Microsoft Server Product PortfolioCustomer Solution Case Study

Retailer Cuts Hardware Costs, Boosts Performance with Enterprise Data Solution

OverviewCountry or Region: TurkeyIndustry: Retail—Clothing and clothing accessories retailing

Customer ProfileThe Tema Group owns and operates LC Waikiki, a chain of more than 300 retail clothing stores in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. Employing about 13,000 people, the company is based in Istanbul.

Business SituationA data warehouse solution was struggling to manage 5 terabytes of inventory and sales data from the company’s stores. Processing time was slow and analysis was difficult.

SolutionLC Waikiki reorganized its data on a Microsoft SQL Server Fast Track Data Warehouse reference architecture and deployed Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2.

Benefits Reduced hardware costs Better performance from industry

standard hardware Intuitive administrative tools Simpler management

"With a SQL Server Fast Track Data Warehouse, we are able to maintain centralized, up-to-date records of inventory and sales information for 10 million products in more than 300 stores.”

Osman Şentürk, CIO and Deputy General Manager of Product Planning, LC Waikiki

The Tema Group, which owns and operates the LC Waikiki retail clothing chain in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, must manage and analyze sales and inventory data from more than 300 stores. The company was using a data warehouse solution based on Microsoft SQL Server 2008, but a fast-growing data volume was slowing processing time and impeding users in accessing information. Working with Microsoft Services, LC Waikiki deployed a new data warehouse solution based on Microsoft SQL Server Fast Track Data Warehouse. Pretested hardware and reference architectures boosted performance, simplified administration, and avoided excessive hardware costs. In addition, the solution’s familiar Microsoft administrative and analysis tools are intuitive and easy for employees to use.

SituationTema Mağazacılık, a subsidiary of the Turkish company the Tema Group, owns LC Waikiki, a chain of retail clothing stores with locations in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. LC Waikiki offers affordable, fashionable clothes to a range of age groups and demographics. Since acquiring LC Waikiki in 1997, Tema Mağazacılık has restructured the business and brand and expanded its operations in Europe.

To identify trends, monitor store performance, restock products, and respond to market opportunities, LC Waikiki business analysts need access to reliable, up-to-date inventory and sales data from the more than 300 stores that the company operates. In 2008, LC Waikiki deployed a mission critical data warehouse based on Microsoft SQL Server 2008 data management software. The solution was based on a relational database and used SQL Server stored procedures to perform its extract, transform, and load (ETL) processes.

Although this solution met the company’s needs at the time, a fast-growing volume of data and increasing demands by users for information began to slow the system’s performance. The company’s data managers implemented multiple summarized tables to ease performance problems, but this was only an intermediate measure. “With so many summarized tables, updating our old data warehouse took four to six hours of processing time each day,” says LC Waikiki Data Process Manager Hasan Rahmi Atılganer. “Also, users did not always know where certain pieces of information had originated.”

Atılganer continues: “As the data load increased to 5 terabytes, and as we started to experience longer waiting periods and other performance problems, we decided to develop a project to improve the performance of the data warehouse and update the system.”

LC Waikiki wanted a data warehouse solution that would offer improved performance and faster updates without requiring a significant investment in new hardware.

SolutionLC Waikiki worked with Microsoft Services to identify the best strategy for improving its SQL Server 2008 data warehouse. Microsoft Services consultants recommended upgrading to Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise and reorganizing the solution by using Microsoft SQL Server Fast Track Data Warehouse.

“As we evaluated various solutions, we found that many of them would be difficult to implement on our existing infrastructure and too expensive for management to approve,” says Atılganer. “In contrast, the SQL Server Fast Track Data Warehouse solution would provide substantial performance improvements at a reasonable cost.”

SQL Server Fast Track Data Warehouse is a set of reference architectures based on best data-management practices and optimized, pretested, industry-standard hardware from manufacturers like HP, Dell, Bull, Cisco/EMC and IBM. The goal of the SQL Server Fast Track Data Warehouse reference architectures is to provide a cost-effective balance between the software’s data-

24

“The SQL Server Fast Track Data Warehouse provided extremely fast performance on entry-level hardware—much faster than even the manufacturer expected.”

Hasan Rahmi Atılganer, Data Process Manager, LC Waikiki

processing capabilities and a particular hardware component’s realized throughput. Because SQL Server Fast Track Data Warehouse solutions are pretested for the specific hardware being used, it also eliminates the need for hardware testing and tuning. After determining the performance requirements for the new solution, the project team selected hardware components that included Dell PowerEdge R710 server computers and EMC CLARiiON CX4 storage hardware. The project began in April 2010. With support from Microsoft Services consultants, LC Waikiki installed the new software, reorganized its file groups onto independent disk groups, and transferred the data-updating mechanisms from the old data warehouse to the new one. The new solution, which runs on the Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise operating system, uses Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Integration Services to bring data from the company’s line-of-business applications into the central SQL Server 2008 R2 data warehouse.

