Working with IBM, the New Outdoor Group replaced its outdated infrastructure with SAP ERP solutions and IBM Power 570 servers. This met the company’s requirement for a scalable platform that would serve its needs for at least 10 years. The group obtained a highperformance solution which dynamically reallocates virtual resources to optimize computing power, increasing reliability and streamlining the task of network administration.

1. News Outdoor Group achieves Overview
advertising success with SAP Challenge
and IBM Outdoor advertising operator
News Outdoor Group’s ERP
News Outdoor Group is the seventh- of diverse functions: production package and server system was
largest outdoor advertising operator in management, procurement unable to deal with the demands
the world. The company owns more management, inventory movement, of rapid business growth.
than 50,000 advertising surfaces in bookkeeping and financial accounting, Reliability was a crucial factor,
five countries in Eastern and Central and report analysis and budgeting. as computational delays from
Europe. It currently has over 50,000 internal software threatened to
advertising surfaces in 90 cities. It is the The company’s business had grown undermine customer confidence.
fastest growing international outdoor by a factor of 30 in seven years and the
advertising operator. number of users of its ERP system had Solution
increased by a factor of 10. Naturally, Working with IBM, the
In 1999, the company laid the there were problems related to group replaced its outdated
foundation for a business resource performance and scalability, as well as infrastructure with SAP ERP
planning system. However, exceptional with the functionality of the old system. solutions and IBM Power 570
growth in the company meant this servers. This met the company’s
solution was soon outgrown. The First and foremost, it was the requirement for a scalable
system needed to be upgraded: a new, throughput of the ERP system that platform that would serve its
forward-looking ERP platform had to be was inadequate. When building a data needs for at least 10 years.
created that accounted for the strategic repository, the throughput of the file
plans of the company – a platform that servers and database servers was Key benefits
could meet the company’s business essentially at maximum. Moreover, The group obtained a high-
needs for at least 10 years. since the old integrated ERP platform performance solution which
combined different systems, the dynamically reallocates virtual
Four years ago, the operator decided server base had to be increased and resources to optimize computing
to replace the old ERP system, which significant resources were required power, increasing reliability and
was based on a variety of different to support the interfaces between streamlining the task of network
applications and had a number the applications. This aspect had administration.
Case study

2. gradually become a critical issue and the-clock was not deemed critical,
the company began thinking about an asymmetrical cluster solution was
virtualization. selected to ensure reliability.
Powerful solution System implementation was based
Business Challenge Solutions available in the market were on two IBM Power 570 servers with
analyzed, including criteria such as medium throughput. Each contains
Outdoor advertising operator News cost and technical support. The most eight POWER6 processors and 64 GB
Outdoor Group’s ERP package and advanced technological solutions RAM. They can currently be expanded
server system was unable to deal that met the company’s requirements to 16 processors and 128 GB RAM.
with the demands of rapid business were produced by IBM. In addition, External memory is provided by IBM
growth. the strategic alliance of SAP and IBM System Storage DS4800 disk arrays
instilled confidence in the quality and and two IBM System Storage TS3200
Reliability was a crucial factor for reliability of the solution. tape libraries.
News Outdoor, as computational
delays from internal software The company decided against a The operating system is AIX 5.3. Tivoli
threatened to undermine customer tender for the platform because all Storage Manager 5.4 is used for system
confidence. parties involved in the decision agreed backup. A fault-tolerant configuration
unanimously that IBM was the best was implemented with High Availability
choice. Bids were accepted only to Cluster Multi-Processing (HACMP), a
select the individual vendors for IBM cluster technology. The DBMS is DB2
solutions. version 9.1.
The focus of the selection process Some 70 percent of the major business
was scalability and performance. The operations of the company divisions are
company was growing so rapidly that now conducted on the new platform,
the immediate priority was to increase and the transition is continuing in
throughput over the next several years. keeping with plans for expanding the
Reliability was also a significant factor system.
because computational delays at a
time when business was increasing The company decided against using
so dramatically could significantly Virtual I/O Server since the number
undermine customer confidence. The of Fibre Channel and Ethernet server
system was intended for internal users. adaptors was adequate. LPAR (Logical
Consequently, while availability round- Partition Access Resources), a logical
2

3. server, was selected as the physical Though company IT personnel had
server for the implementation of the to master the new technologies, and
design. This choice made it possible to despite not having any experience or
divide each server into three sections knowledge of the specific aspects
based on the installation plan for the involved in implementing the new
SAP systems. solution, the system was implemented Solution
at the Moscow headquarters of
One of the physical servers has logical the company in only two months. Working with IBM, the company
sections containing the SAP ERP Specialists also received AIX training replaced its outdated software with
production system, SAP NetWeaver at the IBM training center. Short-term SAP ERP solutions, implemented on
Process Integration (SAP NetWeaver plans for future expansion of the an IBM Power 570 server.
PI) production system and all SAP DEV system include modifying the solution
development systems for SAP ERP, to enhance disaster recovery and This architecture met the company’s
SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse significantly reduce downtime in the requirement for a scalable platform
(SAP BW) and SAP NetWeaver PI in event of a complete failure of system that would serve its needs for at
one system. The second server has hardware. least 10 years.
logical systems containing the SAP
NetWeaver BW production system, The company obtained a high
Business Benefits
SAP Quality Assurance System (SAP performance solution with excellent
QAS), SAP ERP, SAP NetWeaver BW options for improving productivity in
• Excellent options for improving
and SAP NetWeaver PI testing systems the future. The powerful tools offered
productivity in the future, including
(in one system), as well, as well as an by IBM for virtualization and organizing
enhanced disaster recovery.
infrastructure section for Tivoli Storage cluster computing, as well as the option
Manager, NFS and the SAP transport of dynamically reallocating resources
• IBM toolset dynamically reallocates
system. between virtual solutions, allow the
virtual resources, optimizing
company to optimize its computing
computing power, increasing
Unqualified success power. DB2-SAP has proven itself to be
reliability and streamlining the task
The rollout of the hardware platform ideal in terms of performance, flexibility
of network administration.
was managed by KROK (equipment and ease of administration. In addition,
delivery and installation, LPAR it is clear that the alliance between SAP
configuration, AIX installation) and and IBM is not merely ostensible. The
Mekomp (SAP systems installation, real benefits of their integrated products
backup system and cluster and performance optimization tools
implementation) with support from thoroughly convince the company that
News Outdoor's own specialists. they made the best decision.
3

4. Key Solution Components IBM Deutschland GmbH
D-70548 Stuttgart
ibm.com/solutions/sap
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