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E-Business is the talk of the day. While manyproclaim to offer such solutions, few understandthe complexities involved and the requirementsthat it entails. E-business goes beyond offering e-commerceweb based salessolutions. Imple-mentation of a successful e-business strategyrequires a business model transformation basedon integrated front-end (CRM) and back-end(ERP) applications. By offering the OracleApplications InterConnect 3i, and the OracleCRM Pack for Applications InterConnect 3i,Oracle is uniquely positioned to support you indeveloping and implementing such a successfule-business strategy. While the former productoffers you the capability to build a robust e-busi-ness infrastructure, the latter contains the pre-packaged integration mappings for Oracle CRM

applications for an out-of-the-box integrationwith your SAP R/3 enterprise applications.

The Oracle Applications InterConnect 3i is acomprehensive and flexible set of applicationsthat enable you to seamlessly integrate your SAPR/3 applications with the Oracle CRM suite.The easy-to-use wizard-based visual tooliStudioguides you through the integration process andprovides the flexibility needed to make the chan-ges necessary when you have tailored your SAPapplications to your business needs. The iStudiotool facilitates all aspects of the modeling andintegration process from specifying the transfor-mation to setting-up information flows. The net

result is a seamless and reliable integration thatassures maximum uptime while significantlyreducing the integration costs and complexitiescompared to a project based consulting engage-ment.

As a complimentary product, Oracle also offersthe Oracle CRM Pack for ApplicationsInterConnect 3i to help you expand markets andretain profitable customers. By deploying OracleCRM directly into your enterprise, you realizethe full benefits of a customer-centric approachto doing business. The Oracle CRM suite offersthe industrys most comprehensive set of appli-cations, sales, marketing, service, business intel-ligence, designed to enable you to build a suc-

cessful e-business practice. This end-to-end andclosed loop process ensures a near real-timecustomer response and enables you to successful-ly gather customer intelligence through multi-ple channels of communication with the custo-mer face-to-face, call center, and the web andshare that information with the entire organiza-tion to gain a true 360 degrees view of strategicselling. By combing hi-touch with hi-tech, youwill be able to better service your customers, pre-dict their behaviors and needs, reduce operatio-nal costs, and improve your revenue and profit,reducing the bottom-line while improving thetop-line growth.

Oracle for SAP is SAFE-RELIABLE - SCALABLE-that is the consistent quote from SAP customers.Every successful relationship is based on the beliefthat your partners will support you through thickand thin and always give you their best. The Oracleand SAP technology partnership operates on thisprinciple, and together we offer a safe and reliableintegrated information solution the same combi-nation used by thousands of successful businessesaround the world. SAP and Oracle have been tech-nology partners for over 11 years, and are optimi-zed to run together. In 1988, R/3 development wasstarted on Oracle Release 6. In 1992, R/3 was firstreleased to the market on Oracle. SAP R/3 release4.0 and 4.5, as well as SAPs Business InformationWarehouse and mySAP.com, were developed onOracle8. And, SAP was a beta site for our latestdatabase version, Oracle8i. World leadding bench-mark results are confirming this.

The Oracle Development Center, based inWalldorf, Germany, is devoted to workingwith SAP to ensure that our products integrateseamlessly with R/3.

The Oracle Center of Excellence offers Oracleon SAP consulting and provides second levelsupport to SAP/Oracle joint customers.

The Oracle Competence Center is responsiblefor world wide business development, presalesactivities, training of SAP system Integrator/-implementation partners and for real life bench-marking.

This newsletter highlights the Oracle products andservices that have been developed to ensure thesuccess of our joint customers. We have also fea-tured just a few of our joint customers from AsiaPacific. Why do three out of four of SAPs R/3customers choose Oracle as their underlying data-base? Because the SAP/Oracle partnership deliversenhanced performance, guaranteed quality, andimproved bottom-line results time and timeagain. Please join the Oracle booth at SapphireAsia Pacific 99 in Singapore; booth#206. Imlooking forward to meeting you.

EditorialGerhard KupplerGlobal Alliance DirectoOracle Corporation

Oracle CRM

Oracle CRM Enabling E-Business throughIntegration of Oracle CRM and SAP R/3Applications

Editorial

2

2

Oracle8i 64-bit Option

Oracle8i - The Database for SAP BusinessInformation Warehouse

2Oracle Management Pack for SAP R/3

3Oracle Fail Safe, High Availability Solution for NT

3Oracle8 for SAP Ready-to-Run R/3

3

Oracle Consulting Services for R/3 Customers

3Oracle Warehouse Integrator for SAP R/3

4Oracle and HP at Goodyear, Malaysia

5Oracle and HP at Pall Mall, Malaysia

6Oracle and Siemens at UAES, China

7Imperial Tobacco Ltd., Oracle on Linux

N o . 4 O R A C L E - S A P NEWS N O V E M B E R 1 9 9 916,640SD-UseronUNI

worldrecord-moreonpag

Crossing4,900SD-UseNT-seepage8

8NT Benchmark with Data GeneralUNIX Benchmark with IBM


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SAP R/3 is now available with Oracle8i 64-bit data-

base technology. The 64-bit technology enablescomputer systems to be faster and be more man-ageable. Available on a number of hardwaresystems, this technology also enables customersto increase their database size to multiple tera-bytes. Because of added memory capacity, thenumber of concurrent users allowed to runagainst the database increases exponentially aswell.

