Case Study IBM Systems and Technology IBM and EASI optimize IT infrastructure at plumb- ing specialist Facq IBM Power Systems and IBM System Storage in- crease performance and speed while lowering mainte- nance costs Facq is the second largest player on the Belgian market for plumbing, central heating and water treatment supplies. The company delivers to the professional installer as well as the end user. Facq realized sales of 173 million euro in 2010. The company, founded in 1880, has two warehouses, 25 sales outlets and is home to more than 500 employees. Company in full expansion Facq has shown strong growth in recent years. The company presently has 25 sales outlets, but many new outlets are in the pipeline. “This expansion of course has an impact on our IT infrastructure. Each time a new outlet was opened, the infrastructure began to perform more slowly. There were especially problems with the batch programs that run at night. We wanted to upgrade the existing systems, but these were no longer supported by the supplier”, says André Pauwels, IT Manager at Facq. Since the arrival of the computer in the company, Facq has been working with IBM, and wished to continue to do so. “We are very pleased with IBM, and have already implemented numerous upgrades and migrations in order to stay abreast of the most recent technologies and especially to take advantage of their benefits”, says Pauwels. Facq called upon IBM and business partner EASI in order to continue to grow and to improve the performance of the ICT infrastructure at all outlets. Interesting price Facq previously worked with two IBM System i 525 servers, with one serving as production system and the other as back-up. EASI proposed replacing these IBM 525 systems with a new IBM Power 720 Express server and storage virtualization. “We were able to link this to one of the previous systems that was upgraded to an IBM Power 6 system and now serves The Challenge Upgrade the existing IT infrastructure due to performance and capacity problems for a company in full expansion. The Solution IBM Power 720 Express server, linked to an IBM System Storage Storwize V7000 for archiving. The back-up system was upgraded to Power 6. Key benefits Improved speed and performance, scalability, competitive price, lowered maintenance costs.
EASI optimizes the IT-infrastructure of Facq
Jun 21, 2015
EASI optimizes the IT-infrastructure of Facq
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Case StudyIBM Systems and Technology
IBM and EASI optimize IT infrastructure at plumb-ing specialist FacqIBM Power Systems and IBM System Storage in-crease performance and speed while lowering mainte-nance costs
Facq is the second largest player on the Belgian market for plumbing, central heating and water treatment supplies. The company delivers to the professional installer as well as the end user. Facq realized sales of 173 million euro in 2010. The company, founded in 1880, has two warehouses, 25 sales outlets and is home to more than 500 employees.
Company in full expansion
Facq has shown strong growth in recent years. The company presently has 25 sales outlets, but many new outlets are in the pipeline. “This expansion of course has an impact on our IT infrastructure. Each time a new outlet was opened, the infrastructure began to perform more slowly. There were especially problems with the batch programs that run at night. We wanted to upgrade the existing systems, but these were no longer supported by the supplier”, says André Pauwels, IT Manager at Facq.
Since the arrival of the computer in the company, Facq has been working with IBM, and wished to continue to do so. “We are very pleased with IBM, and have already implemented numerous upgrades and migrations in order to stay abreast of the most recent technologies and especially to take advantage of their benefits”, says Pauwels. Facq called upon IBM and business partner EASI in order to continue to grow and to improve the performance of the ICT infrastructure at all outlets.
Interesting price
Facq previously worked with two IBM System i 525 servers, with one serving as production system and the other as back-up. EASI proposed replacing these IBM 525 systems with a new IBM Power 720 Express server and storage virtualization. “We were able to link this to one of the previous systems that was upgraded to an IBM Power 6 system and now serves
The ChallengeUpgrade the existing IT infrastructure due to performance and capacity problems for a company in full expansion.
The Solution IBM Power 720 Express server, linked to an IBM System Storage Storwize V7000 for archiving. The back-up system was upgraded to Power 6.
Key benefitsImproved speed and performance, scalability, competitive price, lowered maintenance costs.
Case StudyIBM Systems and Technology
as back-up for the new system. Data is mirrored to the back-up system over a Fibre 1Gb line. The ability to reuse an existing machine made the price very interesting”, explains Pauwels.
The new system includes IBM Storwize V7000 with tradi-tional IBM hard disk drives (HDD) for archiving. IBM Storwize V7000 uses a modular design, allowing the required components to be added at any time. Specific functions of Storwize, such as IBM Easy Tier, can increase the I/O capacity (the incoming and outgoing data traffic) significantly, thereby substantially improving response time. For Facq, a company in full expansion, this is a reassuring element.
“The old optical drives could not be updated. So EASI proposed replacing these with IBM Storwize V7000 SAN. The Power 720 is
spectacularly fast – due in part to the SSD disks that are much quicker than traditional disks. Start-up now takes only five minutes, while in the past this could take up to 15 minutes. We are able to retrieve documents much more quickly using Storwize V7000 SAN. Facq is one the first in Belgium to use such an infrastructure”, says Pauwels.
Immediate access
All Facq outlets are connected via a VPN network. With the new system, the online data is now immediately available for consultation. “If an order is placed in Namur, it now can be accessed and consulted here immediately. Everything will proceed much more quickly, and the ERP system will also run much faster”, says Pauwels with a smile. “Especially the speed of batch tasks will increase spectacularly. Previously it took the accounting department some ten minutes to prepare a customer statement, depending on system load. Thanks to the SSD disks, I estimate that the process now takes only 3 minutes.”
“The price/quality ratio is very good”, continues Pauwels. “We are now focusing on testing the system and migrating the data. Approximately 1 terabyte of data must be moved from the old opti-cal drives to the new SAN, which will take a bit of time. The EASI consultant and our archive specialist are presently looking for a solution to speed up the process.” Thanks to this transition, Facq no longer needs to archive any paper documents: everything is scanned and stored in the system. This infor-mation is then accessible via the ERP system. In addition, the response time for the interactive programs has increased dramatically.
Reliability and decreased maintenance costs
Facq employs six people in its ICT department. Hence, assistance from the EASI consultant was very welcome. “We chose EASI as our hardware partner for all IBM systems. The consultant supervising the project has been working for years with us and thus knows the company and our infrastructure very well. What’s more, EASI always monitors the situation very closely,” explains Pauwels.
Case StudyIBM Systems and Technology
Facq is also very pleased with the new systems. “We feel a bit stronger with respect to the competition. The biggest plus of the IBM Power 720 system is its extreme reliability. The system never goes down; we hear this from everyone who has one. IBM also guarantees the quality; the systems are operated via the IBM communication line. If severe problems were to develop, the processes are taken over by the back-up system. Moreover, maintenance costs for the new systems have dropped substantially. In short: our systems are now ready to take on the company’s further expansion plans”, concludes André Pauwels.
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