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Kronopol Improves data management and cuts IT costs with SAP and IBM DB2 outsourcing solution
Technology Category
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Databases
Applicable Functions
- Discrete Manufacturing
- Maintenance
Use Cases
- Manufacturing System Automation
- Predictive Maintenance
Services
- Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
- System Integration
The Challenge
Kronopol, a subsidiary of the Swiss Krono Holding AG and a world leader in the wood-based products industry, was facing a challenge with its growing databases that supported the company’s SAP applications. The IT team was spending increasing amounts of time maintaining and administering these databases. The growing data volumes were also affecting business-critical functions such as daily backups. Kronopol needed a solution that would support the data explosion resulting from business growth, while keeping IT spending lean. The company was looking for a solution that would not only address its immediate data management needs and cut storage costs, but also offer a strategic solution to help manage long-term data growth.
About The Customer
Founded in 1994 and based in Zary, Poland, Kronopol Sp. z o. o. operates as a subsidiary of the Swiss Krono Holding AG – a world leader in the wood-based products industry. With the most modern production lines, and more than a hundred years of experience of the Krono Group, the company delivers products of the highest quality and esthetic parameters. Currently, Kronopol manufactures more than 1.5 million cubic meters of wood-based panels annually.
The Solution
Kronopol signed a five-year outsourcing contract with IBM, which included migrating the company’s critical SAP applications to IBM® DB2®. The project was carried out over a period of 10 months, with no interruption to business processes. IBM DB2 was implemented on IBM Power Systems™ servers linked to IBM System Storage DS®, managed by IBM System Storage® SAN Volume Controller software. The solution was configured for high availability with IBM PowerHA® and Enqueue Replication Server technology. Backup and recovery have been handled using IBM Tivoli® Storage Manager software. In total, Kronopol has migrated almost 20 SAP systems to DB2, including five production instances and two legacy systems. All operations were done using standard SAP migration tools, such as heterogeneous system copy. Most planned database outages to support the upgrade from MaxDB to DB2 lasted significantly less than 48 hours, keeping business disruption to a minimum.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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