PT XL Axiata Tbk Reduces CPU Load by More Than 40%, Lowers Dialog Transaction Response Time up to 50%
 
 

PT XL Axiata Tbk Reduces CPU Load by More Than 40%, Lowers Dialog Transaction Response Time up to 50%

  • Oracle Customer:  PT XL Axiata Tbk
    Location:  Jakarta, Indonesia
    Industry:  Communications
    Employees:  3,000
    Annual Revenue:  $1 to $5 Billion

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PT XL Axiata Tbk, a leading telecommunications company in Indonesia, provides pre- and postpaid voice, SMS, and broadband internet packages, and a variety of add-on services, including access to social networking sites, ringtone options, and interactive games.

Over the last 15 years, PT XL Axiata Tbk has grown from a small company offering basic telephony services to the country’s second-largest telecommunications company in market share. It has an extensive network infrastructure and services, covering more than 90% of the population across Indonesia.

In November 2011, PT XL Axiata Tbk upgraded to four SPARC Enterprise M9000 and SPARC Enterprise M5000 servers to improve the storage capacity, performance, and reliability of its hardware infrastructure and to support an SAP enterprise resource planning and business intelligence application upgrade. The company reduced its maximum central processing unit (CPU) load by more than 40%, cut its dialog transaction response time by up to 50%, and increased its enterprise resource planning (ERP) and business intelligence transactions from 8,000 to 9,000 per week.

PT XL Axiata Tbk has also saved up to 50% on maintenance costs for its development, testing, and disaster recovery systems, using Oracle Solaris 10 virtualization. 

 
The Need for a Server Upgrade

A word from PT XL Axiata Tbk

  • “The SPARC Enterprise M9000 server has cut our maximum CPU load by more than 40%, which has helped lower dialog transaction response times by up to 50%. This has improved customer service and staff satisfaction, and enabled senior managers to make quicker decisions.” – Doni Setyawan, Manager—IT ERP Technical Services, PT XL Axiata Tbk

PT XL Axiata Tbk has grown significantly in the past 15 years. It has 45 million cell phone and internet subscribers and more than 22,000 base transceiver stations across Indonesia. As the company grew, the amount of data about its telecommunications products and customers also increased. By 2011, the company held 3.5 TB of data about customers and products in its Oracle Database 11g.

PT XL Axiata Tbk uses SAP applications to manage ERP processes, such as financial reporting, purchasing, and asset management, and to perform business intelligence. Previously, the company was running its ERP and business intelligence applications and Oracle Database on three Sun Fire servers: two production servers and one development and testing server. It did not have a disaster recovery server. These servers had reached end of life and could no longer provide the required storage capacity or system performance. The number of users had also grown to between 1,300 and 1,400, which slowed down system response times.

“We needed to upgrade our server infrastructure to support our business growth, improve system performance and transaction speeds, and support our ERP and business intelligence application upgrade,” said Doni Setyawan, manager—IT ERP technical services, PT XL Axiata Tbk. “We also needed to complete the server migration in a limited timeframe with a minimum amount of downtime.”

 
Transaction Response Time 50% Faster

 
CPU Utilization Rates Cut by up to 50%

 
Virtualized Infrastructure Saved up to 50% in Maintenance Costs

 
System Availability at 99.95%

 
 

 
 

Challenges

  • Replace legacy Sun Fire servers that no longer provided the storage capacity or system performance required to support 45 million telecommunication customers and up to 1,400 users
  • Implement robust, scalable hardware infrastructure that would support an ERP and business intelligence application upgrade and future company growth
  • Reduce the amount of data held in Oracle Database 11g, which had increased significantly in the past few years
  • Ensure the migration was completed in a limited timeframe with minimum downtime

Solutions

Oracle Product and Services

  • Cut maximum CPU load from more than 70% to less than 30%, eliminating bottlenecks that affected application performance
  • Lowered dialog transaction response times by up to 50%, from more than 2,000 milliseconds to between 1,000 and 1,500 milliseconds
  • Reduced maximum CPU utilization rates from between 90% and 100% to 50%, ensuring applications will continue to perform well as the company grows over the next three years
  • Increased the number of ERP and business intelligence transactions completed from 8,000 to 9,000 per week
  • Generated ERP and business intelligence reports about customers’ phone and internet usage about 50% faster
  • Saved up to 50% on maintenance costs by consolidating development, testing, and disaster recovery systems on one virtualized server
  • Decreased the amount of data in Oracle Database 11g from 3.5 TB to 2.6 TB
  • Met SLAs by increasing system availability from less than 99% to 99.95%, using a reliable disaster recovery system and hot swappable power supplies, fans, and I/O cards to reduce downtime
  • Ensured failover to the disaster recovery system in less than an hour in the event of an emergency by using virtualized infrastructure to optimize system performance and load balancing
  • Enabled staff to provide high-quality customer services by ensuring they can access ERP and business intelligence applications at all times
  • Improved customer service and staff satisfaction, and enabled senior managers to make quicker decisions about telecommunications products
  • Supported an SAP ERP and business intelligence application upgrade by implementing servers known to be safe, reliable, scalable, and compatible with SAP applications
  • Continued to meet the needs of telecommunications customers by migrating applications to the new servers in one week, with minimal downtime.

Why Oracle

Oracle was the first choice for PT XL Axiata Tbk’s server upgrade, and the company didn’t consider any other vendors.

“We needed reliable servers with greater storage capacity and faster performance, and Oracle SPARC servers best met those requirements,” said Setyawan. “In addition, Oracle has a proven track record for excellent customer service and a reputation for providing safe, reliable, and scalable servers for SAP customers.”

PT XL Axiata Tbk was also attracted to Oracle Solaris 10. “We could immediately see how the virtualized infrastructure would simplify our IT maintenance and administration, and were aware that Oracle Solaris 10 is also very compatible with SAP,” said Setyawan.

Implementation Process

To ensure the company met the needs of its telecommunications customers, PT XL Axiata needed to complete the server migration in a limited timeframe with a minimum amount of downtime.

The company migrated its ERP and business intelligence applications onto the new servers in just three days. The entire migration took one week, with minimal downtime.

The SPARC Enterprise M9000 and SPARC Enterprise M5000 servers went live in November 2011.

Partner

PT XL Axiata Tbk engaged Oracle Specialized Partner PT Astra Graphia Information Technology (AGIT) to help implement the new SPARC servers.

“AGIT first prepared the servers at its site, then it delivered them to us at our data center in Cibitung,” said Setyawan. “From there, we handled the project management, including the hardware installation.

“AGIT delivered the servers on schedule and to specifications, and we were really happy with the team’s services,” he said.