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1. Case Study
IBM Systems and Technology Group Retail
Pneuhage Group is a tire services company, headquartered in
Karlsruhe, Germany. The company operates two production plants,
three logistics centers and 88 shops across Germany. Pneuhage also
operates four shops and one warehouse in Poland, and a sales office in
France. Employing approximately 1,250 people, the company generates
annual sales revenues of more than €400 million.
With the goal of improving product availability, Pneuhage wanted
to understand sales and inventory performance in real time. The
company’s goal was to gather more accurate and timely figures to
support decision making and provide a factual foundation for response
to variable business situations. Deploying a single, integrated ERP
solution would help the company standardize business processes and
ensure consistent data across the group.
Selecting IBM technology to support SAP
applications
Pneuhage chose to deploy SAP Business All-in-One to standardize
financials, controlling, human capital management, materials
management, master data management, and sales and delivery
processes. To replace its legacy retail software, Pneuhage selected the
SAP Business All-in-One industry solution cormeta TRADEsprint.
Pneuhage’s existing business applications were running on 15 HP Alpha
Systems servers with a UNIX operating system. To save costs and
increase efficiency in its IT operations, Pneuhage decided to look for a
consolidation platform to create a virtualized IT environment.
The company selected IBM Power Systems servers over the competing
x86 processor-based option. “The 25 percent cost advantage of the
IBM solution was not the only reason we chose IBM BladeCenter
Power blades,” explains Ralf Brauer, Head of ICT at Pneuhage. “The
IBM Power Systems platform also provides better performance and
reliability based on innovative and proven technology.”
Integrated virtualization boosts efficiency
Working with IBM, Pneuhage deployed seven IBM Power Systems
blade servers. Today, the company relies on IBM BladeCenter PS701
servers with IBM POWER7® processors to support its business-critical
SAP environment. Leveraging its long-time experience with UNIX
operating systems, Pneuhage decided to run its business applications on
Pneuhage improves
control and visibility of
stock levels
Real-time insights help increase sales
Overview
The need
Pneuhage Group wanted to gain real-time
insights into sales and inventory data
to optimize product availability. Having
accurate figures would improve decision
making and enable faster reactions to
changing market conditions.
The solution
Working with IBM, Pneuhage
implemented an integrated SAP
Business All-in-One solution on
IBM® BladeCenter® Power® blades
with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and
IBM PowerVM® virtualization technology.
The benefit
Provides real-time inventory visibility and
performance figures. Avoided additional
costs of 25 percent by selecting IBM
Power Systems™. Reduced database
size by 70 percent and cut batch runtimes
from hours to minutes. Improved
application response times by up to 90
percent and database processing times
by up to 94 percent.

