Scales New BI Heights

by Ken Murphy, Features Editor

Being at the forefront of cutting-edge technology is the natural

order of business for PMC-Sierra, a pioneering fabless semiconduc-

tor and software company in the heart of Silicon Valley that spe-

cializes in driving innovation across networks that connect, move,

and store big data.

With the volume of worldwide data doubling every 18 months,

and the presence of PMC’s specialized microchips in storage, opti-

cal, and mobile networks, the business has grown rapidly, including

expansion into new markets, acquisitions, and development of new

technologies. To help manage this growth, PMC wanted to consoli-

date these steady changes within a unified business and informa-

tion technology strategy. It deemed this an organizational digital

transformation, which started in 2011 with the rollout of a single

SAP ERP instance for its numerous manufacturing facilities, global

sales offices, design centers, and corporate offices.

At the same time, PMC

overhauled its non-SAP data

warehouse, replacing this ag-

ing system with SAP Business

Warehouse (SAP BW) running

in conjunction with the SAP

BusinessObjects Business In-

telligence (BI) suite. While the

legacy system had adequately

served its purpose when re-

porting was fragmented across

a number of transactional sys-

tems, consolidating the com-

pany’s transactional systems

into the SAP implementation

better facilitated PMC’s new,

unified approach.

At a GlanceGoal: Accommodate planned growth — includ-ing strategic investments and expansion into new markets — by undergoing a “digital transforma-tion” through consolidating transactional systems and implementing a robust enterprise business intelligence platformStrategy: Upgraded to SAP Business Warehouse (SAP BW) 7.3 and SAP Business Planning and Consolidation 10.0, and migrated to SAP BW powered by SAP HANAOutcome: A 70% runtime reduction in the top 10 reports coming out of SAP BW; an end to overnight batch processing; and an approximately 120% runtime reduction in SAP Business Planning and Consolidation reporting

PMC-Sierra

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This article appeared in the JAN FEB MAR 2015 issue of insiderPROFILES (insiderPROFILESonline.com) and appears here with permission from WIS PUBLISHING.

Enterprise BI solved some challenges for PMC, but in keeping

with its reputation as a forward-looking, high-tech organization,

the company wanted to take it a step further by adding top-tier

performance capabilities. This desire for a state-of-the-art BI en-

vironment was cemented with the company’s entry into the rap-

idly growing enterprise flash memory controller market, signaled

by its 2013 acquisition of Integrated Device Technology’s (IDT)

flash controller business. After all, the business’s complex, high-

performance enterprise Flashtec products are built to facilitate

rapid data access through the use of solid state drives (SSDs).

“After having established scalable transactional systems to sup-

port PMC’s growth, the next frontier was to establish a world-

class data-analytics infrastructure to enable timely access to ac-

tionable, accurate, and predictive BI for our knowledge workers

and business leaders,” says Adhir Mattu, PMC Vice President and

CIO. “Everyone can build data warehouses, but PMC conquered

the last mile by delivering data analytics to the users, who now

have capabilities to quickly slice and dice, drill down, and per-

form root-cause analysis. The fact that we are in the business of

providing fast data access speeds solidified the decision to speed

up the information reporting performance any way we could.”

A Step in the Right DirectionAfter several meetings with SAP about performance optimization

and its BI roadmap, PMC decided on an SAP BW 7.3 upgrade to im-

plement SAP BW powered by SAP HANA. Because the company

wanted to optimize its entire reporting platform, it also upgraded

to SAP Business Planning and Consolidation 10.0 in parallel with

the SAP BW upgrade, with the latest version of SAP Business

Planning and Consolidation also supported by SAP HANA.

“We had a lot of discussions and conducted a lot of research,

and our decision came down to SAP HANA not only addressing

performance challenges in our BW environment, but also help-

ing us achieve one of the main goals of our digital transformation

project, which was to become as close as possible to a real-time

enterprise,” says Mattu. “Gone are the days when simply having

good transactional systems made everybody happy.”

