EMC and Telstra boost OneSteel
EMC and Telstra boost OneSteel
OneSteel has managed to increase its report and transaction processing times by 30 percent thanks to a new storage management solutions provided by Telstra and EMC divisions.
OneSteel is the largest manufacturer of steel long products and leading metals distribution company in Australia, with an annual revenue of AUD$3 billion. It has over 200 operational sites in Australia and New Zealand, more than 30,000 customers and employs about 6,900 people.
It generates about 10,000 business transactions a day, but it was facing a lag in performance because of the strains on computers based in the ERP systems.
Allan Strong, IT manager, distribution, OneSteel explained how one key business application forced the company to access and use more disk space than it had too. The storage technology had to run at maximum capacity and the company was running out of storage space rapidly.
This resulted in a huge slowdown in the performance of OneSteel's integrated systems and the daily batch run was affected most of all. The batch run is only meant to take five hours, but the system ended up taking up to 12 hours to process the job.
Strong added: "This meant we were trying to finish report runs at the same time that users were trying to access the system, which further slowed operations. There was also no margin for error. If anything went wrong, we had not time at all to recover the batch job.
"Staff were forced to write down the order and key it in later, which defeated the purpose of a real-time order entry system."
In November 2003, OneSteel signed with Telstra Information Storage Solutions, for a storage management service to improve system performance. At the time, Telstra was developing a solution based on EMC's CLARiiON platform that it realised would be ideal for OneSteel.
During a demonstration, EMC provided on-site engineers to build, configure and connect the Clariion CX600 system to OneSteel's infrastructure. The CX600 stores up to 500 GB of data, providing adequate support for the Oracle databases.
Graham Mirabito from Telstra services, products and sales manager said: "Here was a chance to help a customer with an urgent issue. We identified their problems and worked overtime on the solution to ensure we could meet their needs within a tight deadline. It was an excellent opportunity for both companies to showcase their respective capabilities."
The results were that congestion was eased for one of OneSteel's critical operating systems, which led to increased data processing speeds; hardware and maintenance costs were reduced using a managed solution; customer service was improved through faster processing times for product orders and a shortened batch running time from 12 hours to three hours ensured daily reporting deadlines were met.
Michael Dines, the chief information officer of OneSteel added. "This arrangement allows us to remain focused on business outcomes, without the distraction of supporting highly technical, complex and constantly changing infrastructure. We were extremely happy with the process and service provided by Telstra and EMC. The performance of the CLARiiON system clearly met our business needs."
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