Holcim Migrates SAP Systems to Novells SUSE-R- LINUX Enterprise Server
Wednesday, 15 December 2004Novell (Nasdaq: NOVL) today announced that the North American Service Center of Holcim (US) Inc. has chosen Novell's SUSE(R) LINUX Enterprise Server as the foundation on which to
run its mission-critical applications in Europe. On the strength of the cost savings, scalability and high availability provided by Linux*, Holcim has moved its European SAP R/3 and SAP Business Information Warehouse operations to SUSE LINUX, moving away from its legacy proprietary UNIX* systems. Holcim (US) is one of the nation's largest manufacturers and suppliers of cement and mineral components. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Swiss-based Holcim Ltd, one of the world's largest suppliers of cement and construction materials.
Holcim's EMEA group had reached capacity with its SAP infrastructure running on AS/400 systems. The group decided to refresh its IT architecture and outsource the technical operations to reduce costs and increase system performance and reliability. After evaluating different Linux software offerings on various hardware platforms, the company selected SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server running on IBM eServer xSeries* hardware.
The migration to SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server was completed in less than three months by Holcim's teams in Europe and North America, assisted by Realtech, a provider of SAP migration services. Today, 76 SUSE LINUX-based servers run the EMEA group's mission-critical HR, financial, manufacturing and analytical applications, providing markedly better performance with significant cost savings on both the hardware and software side.
"Cost and performance were key points about SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server that made it the right choice for us," said Mike Stolisov, senior team lead of Systems and Technical Operations for Holcim. "Compared to other Linux systems we evaluated, it has a more robust administrative front-end, better storage management and better integration with the drivers and software we need."
By moving its EMEA group to SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server on Intel-based hardware, Holcim was able to cut its hardware costs by 50 percent and software costs by 20 percent. Because the IT team had extensive UNIX experience, the move to Linux required no increase in training costs or added personnel. Holcim were able to devise and execute a migration plan that was streamlined and efficient and which can then be implemented in different locations with
minimal effort when needed, further increasing the return on investment potential.
Next year, the North American SAP systems will undergo a hardware upgrade. "Without SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server, we would have had to upgrade our current UNIX platform at a significant cost to the organization," said Carl Wilson, chief operations manager at Holcim. "The performance and reliability of SUSE LINUX and the IBM xSeries allow us to refresh our architecture while saving money. Since installing SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server, we have experienced zero unexpected downtime. We are now running the EMEA group's
mission-critical applications on SUSE LINUX and have achieved all of our goals for cost reduction, consistency, scalability and consolidation."
Press Contacts:
Jasmin Ul-Haque
Novell, Inc.
Phone: +44 (0) 1344-326966
E-mail: juh@novell.com
Bruce Lowry
Novell, Inc.
Phone: +1-415-383-8408
E-mail: blowry@novell.com
Source: PR Newswire
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