The solution went live in January 2011. The data warehouse currently holds 5 terabytes of data, and, because it is based on SQL Server 2008 R2, it can scale to 48 terabytes. Employees can perform self-service queries on this data by using Microsoft Office Excel 2010 spreadsheet software. They also have access to Microsoft SQL Server PowerPivot for Microsoft Excel 2010, which they can use to analyze hundreds of millions of rows of data on their desktops.

BenefitsBy deploying a SQL Server Fast Track Data Warehouse solution on a Dell platform with

EMC storage hardware, LC Waikiki avoided substantial new hardware costs and obtained better performance from the industry standard hardware it selected. Intuitive administrative tools were easy for the company’s employees to learn, and the reorganization of the company’s data reduced the complexity of administering the data warehouse.

Reduced Hardware CostsBy deploying a SQL Server Fast Track Data Warehouse as part of a tested, predefined architecture, LC Waikiki was able to achieve its performance goals with far fewer disks than would have been necessary before the new solution. “To meet our performance requirements with our previous data warehouse, we would have needed about 800 disks,” says Atılganer. “With the new solution, we are using 100 disks, but only because we need the capacity. With the help of the SQL Server Fast Track Data Warehouse reference architecture, we met our performance requirements with a mere 40 disks, a 95 percent improvement over the previous solution.”

Better Performance from Industry StandardHardwareLC Waikiki achieved significant performance improvements by deploying a solution based on the SQL Server Fast Track Data Warehouse reference architecture. “Our storage team and the disk manufacturer performed extensive tests during the proof-of-concept phase of this project,” says Atılganer. “The SQL Server Fast Track Data Warehouse provided extremely fast performance on entry-level hardware—much faster than even the manufacturer expected.”

34

“With the help of the SQL Server Fast Track Data Warehouse reference architecture, we met our performance requirements with a mere 40 disks, a 95 percent improvement over the previous solution.”

Hasan Rahmi Atılganer, Data Process Manager, LC Waikiki

Intuitive Administrative ToolsOrganizing files to support optimal query design in the new data warehouse required a different process than LC Waikiki IT employees had used in the past, but the solution’s familiar Microsoft environment eased the learning process. “Configuring the new solution required us to go beyond the routine of SQL Server procedure-writing logic that we were accustomed to,” says Atılganer. “But we were able to learn these new methods much faster than we had learned the previous ones, because the visual tools in SQL Server 2008 Integration Services are easier to use.”

Simpler ManagementWith the new solution, LC Waikiki was able to speed its data updates by reducing the number of summarized data tables it maintains. “Before the new solution, the

process of updating the 15 summarized data tables required 4 to 6 hours of processing time each day, and that included analyzing only a few days’ worth of sales data,” says Atılganer. “With the faster performance of the SQL Server Fast Track Data Warehouse, we now need to maintain only two summarized data tables and can update them in one hour or less. We’re also able to analyze fifteen days’ worth of data in this time, three times faster than the project requirement of five.”

Osman Şentürk, the CIO and Deputy General Manager of Product Planning for LC Waikiki, says that he is very pleased with the new solution. “With a SQL Server Fast Track Data Warehouse, we are able to maintain centralized, up-to-date records of inventory and sales information for 10 million product items in more than 300 stores. And even with hundreds of users and 5 terabytes of data, the solution returns answers to queries within seconds.”Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 delivers higher scalability for mission-critical environments, more efficient IT, and expanded reporting and analytics through self-service business intelligence.

For more information about Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2, go to: www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/R2-editions.aspx%20

44

For More InformationFor more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers in the United States and Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:www.microsoft.com

For more information about LC Waikiki products and services, call +90 212 657 55 55 or visit the website at:fashion.lcwaikiki.com/index_eng.html

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Document published July 2011

Software and Services Microsoft Server Product Portfolio− Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise− Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2

Enterprise Solutions− Microsoft SQL Server Fast Track Data

Warehouse

Services− Microsoft Services

Technologies− Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2

Integration Services− Microsoft SQL Server PowerPivot for

Microsoft Excel 2010

LC Waikiki SQL Server Fast Track Data Warehouse project team (from left to right):

Back row: Gökhan Belindir (Database Manager), Ömer Bodur (Business Intelligence Developer), Ayhan Sevimli (Disk Storage and Backup)

Middle row: Sedat Yoğurtcuoğlu (Microsoft Consultant), Rahmi Atılganer (Data Process Manager)

Front row: Ahmet Kalafat (Business Intelligence Developer), Osman Şentürk (CIO and Deputy General Manager of Product Planning), Osman Yalçıntepe (Information Technologies Infrastructure Operation Manager), Abdurrahman Erol (Disk Storage and Backup)