CUSTOMER SUCCESS STORY

“Choosing Oracle Exadata was a long-term investment decision. Performance has increased 10 to 20 times depending on the report, which has improved user productivity and customer satisfaction. With its consolidation options Exadata also allows us to accelerate both SAP and non-SAP use, which means cost savings.” – DIETMAR SCHL AR, Manager, Raiffeisen Informatik Center Steiermark, Graz

10x to 20x performance boost / Beneficial new IT infrastructure architecture for SAP and non-SAP use / Consolidation platform supports cost reductions

RAIFFEISEN INFORMATIK CENTER STEIERMARK OPTIMIZES SAP BW USE WITH ORACLE EXADATA

Raiffeisen Informatik Center Steiermark (branded for the IT market as Raiffeisen Rechen-zentrum) has been the IT service provider to the Raiffeisen Banking Group in Styria/Austria, which includes Landeshypothekenbank Steiermark, for over 35 years. It supplies a complete range of IT services to Raiffeisen banks to facilitate all layers of day-to-day banking. The company also serves a growing number of industrial customers and other midsize and large enterprises with a high-quality IT service offering. In mid-2013 it opened what is currently the most high-tech data center in Austria.

Goal: performance enhancement

The use of SAP Netweaver Business Warehouse (BW) was increasing all the time at the Raiffeisen Banking Group. SAP BW applications are one of the most business-critical fields of IT use. To be able to quickly produce evaluations and reports for various planning purposes, the data needs to be available at the touch of a button, so to speak. The SAP-based BW appli-cations developed by the service provider are intensively used by around 40 power users. This might be to have sales figures to hand to support management decisions, for example, perhaps split by product group and region.

As SAP BW usage increased, however, and given the growing importance of BW applications, it became obvious that there was a need for optimization in SAP OLAP use. The aim was to improve system performance, which no longer satisfied requirements or the agreed service levels.

“Various response times were increasing steadily, and some reports were ending in timeouts. We had to do something. It wouldn‘t have made commercial or technical sense to expand our Power7 AIX database server by adding more memory. The technical architecture had reached its limits,” says Heiko Held, data center infrastructure manager at Raiffeisen Informatik Center Steiermark (RICS).

RAIFFEISEN RECHENZENTRUM GMBH

(RRZ)

http://www.rrz.co.at

RAIFFEISEN INFORMATIK CENTER

STEIERMARK GMBH (RICS)

ORACLE CUSTOMER

Raiffeisen Informatik Center

Steiermark (RICS)

REVENUE

approx. €60 million p.a.

LOCATION

Graz, Austria

INDUSTRY

IT service provider

EMPLOYEES

140

ORACLE PRODUCTS AND SERVICES

• Oracle Exadata Database Machine (X3-2)

• Oracle ACS Services

CUSTOMER SUCCESS STORY

So in the fall of 2012, RICS started looking around the market for a suitable solution. The main aim was to achieve a significant improvement in BW performance, but other important criteria also came into play. Just before Christmas, after extensive analysis and evaluation, the team opted for Oracle Exadata. Oracle was the logical first choice, and for good reason.

Good reasons to choose Exadata

As RICS manager Dietmar Schlar explains, “The bottom line was that our test and analyses showed Oracle Exadata to be a better solution for us than SAP HANA – from a technology, business and conceptual viewpoint. The final factor that swung the decision in favor of Exadata was a visit to an Oracle Exadata productive customer in Germany, whose experience with the product satisfied our expectations and confirmed for us that it was the right choice to make.”

At the evaluation stage RICS had thoroughly investigated the performance enhancements that Oracle Exadata could achieve. But other factors spoke in its favor too: The multiple usage possibilities on the basis of Engineered Systems, not only for SAP but also all other banking applications including profitable database consolidation options; the maturity of the solution; and the price-performance ratio, including the time and costs involved in implementation and conversion.

The Oracle Exadata Database Machine (X3-2, 1/8 rack) went into operation at Raiffeisen Informatik Center Steiermark in July 2013. Implementation took just eight weeks (with the conversion being completed in a weekend) and in the words of Heiko Held: “This was com-pletely painless. Essentially, after installation and setup it was a standard database export and import followed by testing, except for the fact that we had to increase the network connections between the AIX application server and the Exadata Database Machine to a volume of 10 gigabits per second, simply because Exadata processes and supplies data so fast.”

For the implementation RICS took advantage of ACS support services from Oracle and services from SAP. In addition to SAP NetWeaver BW, ERP ECC (especially FI/CO) is used. The total database volume is currently around 500 GB. Prior to the introduction of Exadata the company had used Oracle Database 11g, but without Advanced Compression and RAC. The SAP application servers will continue to be operated on AIX with IBM Power7.

New architecture – many benefits

The team at Raiffeisen Informatik Center Steiermark is more than satisfied with the results achieved with Oracle Exadata: “It‘s not every day you get e-mails from users thanking you for improvements. But that‘s exactly what happened as a result of the optimized BW response times and increased productivity. This kind of feedback is very gratifying, but it also shows that Oracle Exadata was the right choice. BW performance is now 10 times or 20 times better, depending on the report. This is a very important benefit, but only one of many,” says Dietmar Schlar.

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A few images from the new data center:

Outside view of a rack system

Inside view of a rack system (aisle partition)

Firefighting control panel

Emergency power system (with multiple redundancy)

CUSTOMER SUCCESS STORY

Thanks to Engineered Oracle Systems and a new IT infrastructure architecture based on Oracle Exadata, the IT server provider can now effectively and cost-effi ciently consolidate or simplify the existing database environment (some 40 Oracle databases being used for SAP and non-SAP). It can therefore virtually replace the existing traditional database server landscape with Exadata as a combined hardware and software system – with the associated cost savings. The Exadata system can of course be expanded at any time if required.

The ERP ECC databases will also soon be converted to Exadata, which will mean additional effi ciency enhancements. As Held explains, “This cuts transaction times and speeds up FI/CO usage. All in all the outlay involved in database or SAP operation is reduced signifi cantly.”The company intends to promote the use of Oracle Exadata. One of the biggest projects currently underway at the Raiffeisen Banking Group, the implementation of a comprehensive bank control system, is being implemented with the help of Oracle Exadata as the DBMS system.

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Hardware and Software, Engineered to Work Together

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Dietmar SchlarManager, Raiffeisen InformatikCenter Steiermark, Graz

Heiko Helddata center infrastructure manager at Raiffeisen Informatik Center Steiermark (RICS)