Future Proof Investment

Progressive Infotech devises an Itanium-ready, PA-RISC server solution for a leading handset manufacturer

The Indian subsidiary of a leading global telecommunications company has ambitious plans to increase its handset production capability in India.

The organization runs its own homegrown application, Manufacturing Execution System across all its manufacturing facilities across the globe. It was originally developed for the Windows platform, and now has been ported and tested to run in the Unix environment. The Unix version is also up and running in two facilities outside India.

Increasing Production ManifoldFrom its current capacity of 300,000 handsets a month in India, the organization wants to move to 1-1.5 million units a month, and eventually move up to 5 million units. The organization also wants to move to the Unix environment, while increasing its production capacity.

Progressive had set up the organization’s hardware setup in 2005 as per the norms followed in their global centers. So the organization asked Progressive how they could handle this quantum leap in manufacturing in a new environment.

Beating Obsolescence One of the obvious solutions before the organization was to invest in an Itanium confi guration. But since their MES application has not yet been ported for Itanium, this was not a feasible option for them.

The team at Progressive came up with a solution for this. The Solution Architect from Progressive says, “We suggested that servers on which the application would run, be replaced with PA-RISC servers. And when they would need to increase the production capacity to 5 million units, they could use the same box, same chipset and upgrade to the latest Itanium processor available at that time.”

Progressive helped the organization understand that though PA-RISC was an end-of-life technology, such a solution would be able to meet all their current needs, while staying geared up for the future as well. And in the future, when the organization would be ready to move to Itanium, the infrastructure setup would only need a processor upgrade, and not a re-investment for servers.

ChallengeThe organization wanted to move from a production capacity of 300,000 handsets per month to 1.5 million units a month, and change the platform from Windows to Unix. It also wanted to be able to manufacture 5 million handsets per month in the foreseeable future.

SolutionProgressive deployed two HP PA-RISC servers which could support the increased production capacity, and which could be easily moved to the Itanium platform when needed, by simply replacing the processors.

Benefi tsThe organization is now ready to handle the increase in production requirements, while having future proofed their investments in an end-of-life technology.

In Brief

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Building on Existing SetupThe organization saw the benefi ts of this solution. Progressive deployed the new servers, HP RP7440, while keeping the rest of the setup intact. So the backup server, management server, active directory server, SAN switches, and storage systems were not replaced. The deployment that Progressive had handled in 2005 had factored in that Unix compatibility would be required in the future, and only systems that met this criterion were deployed at the time.

The deployment took less than a day, and saw no downtime. The setup was tested to ensure that it would be able to handle the load of manufacturing 1.5 million handsets.The Progressive team also trained a person from the organization to handle Unix administration.

Reducing TCOThe organization is now well on its way to fulfi lling its manufacturing targets in India. The new deployment of HP PA-RISC servers has ensured that the organization meets its current needs of being able to manufacture upto 1.5 millon handsets per month. With the addition of a cellboard to this server at a later stage, the requirement of increased production can also be handled. Since the chipset and box are Itanium-ready, the move to the new server processing platform would not involve huge re-investments. In effect, the organization will have a low TCO for its manufacturing setup in the long run.

About ProgressiveProgressive Infotech (Progressive) is a leading independent provider of IT Infrastructure Services encompassing Integration and Management of IT Infrastructure, through its robust world class delivery processes to varied corporations of high repute. With an Integrated Quality Management system that comprises ISO 9001:2000, ISO 20000-1:2005 (previously BS15000-1) as well as ISO 27001:2005 (previously BS7799) standards, Progressive has redefi ned the way IT Infrastructure management is being practiced across the globe.

Progressive Infotech Pvt Ltd C-161, Phase - II Extension, Noida - 201305 Phone: +91 - 120 - 4393939 Fax: +91 - 120 - 2563838

Application: Manufacturing Execution Application Server: Two units of HP DL580G3 server on Windows 2003 Enterprise Server in the high availability cluster confi gurationDatabse: Oracle 9iOutput: Support for 300,000 handsets per month

Application: Manufacturing Execution Application, Unix versionServer: Two units of HP RP7440 server on HP-UX 11i running Oracle Enterprise Database Server in the high availability cluster confi gurationOutput: Support for 1.5 million handsets per month

Old Setup

New Setup

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With this new confi guration, the organization will have a low TCO for the manufacturing setup in the long run — Solution Architect, Progressive