case study REHAU
case study REHAU MAXES OUT THE POTENTIAL OF FLEXFRAME FOR SAP WITH INTEGRATED VMWARE » FLEXFRAME FOR SAP IS THE PERFECT PLATFORM FOR HOSTING SAP SYSTEMS. WE ACHIEVED OUR COST-REDUCTION GOALS AND CAN NOW MEET SIGNIFICANTLY HIGHER OPERATIONAL REQUIREMENTS WITH NO INCREASE IN STAFF.« Thomas Schott, Manager Corporate Service Center IT, REHAU AG
PROJECT TARGETS MUST BE MET DESPITE TIGHT COST CONTROLS
The Corporate Service Center IT of the globally active REHAU group makes more than 50 SAP systems available to REHAU companies in over 170 countries. REHAU will more than double the number of SAP systems it deploys in the medium term since the group’s Best Practice project calls for abandoning in-house developments and migrating all business processes to SAP software. However, resource needs can hardly be predicted, for one reason because it will only be possible to determine concrete requirements in the course of the individual subprojects. The worldwide financial crisis represents an additional challenge and made it necessary for the Corporate Service Center IT to contain costs. Major reductions were called for in capital expenditure, in outside costs and operating expense and in consultancy costs. At the same, short-time work, forced holiday leave and a hiring stop in the IT area made the situation even more of a challenge. Nevertheless, in order to achieve its Best Practice goals, REHAU decided to move forward with its SAP strategy, which involved consistent consolidation and virtualization of the group’s IT infrastructure. REHAU PURSUES SAP STRATEGY DESPITE FINANCIAL CRISIS the customer
With 15,000 employees at over 170 locations worldwide, REHAU is the leading premium brand in polymer-based innovations and systems for construction, automotive and industrial applications. www.rehau.com the project
Implementation of major reductions in capital expenditure, outside costs and operating expense at the level of SAP operations while moving forward with the retirement of in-house developments and the worldwide rollout of new SAP instances in connection with the REHAU Best Practice project.
The Fujitsu solution that REHAU is using to pursue its SAP strategy despite the financial crisis has been in productive operation since 2007 – FlexFrame™ for SAP®. In order to move forward with their consolidation and virtualization plans, REHAU IT decision-makers undertook a release change to FlexFrame for SAP Version 4.2, the only SAP IT infrastructure that supports seamless integration of application and server virtualization. In addition, PRIMERGY Blade Servers with current Intel Nehalem processor technology facilitate an enormous leap in terms of performance. With further enhancements such as the use of a DB2 database and even better integration of system management, REHAU was able to achieve a twofold goal of massive savings and significant improvement in performance in the area of SAP operation. Despite a multiple-factor increase in the number of SAP instances, the group now benefits from high-performance SAP operation that features exceptional stability and agility without any increase in personnel.
the solution
Consistent consolidation through migration to a virtualized SAP IT infrastructure: release change to FlexFrame for SAP 4.2 with integrated VMware server virtualization and deployment of Blade Servers with current Intel® processor technology.
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case study REHAU
benefits for the customer
hardware, software, services
I ncrease in SAP instances by a multiple factor – reduction in costs Enormous increase in productivity to support SAP operation for REHAU users worldwide with the same personnel resources Significant reduction in investment in projects Flexible use of resources for SAP and database services Less capital expenditure required – no semi-fixed costs High performance and availability for SAP services Simple, economical expansion Fast, economical rollout of new SAP systems
F lexFrame for SAP Version 4.2 with integrated VMware PRIMERGY Blade Server with 34 server blades, 2 PRIMERGY RX300s NetApp FAS3050HA Metrocluster Operating system: Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 Database: DB2 V9.5 SAP software: SAP BW, CRM, EP, ERP, PI, SCM, SRM, SLD, Solution Manager
FLEXFRAME FOR SAP – A CRISIS-PROOF INVESTMENT
FLEXFRAME FOR SAP HELPS REHAU CUT COSTS UND SAVE RESOURCES
Looking for the best way to build a stable, high-performance SAP platform? One that permits economical operation on existing SAP instances without additional complexity or any increase in personnel requirements? In view of the current worldwide financial crisis, many companies are now looking for just that. REHAU found the answer to these questions back in the year 2007 and has since been gradually consolidating its SAP landscape on FlexFrame for SAP. The Fujitsu solution gives this client an SAP Best Practice infrastructure that features high scalability, availability and flexible use of resources. When the financial crisis hit, REHAU’s Corporate Service Center IT also found it necessary to intensify its cost-reduction measures, but IT decision-makers did not have to look for a completely new solution. Instead, they were able to deploy a targeted enhancement package to cut costs and still carry out plans to expand to 120 SAP instances by the end of 2010. In this case, the decisive step was the change to FlexFrame for SAP Version 4.2 with VMware, which in addition to virtualization of SAP applications also integrated server virtualization. With FlexFrame for SAP, REHAU now has a complete solution for SAP operation in place with a pool of physical and virtual servers, centralized storage, a network and a central control instance. The company can make optimal use of its hardware resources, and each SAP system runs in its own environment, which means other systems cannot be affected. SAP and database services all run on the physical or virtual server that is most suitable at the time. With Novell SUSE Linux, REHAU also has only a single operating system for all virtual and physical application nodes in use. In addition, N:1 high-availability management with FlexFrame for SAP means that very little is required in terms of spare resources to ensure economical, trouble-free automated operation. PRIMERGY Blade Servers with Intel Nehalem CPUs also boost performance by 40 %. And, finally, REHAU was able to achieve further improvement in operation through database compression and increased integration of system management. With its 34 server blades, the installation currently handles a throughput of 410,000 SAPS and has 22 terabytes of mirrored storage.
Implementation of REHAU’s decision to enhance its SAP operations has paid off. For example, Christian Baier, REHAU’s Manager SAP Operations, reports: “Deployment of PRIMERGY Blade Servers with current Intel processor technology and VMware enabled us to double performance and reduce costs.” He also added: “In addition, energy consumption is significantly lower, and we were able to reduce our CO2 footprint by 75 %.” The savings that REHAU realized in the areas of administration, installation and support with FlexFrame for SAP were just as impressive: According to Baier, “that can easily come to 60 man-days for a single project.” And not only that: “The cost of hardware, software, storage, SAP installations and system copies is minimal, and costly SAP sizings are also no longer necessary.” For Thomas Schott, who heads REHAU’s Corporate Service Center IT, that’s why virtualization and consolidation with FlexFrame for SAP add up to the right solution for handling the many challenges involved in SAP operation:
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“FLEXFRAME FOR SAP DELIVERS HIGH ADDED VALUE, ESPECIALLY WHEN BUDGETS ARE TIGHT. ENHANCEMENT AND EXPANSION ENTAIL NO SEMI-FIXED COSTS; SYSTEMS CAN be ROLLED OUT QUICKLY; AND IT IS POSSIBLE TO OPERATE A LARGE NUMBER OF INSTANCES WITH LESS MANPOWER.“
REHAU’s Christian Baier comes to the same positive conclusion: “Although we have increased the number of SAP instances by a multiple factor, we are now running our operations without any increase in personnel.”
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