Success Story

Success on Sun

" Downtime is not an option; these systems run our business. As the applications come online, customers expect service levels of 100%. And we are convinced that Sun systems give us the best chance to deliver that level of uptime."

Here's a question most corporate IT managers can only dream about: If you could start over--replace the legacy systems and applications, put in any technology you wanted--what would you do? Whose systems would you buy? Which applications would you run? How would you set it up? And how would it improve the company's business operations?

BT Office Products International (BTOPI), a $1.6 billion-dollar, 6,000-employee, full-service office products distributor based in Arlington, Texas, decided to do more than dream. It launched Project Millennium, an initiative aimed at re-architecting the company's technology infrastructure to provide a robust, scalable, centralized platform for U.S. operations.

The first item on the agenda: designing a state-of-the-art data center from the ground up. And one of the first crucial decisions: the selection of Sun Microsystems as a key strategic ally. "Some companies just sell systems; Sun serves a much more strategic role for us by addressing our technology solutions," said Mike Ryal, Executive Director of National Systems at BTOPI. "Sun helps us identify problems and get ahead of issues that could become problems later on. The technology Sun provides will enable us to meet our business objectives well into the future."

A Fresh Start for the New Millennium

With consulting assistance from Computer Sciences Corp. (CSC), BTOPI began replacing existing systems with new technology that offered extremely high service levels, scalability to accommodate virtually unlimited growth in the business, and high-capacity data storage and retrieval for faster decision making.

The new national system distributes orders and input from a variety of mechanisms (including customer service, order entry, network-based applications, and Web-based ordering) to the appropriate fulfillment center. It is highly adaptable and will eventually distribute functions for account setup and maintenance, order entry and management, and invoicing and reporting nationwide.

BTOPI's new system is based on a full-cycle electronic commerce model, and delivers not only electronic purchasing solutions, such as EDI and Web-based applications, but also electronic billing and electronic payments. By integrating these functions in and "closing the loop" for customers' electronic transactions, this system helps customers cut costs and streamline purchasing.

The implementation phase for the new purchasing application is underway, and installation of order management, accounting, and other core applications will soon follow. BTOPI chose a Sun Enterprise 6500 server to run a custom-developed order entry application; a Sun Enterprise 6000 server for a customized version of Fourgen Endura software for financials; a Sun Enterprise 5000 server for the local Oracle7 database and linkages to the E3 merchandising software. Additional Sun servers will be used in pre-production and in the testing environment. All of the core applications will run on Sun's Solaris Operating Environment software.

Downtime Not an Option

Sun servers will deliver the required availability level through a combination of hardware reliability, availability, and serviceability (RAS) features, a mature operating system, mission-critical service and support offerings, and clustering. "Sun really offers us scalable availability," said Ryal. "Within a single system, there are excellent reliability and serviceability features, and with the availability of clustering, we can extend that reliability and achieve our uptime goals." BTOPI plans to implement Sun's Enterprise Cluster software for its Sun Enterprise 5000 and Sun Enterprise 6000 servers; both will serve as hot standbys for the Oracle7 data warehouse application.

"It's clear to me that Sun servers are the most reliable UNIX® systems on the market," he said. "We considered HP equipment for this project and we already had a fair number of IBM servers, but they just didn't stand up the way Sun does." Despite the fact that Windows NT has a strong presence in the current BTOPI environment, Windows NT was never under consideration as a platform for Project Millennium, according to Ryal. "Windows NT is a great solution for desktops but is not yet mature enough for what we're doing on an enterprise level," he said.

Ryal said he is also impressed with the scalability Sun servers offer. "Scalability is a critical issue for us because we have very aggressive growth goals, and we expect our technology to keep pace. Since so much of our business is now transacted online, we need to know that our systems can handle orders-of-magnitude growth in transaction volume. And since the rate of that growth isn't always predictable, we need the ability to scale-up very quickly. Sun servers give us virtually unlimited scalability because they all run the same operating environment and the same applications. We can scale up just by dropping in another server."

Sun StorEdge Products Selected for Data Warehousing

"High-volume, high-performance, low-price disk. That pretty well sums up what we like about the Sun StorEdge line," said Ryal. "Sun's storage strategy is totally compatible with our strategy for putting disk on the floor. We can buy what we need in the right increments; we can scale up or down very quickly and easily; the Fiber Channel gives us the performance we need; and we don't have to worry about reliability." Currently, BTOPI is planning to use 12 Sun StorEdge A5000 disk arrays for its major disk farms and data warehousing applications, storing order histories and financial data. The company will use two Sun StorEdge A3500 subsystems and 20 50-gigabyte Sun StorEdge D1000 systems for Oracle logs sitting in front of the Sun StorEdge A5000 disk array at the operating system sites.

The Sun StorEdge D1000 disks provide host-based RAID that can scale from 16 gigabytes to 144 gigabytes in a single tray. BTOPI also selected the Sun StorEdge L3500 Sun Enterprise Tape Library system to perform high-speed backup in its production environment because the L3500 can backup or restore a terabyte of data in just four hours.

Proactive Service and Support

Ryal said he also appreciates the level of responsiveness he gets from Sun service and support personnel. "They go above and beyond the call of duty so regularly that it is difficult to cite specific examples," he said. "You come to expect it."

Ryal said he expects the relationship with Sun to continue growing stronger over time. "We like Sun's philosophy, and Sun products deliver what we expect," he said. "We feel very good about the choice we've made."