DuPont
In 2005, DuPont CR&D's Information & Computing Technologies initiated a project to understand and standardize database deployments. Tim Mueller, supervisor of the High-Performance omputing and Computation Sciences Groups within CR&D, felt it was time to review the effectiveness and long-term viability of the current model. Were DuPont researchers getting the best performance possible for their computing budgets? Corporate IT and CR&D provide services to the company's 27 business units spread across six core business groups. With no standards in place, these business units had the freedom to implement whatever computing infrastructure they felt best met their needs. As a result, six different architectures were in use.
A joint review was undertaken by the corporate IT and CR&D organizations. "Part of our role is to ensure that our researchers have the tools they need to be productive and conduct world-class research,” says Mueller. “We knew that the current outsourced RISC architecture–based environments were not going to scale to meet our long-term growth needs. And though we wanted greater performance, we also had budget considerations."
The DuPont team knew standardization would improve the performance obtained from a given level of spending. Says Mueller, "To reduce the cost of supporting six different architectures, increase computing capacity, and move to a more attractive price/performance model, we decided to understand and initiate a study to help define a company-wide standard for reducing the run and maintain cost for generalized database deployments. We wanted to move from proprietary RISC-based systems to cost-effective Intel architecture–based servers running Red Hat Enterprise Linux."
After establishing this plan, Mueller decided to undertake a project to gain a better understanding of the benefits of Intel architecture–based servers. "We needed to validate their performance and understand the extent of the migration effort to move from our existing servers," he explains. "By reducing the number of CPUs required for a given amount of performance, we might also be able to reduce software licensing costs."
Vivo
Gaining profitability, speeding processes, reducing operating costs, and boosting service development were goals that led Vivo to develop the Apolo Project, which unified all prepaid customers into a single base. The project required building a technology platform with capability to provide fast and reliable data processing. One major challenge was to standardize different ways to provide services by designing one single model for all regional carriers. Choosing a reliable vendor was critical to meet the project's objectives. Vivo selected Portugal Telecom Inovação as vendor to provide a robust platform with several functionalities. For the Apolo Project, PT Inovação decided to design a solution powered by HP* RX 4640 servers based on 64-bit Intel Itanium 2 and Intel Xeon processors. Intel Itanium 2 processors basically support geographically dispersed databases in real time. The databases running on the IT systems contain all customer information.
Intel Xeon processors are used in the application servers. Intel Itanium 2 processors are able to support over 10,000 transactions per second from the prepaid system with reliability. According to Lavrador, Intel products and the Linux* operating system form a winning duo. "Intel technology really pays off due to its flexibility to work with open source operating systems such as Linux. And the results are really positive," he says. The reliability and agility enabled by Intel technology have strengthened our technology foundation. So, it is not by chance that Apolo Project's technology architecture is based both on a distributed and scalable solution to support the carrier's growth and on Red Hat Linux* Advanced Server operating system. This platform also runs Oracle Database 10g with Real Application Clusters (RAC). Today, Vivo can more rapidly provide prepaid services, competitive and complementary offerings, online control-based data services, and online calls.
The agility to provide services will make a great competitive difference. "It is an extremely parameterizable platform. It allows us to provide and implement a service from the ground up."
Getin Bank
Like many financial institutions in todays market, GETIN Bank was formed through a complex series of mergers and acquisitions. In 1990, Górno´slaski Bank Gospodarczy (GBG) SA was founded, with a network of ten branches across southern Poland. It grew in 1995 with strategic investment from Powszechny Bank Kredytowy SA and, from 2002 until 2004, functioned within the Capital Group of Bank Przemyslowo-Handlowy.
By this time the bank had expanded to operate 40 branches. In May 2004 the bank was acquired by Getin Holding. The banks Informat unreliable and expensive to maintain so the management team launched an ambitious nationwide expansion program supported by a complete IT overhaul. Today the bank is recognized as one of Polands top 20 banks and has an impressive € 35 million (US$41.6 million) profit forecast for 2006.
GETIN Bank realized that effective response to industry demands and competition demanded an IT infrastructure to enable the introduction of new products and services through multiple channels and over a wider geographical area. It wanted a centralized system, built on open standards technology to connect all existing and future branches. The solution had to be scalable to support its plans for growth and highly reliable to ensure good customer service.
GETIN Bank purchased HP 76* series servers powered by Intel Itanium 2 processors running HP-UX* and Oracle 9.2* database. The platform supports the DEF 3000* core banking system and electronic banking, training and reporting applications. A cluster of 32-bit Intel Xeon processor-powered HP servers supports online banking services for 250 large enterprise customers with plans to support 750 customers by the end of 2006.
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