PMC also decided to implement SAP BW powered by SAP

HANA with an eye toward the future, knowing that SAP’s road-

map includes resting its entire solution portfolio on the in-mem-

ory platform. Having the ability to analyze live SAP ERP data

brought PMC a step closer to fulfilling the company’s ultimate

vision. Venkat Nr, PMC’s Senior Manager of Business Applica-

tions, says, “With SAP maneuvering to convert all of its core sys-

tems to SAP HANA, it made a lot of sense for us — as a cutting-

edge technology company that has already invested a lot in SAP

software — to remain ahead of the curve, and SAP BW powered

by SAP HANA positions us well for the future.”

Following a Non-Disruptive PathTo prepare for its SAP BW upgrade and SAP HANA migration,

PMC first condensed its financial data in SAP Business Planning

PMC-Sierra, Inc. Headquarters: Sunnyvale, California Industry: Semiconductor, high techRevenue: $508 million (2013)Employees: 1,450 approximatelyCompany details:•Foundedin1984asSierra

Superconductor•Wentpublicin1991

(NASDAQ: PMCS)•BusinesssegmentsincludeStorage,

Optical, and Mobile•Fablesssemiconductormodelpioneer•www.pmcs.comSAP solutions:•SAPBusinessPlanningand

Consolidation•SAPBusinessObjectsBIsuite•SAPBW•SAPERP•SAPSCM•SAPCRM•SAPHANA

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and Consolidation as an initial step to more manageable

reporting. Integration between SAP Business Planning

and Consolidation and SAP BusinessObjects BI tools en-

sured a less fragmented reporting environment by allow-

ing the company’s users to continue using familiar SAP

BusinessObjects BI tools for dashboards and reports.

Rather than stand up a new SAP BW environment, the

company replicated its existing SAP BW instance before

the upgrade and migration to its new SAP HANA appli-

ance, enabling it to complete the rollout with little to no

disruption of its existing infrastructure.

The timing of PMC’s digital transformation project —

started in 2012, in conjunction with the initial release of

SAP BW powered by SAP HANA — made the company

somewhat of an early adopter. SAP eased the transition by

helping the business navigate through a lot of early SAP

HANA upgrades. The company also had assistance from

implementation partner Bristlecone, with which it had

contracted for its initial SAP ERP implementation.

“We hit the sweet spot and trifecta of support,” Mattu

says. “As one of the first companies in the semiconductor

industry to explore an SAP HANA use case, we had a lot of

support from SAP and from Bristlecone.”

A Real-Time WindowPMC went live with SAP BW powered by SAP HANA in

August 2014. Results included a runtime reduction of ap-

proximately 120% for reports coming out of SAP Business

Planning and Consolidation, and an average runtime re-

duction of 70% for the top 10 reports from its SAP BW

system. And, because an in-memory database requires

no data extraction into a traditional relational database

management system, PMC estimates a roughly 400% im-

provement in the extract, load, and transfer (ETL) process.

Overnight batch processing is now completed in just min-

utes, and the business expects to capitalize on this speed

with twice daily data refreshes versus previous weekly or

monthly cycles.

According to Mattu, this significant time savings has

transformational capabilities for the company. “A compa-

ny in our industry that can process this information more

intelligently has tremendous advantages,” he says. “In the

old days, disparate reporting consisted of passing around

many spreadsheets, and it wasn’t easy to determine what

was happening in specific regions, countries, product lines,

channels, etc. There were phone calls to make, IT to con-

tact; the process had a tremendous opportunity for effi-

ciency enhancements. Having the ability to see this data

earlier, and make more intelligent decisions because it’s

presented in the context of an enterprise BI platform, was

one goal heading into this digital transformation. With

SAP HANA, we are moving in the direction of a real-time

enterprise.”

Mattu views this technology as a potential “building

block” for eventually running all of the company’s solu-

tions on the SAP HANA platform to embed analytics di-

rectly into transactional systems. “I see that as the next

step once we fully exploit and optimize the SAP BW pow-

ered by SAP HANA piece of it,” he says. “For PMC-Sierra,

this was a big step in the right direction.”

“After having established scalable transactional systems to support PMC’s growth, the next frontier was to establish a world-class data-analytics infrastructure to enable timely access to actionable, accurate, and predictive BIforourknowledgeworkersandbusiness leaders.”

— Adhir Mattu,VicePresidentandCIO,PMC-Sierra

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