Robur

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As concerns about sustainability grow, so does the need for environmentally friendly products. Robur, an Italian-based manufacturer, has taken a lead in that effort, creating gas-fired heating and cooling solutions that help save energy. For example, the company has developed a non-electrical heat pump that is 40 percent more efficient than its closest competitors. But the popularity of Robur's products has created challenges for the company.

Because of its continued growth, Robur's business-to-business sales and service network has expanded worldwide. To enhance the network, Robur wanted to improve the key systems that are important in promoting a positive customer experience. Specifically, it sought to improve processes for creating sales proposals and for managing orders. Both of these processes were largely manual and time-consuming.

To address these challenges, the company planned to deploy a Web-based portal to help its sales staff generate proposals and provide a similar solution for business partners and employees to manage orders. The new portal technology needed to satisfy several requirements before work could begin. It needed to: provide tight security; work with widely adopted devices, platforms, and operating systems; support multiple firewalls to minimize technical support; and to scale easily to support future needs. After a review of several similar solutions, Robur chose Sun Java Enterprise System software. Sun provided a local service company, Sorint, to support Robur throughout the design, development, and implementation stages of the project.

The solution is based on Sun Java System Portal Server. Sun OpenSSO Enterprise uses single sign-on to authenticate and authorize user requests for secure applications and services. Three Sun V20z servers and a Sun Fire V100 gateway server support the infrastructure, all running the Solaris 10 Operating System. The software that runs on the servers includes the portal server software, mail services, and a MySQL database.

Maurizio Agazzi, ICT (Information and Communication Technology) manager at Robur, says, "Only Sun offered solutions with the level of security and reliability that we needed to manage our data." With Sun Java Enterprise System, the company implemented functionality such as access management and interoperability through an affordable subscription pricing model.

Within three months, the portal went live. Thanks to the new solution, creating sales proposals is much easier. In addition, business partners can configure product solutions without installing software on their system, which is more secure. They can work in multiple languages, at any time and place using an Internet connection. The portal functions with all major browsers and operating systems. Even better, single sign-on access and secure communication channels help ensure that the data is safe.

The key advantage of the new portal system is that it gives employees a single Web-based location where they can effectively manage their day-to-day activities even when traveling, which significantly boosts productivity. For example, while processing orders from a client's premises, sales people can also check e-mail messages and book appointments in their calendars.

Besides ordering new product configurations, business partners and employees can also easily order spare parts through the portal. The can view product codes and pricing details to complete electronic order forms fast and accurately, before sending them by e-mail to their local Robur office.

Because of the portal's success, Robur is rethinking its future desktop environment "Because we are extremely pleased with the results," says Agazzi, "we are planning to upgrade our existing platform completely, replacing PCs with Sun Ray 2 thin clients. We hope to achieve on the client side the same level of security and efficiency that we are enjoying in the rest of our IT infrastructure." He adds, "We are looking forward to this expansion, which will allow us to reduce costs and increase operating efficiency through a security model that’s easily manageable by ICT."