1 / 24

INT423 : Sybase Integration – A Customer Case Study

INT423 : Sybase Integration – A Customer Case Study. Marius Roets System Manager: Integration Solutions MariusRoets@woolworths.co.za 6 August 2003. Agenda. Woolworths (Pty) Ltd – South Africa. Overview of Woolworths Overview of the Woolworths environment

sloan
Download Presentation

INT423 : Sybase Integration – A Customer Case Study

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. INT423 : Sybase Integration – A Customer Case Study Marius RoetsSystem Manager: Integration SolutionsMariusRoets@woolworths.co.za6 August 2003

  2. Agenda Woolworths (Pty) Ltd – South Africa. • Overview of Woolworths • Overview of the Woolworths environment • Woolworths existing integration environment • Migration plans to e-Biz Impact v5.3 • Future integration plans • The role of Sybase in Woolworths Integration Strategy • Q & A

  3. Overview of Woolworths Strategic Intent We aspire to being the greatest, most trusted and respected African retail brand. We will achieve this by nurturing and building lifetime relationships with our customers. These relationships will be earned by all of us making the Woolies difference.

  4. Agenda Key Strategies to Achieve our Strategic Intent • Build a sustainable growing Textiles business • Maximize the growth potential of our Foods business • Grow our Financial Services business, leveraging our establish brand values • Build our International business in Africa and The Gulf • Consistently deliver an exceptional customer focused shopping experience • Become an Employer of Choice who attracts and retains Employees of Choice • Deliver operational efficiency through simplifying our business processes

  5. Overview of Woolworths Stores & Distribution Centers • Store environment • 150 Corporate stores in South Africa • Textiles: 150 • Foods: 120 • 50 Franchise stores • 55 International stores • 25 Cross Border Stores Distribution Centers • 3 Textile DC • 4 Foods DC

  6. Overview of Woolworths Online Channel

  7. Overview of Woolworths Online Channel - Foods

  8. Overview of Woolworths Online Channel - Textiles

  9. Overview of Woolworths Online Channel – Financial Services

  10. Overview of Woolworths Online Channel - Cellular

  11. Overview of Woolworths Key Shifts to Achieve Our Strategies • Increase the focus on customer relationships • Provide a convenient, exciting, modern and entertaining shopping experience • Provide more knowledgeable and personalized services • Offer more comprehensive, differentiated ranges • Establish strategic alliances and partnerships with suppliers and communities • Exploit the use of Internet technology to drive our business in content, communication and commerce • Maximize all opportunities to enhance our Brand

  12. Overview of the technical environment Hardware platforms • More than 250 business applications in Woolworths • Application hardware platforms • Mainframe – MVS – 2 LPARS (110 MIBS) • AIX Unix – All stores (store back office applications), all DC’s & head office • SUN Unix – Data warehouse (1 TG Informix database) • AIX Unix MQ Server Cluster • Microsoft Windows 2000 servers on IBM & Dell servers – 50 Applications servers & 3 MS SQL Server database clusters • Challenge to manage, but it does support the business applications 24x7

  13. Overview of the technical environment Main business applications • Mainframe • Foods order management • Textiles merchandising system • Transaction Control • Finance Systems (Walker) • Woolworths Financial Services Systems (Vision Plus) • Unix • Foods supply chain • Textiles demand forecasting • Data warehouse • Store applications • WebSphere MQ Series • Windows NT • Microsoft Exchange • RightFax • Integration broker • WebSphere MQ Series • Staff Planner • Peoplesoft • Postilion payment gateway switch • Microsoft Internet Servers / Microsoft Transaction Servers

  14. Application Integration in Woolworths Background • Why did Woolworths think about integration. • At the time of investigation, the implementation for an ERP solution for Retail was to costly (package cost, consultancy & exchange rate) • 8 years ago the board decided that the Foods & Textiles business units should develop their own systems • This was achieved with the use of external consultants, resulting in the Textiles merchandising availability program (MAP) and the Foods supply chain (FSC) systems. • How did Woolworths approach integration? • Transaction Control (Cobol, Easytrieve, QSAM & VSAM) was developed on the mainframe to support the MAP environment. • Transaction Control is responsible for the transmission of data between the DC’s, stores, suppliers and mainframe systems. • MQ and FTP are the primary transport layers used by Transaction Control. • SMART MQ components for Informix 4GL programs were developed.

