to

reconsider its IT strategy, hardwareplatform and SAP applications.

Rafi Shamir says, “We originally

selected the outsourcing route because

maintaining an SAP ERP landscape and

the supporting infrastructure requires

a great deal of expertise. For example,

training and retaining SAP BASIS

personnel is an expensive occupation.

We prefer the outsourcing strategybecause for Albaad it is a cheaper, more

secure option than trying to become

SAP application and infrastructure

experts ourselves.”

“We compared tender offers from several

hosting providers, and the IBM proposal shone

out in terms of strengthin depth and quality of capability.”

Rafi Shamir, Operational and IT Manager,

Albaad

Albaad, headquartered in Israel,

produces a wide range of wipes, for

cosmetic, health, personal hygiene,

professional healthcare and related

markets. Principal manufacturing

operations are based in Israel,

Germany and the USA, and the

company has market presence in

more than 20 countries.

Albaad manufactures own-label wipes

for customers such as supermarket

groups and pharmaceutical brand

owners. A combination of innovation,

quality and cost-efficiency has helped

Albaad to become a global leader in

its market space.

Having used SAP ERP applications

for some years, the number of users,

total data volumes and transaction

workload had gradually increased.

As a result, Albaad’s users weresuffering from long wait times to

produce reports and slow system

response. After five years, the existing

IT infrastructure had reached the end

of its effective life, and had reached



Albaad controls its enterprise-wide

operations with a wide range of SAP

ERP applications, including financials,

controlling, materials management,

purchasing management, production

planning, and sales and distribution.

Some 180 people access the SAP

solutions, creating a total of around

1.7 TB of production data, and general

business applications such as email,

Microsoft Active Directory and file

services are supported by the same

infrastructure.

At the outsourcing contract renewal

date, Albaad took the opportunity

to refresh the server infrastructure

in readiness for an upgrade to the

latest editions of its SAP software,

and make the transition to 64-bit

operating systems. This would allow

the company to significantly increase

the workload capacity of the individualservers, with a smaller number of

processors supporting a larger total

transaction throughput, offering

potential software license fee savings,

improved data center efficiency and

reduced system management costs.

For the core SAP applications, Albaad

chose the IBM System x platform,

implementing x3650 M2 servers,hosted by IBM Global Technology

Services. For line-of-business

applications, Albaad deployed IBM

x3550 M3, x3550, x3650, x3400,

x346, x335, and x336 servers,

powered by Intel Xeon Processor 5000

series processors in-house.

Servers powered by the highly

intelligent and massively scalableIntel Xeon processor series offer a

dramatic increase in performance and

efficiency. Built to handle demanding

applications and workload, the Intel

Xeon processor series delivers

a quantum leap in enterprise

computing performance. The Intel

Xeon processor 5000 series with a

Nehalem Microarchitecture, helps

achieve near-native performance

and near-linear scalability for SAP

ERP, to help lower IT costs and

increase agility without compromising

performance. With automated

energy-efficiency features, the Intel

Xeon processor 5000 series also

scales energy usage to workload

requirements, delivering optimal

performance/watt.

For data storage, backup and

archive, Albaad selected IBM System

Storage DS3400 and IBM System

Storage TS3100 disk and tape

servers supporting a total of 5 TB of

production data.

Boosting business performance

The refreshed IT infrastructure

provides a stable, high-performance

system landscape that has

immediately addressed Albaad’s

productivity issues. SAP application

dialog response delays have been

cured. Reports that had taken several

hours to produce are now returned

within, typically, 30 minutes.

Choosing to outsource to IBM

At a strategic level, the IT

infrastructure now acts as an

enabling service that serves the

company’s business ambitions. For

example, when Albaad acquired

a new business, the new data and

processes were able to be was

migrated to the shared infrastructurefrom the previous in-house systems to

the SAP landscape rapidly and easily,

without requiring system upgrade or

change.

“By outsourcing our server infrastructure

and applicationmaintenance to IBM

Global Technology Services’ outsourcing services... We are able

to exploit the benefits of the SAP applications tothe maximum, looking

for ways to optimize processes, reduce costs

and develop newmarkets.”


Albaad

TECHNICAL LANDSCAPE

Servers: IBM System x including x3650

M2, x3550 M3, x3550, x3400, x346,

x335, and x336 servers powered by

Intel Xeon Processor 5000 series

processors, IBM System Storage

DS3400 and IBM System Storage

TS3100 tape server.

Software: SAP ERP components,

including financials, controlling,

materials management, purchasing

management, production planning,and sales and distribution. Microsoft

Windows Server, Microsoft SQL

Server.


http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/albaad-wipes-away-international-businessmanagement-challenges-with-sap-and 4/4SPC03323-ILEN-00 (April 2011)

“With integrated SAP solutions hosted on

IBM technologies and managed by the IBM team, Albaad has the

enterprise-wide viewof skills, inventory and

manufacturing thatwill enable us to takethe next steps in its

international businessexpansion.”


Albaad

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“Before we committed to the

agreement with IBM, we examined

the business case for both in-house

and hosted solutions. The IBM

proposal offered lower total costs,

as it avoids the need to build and

manage a server room, train and

retain BASIS consultants or database

administrators, and the associated

systems and application management

costs,” says Rafi Shamir.

“We compared tender offers from

several hosting providers, and the IBM

proposal shone out in terms of strength

in depth and quality of capability.

Rather than sending us a generic

hosted offering, IBM proposed a

tailored solution based on Albaad’s

specific requirements, and was able

to demonstrate its ability to deliver

worldwide SAP application and BASIS

support.”

Looking to the future

With the IBM System x infrastructure in

place, Albaad is positioned to migrate

to the latest editions of SAP ERP

applications.

Rafi Shamir comments, “By

outsourcing our server infrastructure

and application maintenance toIBM Global Technology Services’

outsourcing services, we have

gained the ability to concentrate on

the business opportunities rather

than spend time on hardware and

functional maintenance, or invest in

BASIS skills. We are able to exploit the

benefits of the SAP applications to the

maximum, looking for ways to optimize

processes, reduce costs and developnew markets.

“The next steps are to implement the

latest editions of SAP ERP solutions,

and we will add SAP ERP Human

Capital Management. It makessense for Albaad to integrate our

people management with business

management, as we need to track,

for example, their training for specific

work areas that meet ISO 14000

and ISO 9000 requirements for

manufacturing. With integrated SAP

solutions hosted on IBM technologies

and managed by the IBM team,

Albaad has the enterprise-wide viewof skills, inventory and manufacturing

that will enable us to take the next

steps in its international business

expansion.”

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albaad wipes away international businessmanagement challenges with sap and ibm

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