Reliance BIG Entertainment Speeds ERP Transactions by 80%, Cuts Backup Time by 70%
 
 

Reliance BIG Entertainment Speeds ERP Transactions by 80%, Cuts Backup Time by 70%

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Reliance Big Entertainment (RBEL) was incorporated in India in 2005 as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Reliance ADA Group. RBEL has four media groups: Reliance Media Works, Reliance Broadcast Network, Reliance Digital, and Reliance Entertainment. These groups operate more than 20 media-related businesses, including the cinema chain BIG Cinemas, the film production company Film and Media Services, and radio stations 92.7 BIG FM and BIG CBS. BIG Cinemas is India’s largest cinema chain, with more than 516 screens in theaters across India, Malaysia, Nepal, the Netherlands, and the US, catering to over 35 million customers. As India’s largest FM network, 92.7 BIG FM is comprised of 45 stations and reaches more than 41.6 million Indians every week.

RBEL has grown significantly since 2005 and needed a robust, scalable, and high-performing IT infrastructure to support its SAP enterprise resource planning (ERP) application. By implementing Oracle’s SPARC T4 Series servers, running Oracle Solaris and Oracle’s Pillar Axiom 600 storage system, the organization has cut data backup times by up to 70%. It also significantly reduced IT administration and data center costs and can process transactions, such as financial and procurement report generation, up to 80% faster.

 
Growing Company Requires High-Performing, Scalable IT Infrastructure

A word from Reliance BIG Entertainment

  • “We evaluated Oracle and other vendors, but the SPARC T4 servers running Oracle Solaris clearly demonstrated better response times. We significantly increased the performance and storage capacity of our ERP application, improving transaction responses by 80% and data backup times by 70%.” – T.S. Purushothman, CIO, Reliance BIG Entertainment

Since RBEL’s inception in 2005, the number of media-related businesses the company operates has grown from around 14 to more than 20. RBEL previously ran its ERP application (for financials, purchasing, human resources, and payroll), on six Sun M4000, T5220, and x4150 servers. It also operated one StorageTek 2540 storage array.

As the company expanded, the legacy servers’ performance began to wane. In addition, the amount of ERP data RBEL needed to store increased by 50% to 60%.

“As our media companies grew in number and size, the legacy servers struggled meet the increase in ERP transactions, so that response times slowed by 70% to 80%,” said T.S. Purushothman, CIO, Reliance BIG Entertainment. “For example, in the past we could generate various management information system (MIS) reports, such as finance and procurement reports, in two or three minutes. However, as we grew, these reports were taking 10 or 12 minutes to produce, which affected staff productivity and efficiency.”

RBEL needed a robust and high-performing server infrastructure that would improve application performance and support increased transactions as the company grew. It also needed a scalable storage solution that could handle an increase of around 5 TB to 6 TB per year.

 
Application Transaction Times up to 80% faster

 
Virtualization Cuts Server Utilization Rates from 70% to 30%

 
Cut Data Backup Time by up to 70% and Database Responses by 50%

 
Data Center Costs Significantly Reduced

 
Seamless Live Migration of ERP Application

 
 

 
 

Challenges

A word from Reliance BIG Entertainment

  • “We evaluated Oracle and other vendors, but the SPARC T4 servers running Oracle Solaris clearly demonstrated better response times. We significantly increased the performance and storage capacity of our ERP application, improving transaction responses by 80% and data backup times by 70%.” – T.S. Purushothman, CIO, Reliance BIG Entertainment

  • Improve performance of mission-critical ERP application for financials, purchasing, human resource, and payroll for more than 20 media-related entities
  • Reduce transaction time, such as for generating movie production procurement reports, which had increased by 70% to 80% and were affecting productivity and efficiency
  • Ensure server infrastructure could support an increase in transactions as the media-related entities grew in number and size
  • Implement a robust, scalable storage solution that could support an increase of 5 TB to 6 TB of ERP data each year

Solutions

Oracle Product and Services

  • Improved transaction times up to 80%, generating reports showing a movie’s procurement costs, for example, in 2 to 3 minutes rather than 10 to 12 minutes
  • Generated reports based on archived historical data, such as financial information for a previous quarter, in 10 minutes, compared to 30 minutes, previously
  • Reduced server utilization rates from 70% to 30% to scale in real time and to run new applications or move other media-related businesses onto the ERP system
  • Cut backup time for 2 TB to 3 TB of media-related ERP data from around 10 hours to 3 to 4 hours, minimizing effect on system performance and ensuring data remains available in the event of an emergency
  • Reduced response times for database queries and transactions from a large volume of film, radio, and broadcast-related data by about 50%
  • Lowered data center costs significantly by achieving a 3:1 server consolidation and reducing storage boxes from two to one
  • Cut the time taken to process travel receipts by integrating other media entities onto the ERP application, so staff can enter data directly into the system for approval rather e-mailing it
  • Enhanced management decision-making by quickly providing up-to-date information about costs and revenue generated by different media-related projects
  • Improved productivity, as employees can more quickly run reports and complete other ERP processes, such as purchase approvals
  • Supported a green initiative by reducing data center power consumption and the amount of electricity required for cooling
  • Provided the server capacity and performance to support a predicted increase in transaction rates from 15,000 TPS to 45,000 TPS
  • Delivered the scalability to support an anticipated 5 TB to 6 TB increase in ERP data from new and expanding media entities each year
  • Moved the ERP application from the legacy server to the SPARC T4 servers seamlessly, without affecting the application’s availability

Why Oracle

RBEL was looking for a reliable, robust, and scalable server to support its ERP application and growing media-related businesses.

“We evaluated Oracle and other vendors but the SPARC T4 servers running Oracle Solaris clearly demonstrated better response times than the other comparable products,” said Purushothman. “We could also see the SPARC server and Solaris combination would better support our long-term plans by providing scalability and maintaining system performance as our data volumes grew.”

In addition, RBEL’s legacy server and database infrastructure was already based on Oracle, so the company was confident about Oracle’s abilities, as well as the servers’ compatibility during the migration.

Implementation Process

RBEL began looking for a new server and storage solution in October 2011 before deciding on the SPARC T4 servers and Pillar Axiom 600 storage system in March 2012.

The company worked closely with Oracle’s product teams and its in-house IT teams to ensure the implementation and data migration was as smooth as possible. The new IT infrastructure went live in November 2012.

Partner

RBEL worked with Oracle Partner Ashtech Infotech on the server virtualization. The partner was particularly helpful in creating the virtualized server partitions.

“We worked very well with Ashtech, and formed a strong relationship with the team,” said Purushothman. “We were also very impressed by how well the partner worked with the Oracle teams. The interaction was so seamless, it was as if we were working with only one support team, rather than two.”

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