Balluff GmbH migrates its hardware and software from Hewlett-Packard and Oracle to IBM for a 60 percent increase in batch processing speed and a 15 percent cost reduction.
In what the company is citing as an example of "smarter computing," IBM has announced that Balluff GmbH has migrated its SAP software and storage environment to IBM hardware and software to help optimize its global supply chain.
A leading manufacturer of sensor technology, Balluff GmbH uses SAP applications to complete the execution of core business processes such as sales and distribution, production planning, and materials management. With the new IBM system, Balluff achieved greater systems reliability and performance–including 60 percent faster batch processing for the SAP ERP system and 15 percent lower total costs through reduced administration and management overhead for the database and system backup.
Administrative expenses for the entire SAP system environment are also expected to be significantly reduced.
Balluff GmbH replaced its existing IT infrastructure of HP Integrity servers, HP StorageWorks Data Protector and Oracle Database with a comprehensive suite of IBM software and hardware. This includes:
- IBM Power 750 system with 24 POWER7 processor cores and 384 GB main memory, replacing the previous HP server environment.
- Traditional SAN storage and a fully virtualized storage environment including more than 79 terabytes of IBM XIV Storage System capacity and high-end IBM System Storage DS3500 disk storage with over 30 terabytes of additional disk space for backup to disk. By using IBM Tivoli Storage Manager with IBM DB2 database software, storage compression backup time was reduced by about 50 percent, which is expected to save annual spending in a five-figure range.
- IBM DB2 database software replaces Oracle. The migration went quickly and without major incidents as DB2 integrated seamlessly into the new system environment.
The close collaboration between IBM and SAP, and high compatibility of the systems resulted in dramatically lower testing efforts. In addition, Balluff has gained a 15 percent improvement in SAP response time within interactive mode.
Balluff is among more than 2,400 competitive migrations to IBM Power Systems that have occurred since 2010. Most recently, in the first quarter of this year, there were more than 250 competitive displacements that resulted in over $200 million in business for Power Systems. Roughly 60 percent of this business came from HP.
About Balluff GmbH
Balluff GmbH celebrated its 90-year anniversary in 2011. With more than 50 years of experience, the company is today a world leading manufacturer of sensor solutions with headquarters in Neuhausen, near Stuttgart. Sophisticated technology and the most modern electronics, application-specific customer solutions, individual assistance and first-class service are the hallmarks of the company supported by more than 2,200 employees across the globe. More information is available at http://www.balluff.de.
For more information about IBM Smarter Computing visit www.ibm.com/smartercomputing
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