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Actian > Case Studies > For AAH Pharmaceuticals, Ingres is the key to a healthy business
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For AAH Pharmaceuticals, Ingres is the key to a healthy business

Technology Category
  • Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Database Management & Storage
Applicable Industries
  • Pharmaceuticals
Applicable Functions
  • Logistics & Transportation
  • Sales & Marketing
Use Cases
  • Inventory Management
  • Supply Chain Visibility
Services
  • System Integration
The Challenge
AAH Pharmaceuticals Ltd. is the United Kingdom’s leading distributor of pharmaceutical and healthcare products and services to pharmacies, hospitals, and doctors. With more than 4,000 employees, 19 distribution warehouses in the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland, and more than 2.6 million products delivered daily, the company relies on an enterprise-class IT infrastructure to support its large-scale logistical operations. At the same time, in its highly regulated and constantly-changing market, AAH must also maintain the agility to respond quickly and efficiently to emerging business requirements. The company’s role as an intermediary between suppliers and end customers brings additional complexity to the challenge; each business application used and each link in the value chain must perform optimally to maintain competitive advantage.
About The Customer
AAH Pharmaceuticals Ltd. is the United Kingdom’s leading distributor of pharmaceutical and healthcare products and services to pharmacies, hospitals, and doctors. The company has more than 4,000 employees and operates 19 distribution warehouses in the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland. AAH delivers more than 2.6 million products daily, relying on an enterprise-class IT infrastructure to support its large-scale logistical operations. The company operates in a highly regulated and constantly changing market, requiring agility to respond quickly and efficiently to emerging business requirements. As an intermediary between suppliers and end customers, AAH faces additional complexity; each business application used and each link in the value chain must perform optimally to maintain competitive advantage.
The Solution
To provide the agility and performance its business required, AAH migrated its systems onto Ingres running on Linux. The results were nothing short of spectacular: “It practically installs itself in a matter of minutes,” says Richard David, senior database administrator for AAH, who highlighted the speed of the system’s performance. “This is by far the best Ingres product I’ve seen in many years.” The company now uses Ingres technology to run all of its most important business applications, including stock, sales, invoicing, and master data maintenance. Based on open source technology, Ingres has enabled seamless integration with the legacy systems of AAH’s constituent companies, Enterprise (the leading wholesaler of health and beauty products in the United Kingdom) and Trident (a shortline distributor of generics and parallel imports). As a result, the company can provide its partners with flexible support services that can adapt to constantly changing market trends.
Operational Impact
  • The crisp, reliable performance of Ingres has dramatically accelerated the performance of AAH’s business applications.
  • Ingres has enabled seamless integration with the legacy systems of AAH’s constituent companies, Enterprise and Trident.
  • The company can provide its partners with flexible support services that can adapt to constantly changing market trends.
Quantitative Benefit
  • Queries that once took five hours to process, now take less than 20 minutes.
  • In less than three years, AAH will have recovered its costs while gaining greater efficiencies and higher performance by running Ingres on smaller and more powerful Linux servers.

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