Global integration of SAP and Oracle Database
Efficient skill acquisition through utilization of the Oracle Advanced Customer Services (ACS) for SAP on Oracle, results in a success- ful launch of production operations, by the targeted date. “We were able to complete the SAP and Oracle DB integration process in a short period of time, and reduced the data volume by 60% thanks to the Oracle Advanced Compression option,” claims a spokesperson from SHARP Corporation.
SHARP Corporation (SHARP) is a world- leading manufacturer of general home electro- nics products that produces “Aquos,” one of the major brands of LCD TVs. SHARP planned to consolidate and integrate SAP systems and Oracle databases, which had both been in various locations around the world, in a single instance configuration at each location. SHARP integrated “SAP ERP 6.0” on the Oracle Database 11g by utilizing Oracle Advanced Customer Services for SAP. We interviewed Mr. Shinji Hara, Assistant Executive Director of the First IT Promotion Dept, IT System Promotion Center, SHARP, and Mr. Takashi Tamashima, Group Leader of the Solution Engineering Dept, Second Service Division, SI Solutions Co., Ltd. (SI Solutions). SI Solutions has vast experience in implemen- ting SAP globally, primarily for SHARP pro- duction and sales companies. Based on the expertise gained through such achievements, SI Solutions offers templates that assist in the formulation of mission-critical operations, and a range of solutions to business issues existing in the high-tech industry.
Early stages of implementing SAP and the Oracle Database in the mid-1990s
Since SHARP was established in 1912, the business has gained a good reputation in Japan and overseas as being a company that is com- petent at creating specific types of demand. SHARP succeeded in establishing mass pro- duction of solar batteries as well as being the first company in the world to commercialize electronic calculators and LCD display pro- ducts. SHARP is a leading Japanese company that holds to the policy of “Manufacturing products strictly to satisfy customers” while at the same time proposing new lifestyle options to users through the introduction and expan- sion of electronic technology.
Starting in approximately 1994, SHARP rolled out the big bang approach to implement SAP into the operations of their overseas bases, a process that is now almost completed. In a process that took place at bases in Japan around 1997, SHARP began replacing the host system with a system that incorporated SAP and the Oracle Database. Mr. Hara explains the reason why SHARP selected the Oracle Database. “After evaluating several products, we deter- mined SAP would be the global standard. As for the database, we selected Oracle because of its level of reliability and global support structure.”
Consolidating and integrating all separately installed SAP systems and Oracle databases at various bases
When the process of instance integration (integrating multiple instances to a single instance) in each region had started, a number of concerns were raised, says Mr. Tamashima. “The database would become extremely large and consequently require an extraordinary large amount of storage due to our attempt to inte- grate systems that had their own instances and that were being used independently. This raised
Chevron Corporation
U T I L I Z I N G A D V A N C E D C U S T O M E R S E R V I C E S ( A C S ) F O R S A P O N O R A C L E A N D O R A C L E D A T A B A S E 1 1 g R E L E A S E 2
“We were able to complete the SAP and Oracle DB integration process in a short period of time, and reduced the data volume by 60% thanks to the Oracle Advanced Compression option.”
– Spokes person, SHARP Corporation.
Oracle Advanced Compression at SHARP Japan 51
our concerns about performance. We explored ways to control the size of the database and to access data efficiently even if the size of the database became large so as to maintain a satis- factory level of database performance. To solve these problems, we decided that Oracle Data- base 11g was best suited to utilize its Advanced Compression feature to compress data and the partitioning feature to logically partition the database.”
There were other reasons why SHARP selected Oracle Database 11g for the consolidation and integration of SAP and the company’s database. SHARP at that time was spending approxi- mately half of their system operation budget solely on storage-related expenses, and they seriously needed to consider reducing TCO. In other words, data compression using Oracle Database 11g became an important key in view of performance and TCO. SHARP was also concerned that the integration process would result in an increase in load on the database, but an around-the-clock service was
required for the system because SHARP had expanded their business worldwide. For that reason, SHARP decided to take into conside- ration the future utilization of Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC), available since Oracle Database 9i.
