INT423 : Sybase Integration A Customer Case Study

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INT423 Sybase Integration A Customer Case
Study
Marius RoetsSystem Manager Integration
SolutionsMariusRoets_at_woolworths.co.za6 August
2003
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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

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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.

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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

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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

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Overview of Woolworths
Online Channel
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Overview of Woolworths
Online Channel - Foods
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Overview of Woolworths
Online Channel - Textiles
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Overview of Woolworths
Online Channel Financial Services
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Overview of Woolworths
Online Channel - Cellular
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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

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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 DCs 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

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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

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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 DCs, 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.

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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.

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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

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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

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

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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.

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

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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.

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Q A
Woolworths (Pty) Ltd South Africa.

• Q A