  15. Application Integration in Woolworths How do we approach integration? • The use of a dedicated integration competency team. • a Standard set of integration principles that support all platforms was published. • Integration interfaces are developed in adherence to the System Development Life Cycle (SDLC). • Non-evasive approach is followed. • Delivery of information from the source to the destination system is assured (FTP, MQ, ODBC, TCP/IP, Java, DCOM) • Interfaces are developed, managed and supported end-to-end.

  16. Existing Integration environment in Woolworths What does the existing integration environment look like today? • Hardware: • 2 * Dell Power Edge Servers in Microsoft Cluster for Impact • 4 GB memory, 4 * 800 MHz processors, 300 GB disk • 2 * Dell Power Edge Servers in Microsoft Cluster for Microsoft SQL Server • 8 GB memory, 4 * 800 MHz processors, 600 GB disk • Software: • Impact v4.1 in production • Impact v5.3 in production • Opalis Robot – Windows Scheduler • Microsoft MOM – Management & monitoring • SQL Server 2000 Enterprise edition • Informix 9 on Unix platforms (Stores, DC, Data warehouse) • WebSphere MQ Server v5.3 for Windows NT & Unix • WebSphere MQ Server v5.2 for IBM Mainframe • Qpasa for WebSphere MQ management • Q-Liner for FTP compression over FTP / MQ / TCP • Postilion – Payment Gateway to banks • SMS Enterprise Server

  17. Existing Integration environment in Woolworths What does the existing integration environment look like today? • Mainframe • 150 different transaction types (Assembler, Cobol, Easytrieve) – Plan to migrate all of this onto Impact v5.3 before October 2003 • 0.5 million transactions per day from/to mainframe (3 GB data / day) • Average MAP message size 1 MB, reading 55 MB for some interfaces • Main protocol is FTP, but MQ is also used in some interfaces to/from mainframe • Impact v4.1 configuration • 240 different transaction types • 30% of interfaces are database acquisition and/or delivery aims • 40% of interfaces are MQ interfaces • 10% of interfaces are Microsoft DCOM interfaces • 8 interfaces use TCP/IP Socket for interfacing with banks and mainframe (CICS transactions) • 10% of interfaces are Flat file / FTP interfaces

  18. Existing Integration environment in Woolworths What does the existing integration environment look like today?

  19. Existing Integration environment in Woolworths What does the existing integration environment look like today? • Existing challenges with Impact v4.1 • The speed, memory handling & robustness of BSM is compromised due to high volumes. • DFC limitation (64KB) – big challenge • TCP/IP socket management in MSG-IDE not robust enough • TRAN-IDE parsing of big groups – too slow and occasionally results in GPF. • MQ Bridge configuration limitations • The failure of an Aim can bring down BSM and impact the rest of the integration infrastructure • Difficult to integrate with Microsoft DCOM & Java and ensure guaranteed delivery. • Database handling not robust enough.

  20. Future Integration environment in Woolworths Migration plans for e-Biz Impact v5.3 • Woolworths was part of the e-Biz Impact v5.3 beta program – Challenging times • The integration team is re-developing the core broker infrastructure in v5.3 • Integrate into Java and DCOM synchronously with EAServer & Impact interoperability for integration to the i2 & Retek applications. • Migration of mainframe interfaces (8 MIPS, 0.5 million/day, 3GB/day) onto v5.3 – Go live October 2003 • Migration of existing v4.1 interfaces to v5.3 – July 2004 • Implementation of the re-developed broker onto new hardware – 8 * 2 GHz processors, 8 GB memory, Windows 2003 2 node cluster.

  21. Future Integration environment in Woolworths Migration plans for e-Biz Impact v5.3

  22. Future Integration Plan for Woolworths • Migrate all Impact v4.1 code to e-Biz Impact v5.3 • Implement EAServer for synchronous messaging between Java world, DCOM and legacy applications • Implement Business Activity Monitor for Woolworths (Enterprise nervous system) • Implement Process Management framework for Woolworths • Assist in the mobile & wireless integration infrastructure.

  23. The role of Sybase in Woolworths Integration Strategy • Sybase understands the Woolworths integration environment & its current challenges. • Sybase and Woolworths are co-operating to ensure that the advanced features of e-Biz Impact v5.3 are utilized to their full potential. • Sybase understand our mobile and wireless needs and is proactively assisting us in developing our mobile & wireless strategy. • Sybase integration engineering & QA teams are committed to supporting Woolworths and the e-Biz Impact v5.3 product set.

  24. Q & A Woolworths (Pty) Ltd – South Africa. Q & A

More Related