Utilizing “ACS for SAP on Oracle” to imple- ment the system in a short period of time
In this project, launching production operations in January of 2011 was a critical prerequisite. However, Oracle Database 11g with its parti- tioning and data compression features that would have solved the problems SHARP was experiencing, was not going to be released until the end of March 2010. This meant that SI Solutions, which was committed to imple- menting the system for SHARP, had to success- fully complete what was an extensive project within just six months. It was at that point that SI Solutions decided to utilize “ACS for SAP on Oracle”. Mr. Tamashima talks about this decision.
“As for the database, we selected Oracle because of its level of reliability and global support structure.”
– Takashi Tamashima, Group Leader of the Engineering Dept, SHARP, Japan
“As Oracle Database 11g was going to be released in March, consequently the schedule was fixed so that we would start our work in July and launch production operations the following January. We realized that with the given schedule we would not be able to imple- ment the system and check the procedures by ourselves before starting production operations. To reduce the man-hours and time required, we considered requesting the service of “ACS for SAP on Oracle”. Actually, we relied on this service when we previously explored implementation of Oracle Data Guard. Advanced Customer Services for SAP on Oracle provided excellent support at that time and we were able to acquire necessary skills in a short period of time. We were also able to drastically reduce man-hours spent on inspec- tions. Through such an experience, we decided to adopt the service again for this operation. Oracle staffers took appropriate actions prompt- ly as we expected, and when we came to a standstill with problems, they directed us to try new and different ways to overcome problems. As a result, we were able to save time and reduce the workload required for inspections. As they provided us with proce- dures that suited the SHARP system, we were able to implement our work very smoothly and launch production operations in January 2011 as scheduled.”
Acquiring skills efficiently and succeeding at reducing data volume by 60%
According to Mr. Tamashima, the data com- pression executed at that time enabled SHARP to reduce the relevant data volume by approx- imately 60%. Utilizing ACS for SAP on Oracle was also beneficial for SI Solutions as they were able to make use of the skills they acquired through the service. It will be a great advantage for SI Solutions to be able to apply the skills gained for direct sales activities in the future.
Both companies thus gained substantial bene- fits. Regarding their future prospects, Mr. Hara commented: “We would like to make compressing of all databases a standard rule. Reduction of data volume has had a signifi- cant effect on TCO reduction and disk capa- city due to the fact we use an expensive storage device. In this respect, we feel that data compression is necessary and we will enforce that notion further. We hope that Oracle Japan will continue to provide us with new proposals, as was the case this time. We expect improvements and consolidations with Exadata for SAP.”
“As Mr. Hara commented, database compres- sion will not be limited to SAP. We will also compress other databases. I expect the experi- ence of compressing SAP BW and the skills we gain from doing it will lead to more direct sales opportunities,” Mr. Tamashima claims.
53 Oracle Partitioning for SAP at RWE Poland
RWE Polska Enhances Stability and Performance of Billing System
RWE is one of the leading electricity and gas companies in Europe. More than 70,000 employees supply 16 million customers with electricity and approximately 8 million custo- mers with gas. RWE Polska supports RWE development in Poland and provides electricity to approx. 900,000 customers in the country.
