Tabacon Group

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As its business expanded into new market sectors, Tabacon faced the challenge of upgrading custom financial accounting and goods management systems that had begun to reach their performance limits. In addition, anticipated changes in legislation caused the firm to look for new accounting and ERP software to support regulatory compliance efforts.

For compliance reasons, Tabacon needed financial accounting software that supported modern principles of data access such as GDPdU, as well as the US-GAP system for presenting balance sheets in American format. The firm also needed better integration between its accounting and invoicing system. After evaluating several alternatives, Tabacon decided to standardize on Navision software (now Microsoft Dynamics NAV), which includes integrated accounting and goods management modules.

Tabacon also needed a new, more powerful hardware platform to enable the simultaneous processing of multiple, time-sensitive orders. For the optimum platform to run the new software and store-related data, Tabacon selected Sun Fire V40 servers from Sun Microsystems and as Sun Storage 3510 Fibre Channel disk array. Tabacon had a strong relationship with Sun based on its deployment of Sun servers running the Solaris Operating System in other areas of the organization. Now Tabacon had the confidence to run the Navision applications with Microsoft Windows on the Sun Fire V40z servers, representing one of the first deployments anywhere of Navision software on Sun hardware.

The Sun Fire V40z servers are based on AMD Opteron processors that gave Tabacon the choice of Windows, Linux, or Solaris operating systems, as well as the flexibility to deploy the servers and applications in either 32-bit or 64-bit operation. In addition, the Sun x64 servers offered superior price performance to competing systems, including a lower TCO from reduced power requirements. The Sun servers also provided seamless Fibre Channel connectivity with the Sun StorageTek 3510 disk array.

Lean GmbH, a Sun Advantage Partner, assisted Tabacon with the conversion to Navision financial accounting and the porting of the accounting and goods management systems to the Sun servers. At the time, the Navision applications had not been certified by Microsoft for operation on Sun hardware. However, both Sun and Microsoft worked closely with Tabacon and Lean to ensure compatibility of the software with Sun’s eco-friendly server systems.

Lean pre-assembled key system components and worked with Tabacon to install them across three data centers in a high availability configuration. The sites were also linked via a virtual private network, which supports central administration. Tabacon staff received training on the new systems, which enabled personnel at all three sites to work together smoothly.