2. Case Study
IBM Systems and Technology Group Retail
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. Utilizing IBM PowerVM virtualization
technology with the IBM Integrated Virtualization Manager enabled
Pneuhage to reduce the number of servers by more than 50 percent.
Because the new systems are much more efficient, Pneuhage was also
able to cut down on floor space and power consumption considerably.
“The integrated virtualization capability was an important factor for
us,” says Jürgen Hiegle, Head of System Administration at Pneuhage.
“With Power Systems, we do not need separate virtualization software
and we can use the total capacity of the servers more efficiently.”
Selecting workload-optimized servers, Pneuhage set up two large IBM
Power Systems servers with 128 GB main memory as database servers
and configured less powerful servers as SAP application servers.
Altogether, Pneuhage runs about 30 SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
systems on the IBM Power Systems platform. For fast and reliable data
storage, the servers are connected to a storage area network based on
IBM System Storage® DS4700 devices.
Reducing database size with IBM DB2
After the successful implementation of SAP Business All-in-One on
IBM Power Systems with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, Pneuhage
decided to migrate its SAP database from MaxDB to IBM DB2® for
Linux, UNIX and Windows. A major challenge for the project team
was to minimize system downtime, as Pneuhage could not shut down
its systems for an entire weekend, because its shops are also open on
Saturdays. Experienced specialists and optimized migration methods
based on best practices ensured a smooth migration within the assigned
time slots.
“We wanted to migrate our SAP databases to IBM DB2 to reduce
database sizes and improve the performance of our systems with
the integrated compression features,” says Jürgen Hiegle. “The
close collaboration between IBM and SAP was a significant asset in
performing the migration quickly and without any technical problems.”
Migrating from MaxDB to IBM DB2, Pneuhage reduced database
volumes by 70 percent from 1.7 TB to about 0.5 TB. As a result,
backup times were substantially improved, and some batch process
runtimes were cut down from hours to minutes. The overall
performance of the SAP systems was significantly enhanced with some
application response times reduced by approximately 90 percent.
Certain database response times even improved by up to 94 percent.
The IBM DB2 database integrates closely with the SAP DBA Cockpit,
providing quick and easy access to basic administration tools. This
enables the database administrator to identify slow-performing queries
quickly. “The new database system provides more sophisticated
analytics capabilities. Detailed analysis and new indices based on the
additional insights boosted our database performance considerably.
Solution Components
Hardware
• IBM® BladeCenter® PS701
• IBM BladeCenter JS22
• IBM BladeCenter JS21
• IBM System Storage® DS4700
Software
• IBM DB2® for Linux, UNIX and
Windows
• IBM PowerVM®
• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
• SAP Business All-in-One
“Operating a consistent
server landscape is, of
course, much easier
than a number of
different systems. And
having fewer servers
automatically reduces
the workload for the
IT administrators
significantly.”
— Ralf Brauer, Head of ICT at Pneuhage

3. Case Study
IBM Systems and Technology Group Retail
Overall, system administration on IBM DB2 is much better than our
previous solution,” says Jürgen Hiegle. “We also use all the automation
features provided by IBM DB2. This allows database administrators to
focus on more advanced tasks instead of basic system maintenance.”
Real-time insights
In the past, sales and inventory data was updated once a day with a
nightly batch run. By deploying SAP Business All-in-One, Pneuhage
gained real-time visibility of inventory data and sales figures from
all shops. The integrated solution also eliminated error-prone data
exchanges between different legacy systems, improving the reliability of
the ERP solution.
“With SAP Business All-in-One, we can access current figures at
any time,” says Ralf Brauer. “This real-time insight enables dynamic
optimization of inventory levels, helping us reduce waste while
ensuring availability of those products that are most in demand. Now,
we can react much quicker to changing market conditions. For a
retailer, directly tracking supply against demand translates into larger
sales and greater customer satisfaction.”
Additionally, a consistent user experience across different applications
and business areas improves usability and increases the efficiency
of Pneuhage’s workforce. The implementation of SAP applications
enabled the company to optimize and accelerate business processes that
were not supported by its legacy IT systems.
Making savings with ultra-efficient IBM
technology
Pneuhage avoided additional costs of 25 percent by migrating to IBM
Power Systems instead of an x86 processor-based solution.
“Operating a consistent server landscape is, of course, much easier than
a number of different systems,” says Ralf Brauer. “And having fewer
servers automatically reduces the workload for the IT administrators
significantly.”
“IBM provided not only the more cost-efficient solution, but also
proved to be a reliable long-term partner for our IT,” says Ralf Brauer.
“Projects are not only about costs, but also about collaboration. Based
on the successful implementation of IBM Power Systems and the
smooth migration to IBM DB2, we are currently working with IBM on
a project to upgrade our SAP Business All-in-One system.”
For more information
For more information about IBM Power Systems, contact your
IBM sales representative or IBM Business Partner, or visit us at:
ibm.com/power
“We wanted to migrate
our SAP databases to
IBM DB2 to reduce
database sizes and
improve the performance
of our systems with the
integrated compression
features. The close
collaboration between
IBM and SAP was
a significant asset
in performing the
migration quickly and
without any technical
problems.”
— Jürgen Hiegle, Head of System
Administration at Pneuhage

4. © Copyright IBM Corporation 2013
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Produced in Germany
January 2013
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This document is current as of the initial date of publication and may be changed
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The client examples cited are presented for illustrative purposes only. Actual
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It is the user’s responsibility to evaluate and verify the operation of any other
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