Challenges
• Increase capacity of the utility’s SAP billing system due to extremely high loads of electricity and gas billing data—as much as 60 gigabytes monthly
• Shorten access time to the billing database, and eliminate billing system slowdowns caused by the prolific growth of the customer base
• Simplify and streamline management of extremely large mission-critical database objects
• Improve database response by methods other than hardware investments, as technical analysis found that additional servers will not translate into the expected results
Solution
• Used Oracle Partitioning to split key Oracle Database tables into smaller fragments (11–12 parts) and gained much smaller volumes of data in each partition, enabling faster computing of customer billing data for electricity, gas, and other utility services
• Implemented parallel in-and-out operations along with Oracle Partitioning, resulting in a twelve-fold increase in processing speed, enabling the company to process and issue customers’ utility bills faster
• Shortened average report execution time from a few hours to several minutes—for key reports such as the payments-due settlement report, reporting performance grew by 400%
• Relaunched several important billing reports, such as reporting on payments due, broken down into electricity tariffs —reports that had been suspended because they were too time consuming to create • Optimized storage utilization, decreasing
the number of disk system reads by tenfold to prolong storage lifecycle
• Speeded up the company’s monthly financial close, achieving long-term business value
“Oracle Partitioning, deployed for our billing system, provided long-term system stability and enabled an unprecedented 400% growth in system performance. Oracle technology proved more cost effective and successful than any other system upgrade investments.”
– J A R O S L A W G R O M A D Z I N S K I ,
Infrastructure Development & Support, RWE IT Poland
RWE Polska SA Warszawa, Poland www.rwe.pl Industry: Utilities Annual Revenue: US$65 billion Employees: 1,600
Oracle Products & Services:
Oracle Database Oracle Partitioning
Introduction
• 7800 employees - 3 Locations in India 1 Location in Indonesia
• Third largest producer of two-wheelers in India
• $1.5 billion in revenue
• Deming Prize Winner for Quality – First and only two-wheeler manufacturer in the world to have won the award
• Exports to over 47 countries
• Second largest three-wheeler manufacturer in India
TVS Motor Company is the third largest two- wheeler manufacturer in India and among the top ten in the world, with an annual turnover of more than USD 1 billion (2008-2009). The company currently manufactures a wide range of two-wheelers from mopeds to racing-inspired motorcycles and has 4 plants located in Hosur and Mysore (South India), in Himachal Pradesh (North India), and one in Indonesia.
TVS Motor Company (7,800 employees) has a production capacity of 2.5 million units a year with exports to over 47 countries and is the flagship company of the USD 4 billion TVS Group, employing more than 40,000 people worldwide.
High rate of data growth, several optimization points
Strong business, above-average increases in data volume – like many other companies, TVS
Motor Company was faced with this situation and needed to find a way of countering this problem area, which was also a significant cost driver.
For more than 10 years, this highly successful and growth-orientated company based in India has been using Oracle Database together with a distinct and intense-use SAP application landscape. Virtually all ERP ECC 6.0 modules are used, as are Netweaver Business Warehouse (7.01) and Process Integration (PI 7.0), which is used to link three non-SAP applications with the central application landscape. More than 600 users work with this system environ- ment where HP systems (rx6660 servers with HP-UX 11.31 and EVA-4400 storage units) make up the hardware component.
T. G. Dhandapani, Group CIO at TVS Motor Company, explains: “We set ourselves the goal of finding an effective tool to counter our ever-rising and cost-intensive growth of data in SAP usage. Our database and our storage units were growing all the time which had impacted on storage costs, performance, database update times and also restore times.” Since last December, TVS Motor has been using Oracle Database 11g for SAP. It has proven to be the ideal solution, delivering significant improvements through its beneficial Advanced Compression features.
