EDS Deutschland GmbH
Rüsselsheim

www.eds.de

EDS is a world-wide leading company for technology services and has had extensive and long standing experiences in the area of outsourcing information technology and business processes.

Rolls-Royce Deutschland Ltd & CO KG
Oberursel

www.rolls-royce.com

Industry sector:
defence aerospace

Sales volume:
EUR 9,4 Mrd. Euro (worldwide)

Employees:
2125 (in Germany)

"With the implementation of the Oracle solution we are able to satisfy our legal archiving requirements for SAP and Cincom data at a very low cost." - Dr. Manfred Schmatz, Head of Information Systems, Rolls-Royce Deutschland Ltd & Co KG

Rolls-Royce operates in four global markets - civil aerospace, defence aerospace, marine and energy. In 1990, in partnership with BMW, Rolls-Royce founded a German company to develop civil jet engines for the world-wide market for the first time in Germany. Rolls-Royce Deutschland, now a 100% subsidiary of Rolls-Royce plc, is Germany´s engine manufacturer with complete systems capability for the development, production and after-sales support of modern jet engines. Rolls-Royce Deutschland has a workforce of 21251,850 divided between its two sites in Dahlewitz near Berlin and Oberursel near Frankfurt am Main.

In the course of the consolidation of information systems across the Rolls-Royce Group, local systems used by Rolls-Royce Deutschland - SAP finance system and Cincom production planning system - were replaced by a global SAP system hosted in the UK. The migration plan included the transfer of live data, but not of historic data. However, for legal reasons, it is required to be able to access historic data for several years. Therefore, an archiving solution had to be found that would allow the continued access of legacy financial SAP data, as well as the materials planning data from the Cincom system. In addition, the solution had to be ready within a short time period at a preferably low budget, and the access was to be according to the usual procedure in order to avoid additional training for the users.

Quick, cost-efficient solution
Under consideration of these requirements, EDS proposed a solution on the basis of an Oracle database and Oracle HTML DB to Rolls-Royce Deutschland. Compared to a continued use of a SAP system, this solution has the advantage of cost savings in the millions for the intended archiving time frame of 10 years. This is achieved by means of a simpler system infrastructure, the discontinuation of SAP licences and lower implementation expenses. Furthermore, such a solution can be implemented comparatively quickly, it offers a high level of flexibility and does not require the distribution of software to the PCs of the users because it is accessed by means of a web browser. Since an existing licence already covers the database, there are no additional licence fees. However, the Rolls-Royce solution required a redevelopment of the interface for the data access according to the previous applications. For the intended useful life, there are then only the costs for the procurement of a server, the development of the interface, the data migration, as well as for the maintenance and support of the database, the server and the operating system. For the useful life, the total cost is therefore significantly lower than in the case of other solutions.

Redevelopment of interfaces
The rapid application development functions of HTML DB allow a quick and simple development of database-protected applications, which can be made available on the web. In this case, both the application and the data are in a central Oracle database. In a first step, EDS created about 50 templates for the Cincom application. With the exception of a few special applications that required additional algorithms, it was only necessary to retrieve and display the data. All data sets were transferred to the new Oracle database by means of existing export/import functions. In a second step, the data sets from the SAP system were extracted by means of standard reports and migrated to the new database. The interface must also be redeveloped for the SAP data, which requires about the same amount of effort as for the Cincom project. The total data volume of both sub-projects was about 150 GB.

The users can now access the existing data sets as usual by means of templates and with the help of a browser. The data queries then also allow the entry of parameters and enable the transfer of the results to spreadsheet applications. In addition, this solution also met the other requirements, such as an authentication of the user, a high performance and the option to navigate within the applications. The solution also conforms to the guidelines for the digital government tax audit (Guidelines for Data Access Verifiability of Digital Documentation).

Why Oracle?
With the help of the Oracle product HTML DB, it was possible to implement an efficient solution with high reliability within a short time period and at a low cost. In addition, Rolls-Royce has already been using different Oracle solutions and is convinced of the high performance and reliability of these products.

Why EDS?
For many years, EDS has been supervising and operating the IT infrastructure of Rolls-Royce in Germany und in other countries. Since EDS is very familiar with the infrastructure and the requirements of Rolls-Royce and has had extensive experience with SAP systems, EDS therefore was the ideal partner for this project.