Industry:
Manufacturer of two-wheelers (production capacity 2.5 mil- lion units per year);
motorcycles, variomatic scooters, mopeds dd Workforce: 7,800 (India, Indonesia) Oracle products:
Oracle Database Rel. 11.2.0.1 for SAP; size: 2.5 TB before Advanced Compression with Oracle Database 10g (10.2.04)
Key Benefits:
Space savings with optimized management, cost savings, significant database size reduc- tion, much better performance, reduced backup time, enabling future growth
SAP:
ERP ECC 6.04 (FI CO, MM, PP, QM, HCM/HR, PM, SM, PLM, Netweaver BW 7.01, PI (7.0), all modules active
Infrastructure:
HP rx6600 servers with HP-UX 11.31, EVA 4400 storage TVS Motor Company
http://www.tvsmotor.in
T V S M O T O R C O M P A N Y E N J O Y S S I G N I F I C A N T I M P R O V E M E N T S W I T H O R A C L E D A T A B A S E 1 1 g “Opting for Oracle Database 11g and the Advanced Compression features was the right choice
and was certainly worth the investment. We could reduce the Database volume by 60 % and the response times by 56 %. The improvements and benefits gained are clear to see. We are already planning implementation of other 11g features such as Database Vault or Network Compression.”
– T . G . D H A N D A P A N I , Group CIO, TVS Motor Company
Oracle Advanced Compression at TVS Motor Company 55
Problem-solver:
Oracle Advanced Compression
TVS Motor Company consciously opted for Oracle Database 11g and Oracle Compression in order to implement storage and database management optimizations. The IT team working for the growth-focused company had to choose from three possible options. Firstly, to significantly extend the storage systems, but this would have resulted in disproportionately high costs and a relatively long implementation period.
Secondly, to use a data archiving concept and implement this gradually, but this would have taken a long time and the potential space savings would only have been marginal. And thirdly, to switch from Oracle Database version 10g to 11g and to tap into the far- reaching database Advanced Compression features with the prospect of benefiting from several of these at the same time.
“Since we had already enjoyed positive experi- ences with the Oracle Database 10g feature Index Compression and we were able to bene- fit from very sustainable optimizations after testing with Oracle Database 11g, we decided to rapidly upgrade our Oracle database to Oracle Database 11g,” continues Dhandapani. Firstly, the system was upgraded from 10g to 11g (10.2.04-11.2.01). This process was a smooth and rapid one (not including prelimi- nary work/tests: 6 hours). Then Advanced Compression was added and configuration/- settings/compression undertaken using BRtools. The time taken for the compression activity was 18 hours.
Impressive and clear results
TVS Motor Company is delighted with the results. “Opting for Oracle Database 11g and the Advanced Compression features was the right choice and was certainly worth the invest- ment. The improvements and benefits gained are clear to see. We are already planning the
implementation of other 11g features such as Database Vault or Network Compression.” The before and after values are miles apart and some of the optimizations are huge. For example, using Oracle Database 11g Advanced Compression, the company managed to reduce the size of its database (which had grown during the 10g to 11g upgrade to around 2.3 TB) by 60 percent to 0.8 TB. But that’s not all. Response times have improved dramatically by a massive 56 percent. Before using 11g Advanced Compression, the database response times were 550 milliseconds, now they are 240. It has also been possible to cut the backup time from 9 to 3 hours. Advanced Compression has also been used successfully with the SAP Net- weaver BWwhich is also running on Oracle DB.
Other Oracle Database 11g features firmly in sight
What’s more, TVS Motor Company is also using other new Oracle Database 11g features in addition to Advanced Compression, including Real Application Testing (RAT) and Secure Files. RAT is a tool for testing and optimizing changes under real conditions to assess their impact on workload before they are adopted or go live, for example when upgrading from version 10g to 11g. Secure Files is a new type of data for storing large objects (LOBs). Unlike LOB technology, data stored in this format offers better performance and simplified management. You could say that Secure Files are compatible with database options such as Advanced Compression. As TVS Motor Company’s CIO Dhandapani concludes: “By using Oracle Database 11g and Advanced Compression we have gained major space savings and the cost savings aren’t bad either. Our entire disk space management now also has a beneficial and firm footing for the future.”
“We set ourselves the goal of finding an effective tool to counter our ever-rising and cost- intensive growth of data in SAP usage. Our database and our storage units were growing all the time which had impacted on storage costs, performance, database update times and also restore times.”
– T.G. Dhandapani,
Group CIO, TVS Motor Company