The benefits of 64-bit system and database tech-nology are now automatically available to theR/3 application. As a result, the R/3 application onOracle8 64-bit is faster and even more scalablethan on a 32-bit database.

Providing the 64-bit database technology for SAP

R/3 is another outstanding milestone in the

11 year technology relationship between SAP

and Oracle,

said Gary Bloom, executive Vice President ofSystems Products at Oracle. Again, Oracle istaking the lead in making the latest databasetechnology available to an important set ofcustomers.

The 64-bit technology allows more business datato be stored in main memory by leveraging the64-bit client libraries of Oracle8. This is of parti-cular interest within the SAP Supply ChainOptimization Planning and Execution (SAPSCOPE) initiative, where new reporting, fore-casting, planning and optimization functionalityentails processing of very large data volumes in

main memory. With SAP R/3 on 64-bit Oracle8,SAP is providing customers the most innovativetechnology to allow real-time, high-volume pro-cessing of business data in main memory, statedKarl-Heinz Hess, Member of the ExtendedBoard of SAP AG. SAP R/3 with 64-bit Oracle8is currently available with R/3 Release 3.1 and4.0 on Compaq Tru64 UNIX, HP UX 11, IBMAIX 4.3 and Siemens Reliant UNIX.

The data warehouse is often the most strategicsystem of a company.

Efficient use of a data warehouse requires a data-

base system that is capable of managing andrapidly analyzing large quantities of data. Oracleis the undisputed technology and market leaderin the field of data warehousing, with 60% of theworlds data warehouse applications running onOracle databases. Simplified management is thekey to maintaining premium system performance,said Gerhard Kuppler, Global Alliances Directorfor SAP. The SAP Business Information Ware-house (SAP BW) is an independent compo-nent of the SAP Business Framework architec-ture. It is designed as an open solution and is de-livering Business Application ProgrammingInterfaces (BAPIs) for non-SAP data integrationand third party analysis tools. Oracle8i is the

development database for the SAP BW

.

This ensures use of the most advanced Oracle tech-nologies for SAP BW and guarantees optimumperformance. Some of the advanced features ofOracle8 that are available with SAP BW include:

Partitioning Bitmapped Indices Star Query Optimization Hash Join Optimization Cost Based SQL Optimizer- Parallel Query Technology- Parallel Access- Parallel Index Scan- Parallel Sorting- Parallel Table Structure with and without Log

- Parallel Index Rebuild- Index Organized Tables- Read Only Table Spaces- Dedicated Temporary Table Spaces- Variable Database Block Sizes up to 64KB- Materialized Views

Available Fall 1999, Oracle Manag

ment Pack for SAP R/3 builds on OracEnterprise Managers host and databamanagement infrastructure, makinSAP environments much easier to mnage. Administrators will now be abto monitor different R/3 platforms, Rdatabases and R/3 applications froone single console. All this results ilower administrative costs and increaseadministrator productivity.

Oracle Management Pack for SAP R/3 allows focomprehensive monitoring and collection of dafrom multiple systems, extending its reach provide graphical monitoring of SAP R/3 applcation servers. It includes features for optimum

monitoring and deployment of R/3 across appliction servers, including collection and managemenof data relating to system performance animmediate notification of potential problemthrough an advanced event system.

75 per cent of SAP customers are running theapplications on an Oracle database. Many those customers have entered or will shortly entthe 24-hour economy, and need to be sure ththeir systems run as near to 100% as it is possibwith current technology. As the leading providof non-proprietary mission-critical data managment solutions, Oracle is committed to helR/3 customers meet the challenge of 99.95

availability, and will continue to expand its damanagement offerings to allow these custometo take advantage of the latest advances in misson-critical computing said Gerhard KuppleGlobal Alliances Director for SAP.

SAPs continuing strategy of closer R/3 integratiowith Oracle will eventually enable R/3 users benefit from Oracles ground-breaking Interncomputing technologies, which will enable enteprises to become 24-hour operations. WitOracle as strategic technology provider, Rcustomers can be sure that their systems wremain highly available, scalable and manageabno matter which computing environment theopt for.

2

Option64-bit OptionOracle8i

BusinessThe Databasefor SAP BusinessInformation WarehouseTM

Oracle8i

Packfor SAP R/3Oracle Management Pac


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High availability is one of the key demands ofSAP R/3 customers regardless of the hardwareand operating system used. As the central nodeof the R/3 systems three-tier architecture, thedatabase server plays an important role in highavailability and fail-safe operations. Oracle offersan excellent high availability solution, calledOracle Fail Safe to companies which run theirR/3 applications on NT.

The foundation for setting up a failsafe databaseserver system on NT is to configure two NT ser-vers as two nodes of a cluster. Each of the twonodes possesses its own, dual-ported disk sub-system, to which each node has exclusive accessduring normal operations. An Oracle Fail Safe

R/3 configuration defines one of the two nodes asthe production system, to which all the R/3application servers are connected. The secondnode of the cluster serves as the fail-safe node,but can also perform other tasks in the meantime.

In case of failure of the production database server,Oracle Fail Safe immediately switches all neces-sary resources from the production node to thesecondary cluster node, and restarts the Oracleinstance there.The R/3 application servers auto-matically establish a new database connection tothe Oracle instantly on the failsafe node, withoutrequiring intervention by the end user or databaseadministrator.

We are pleased with the high availability,robustness and ease of use of the Oracle Fail Safe database solution. In SAP stress testswith up to 300 users, the Oracle8 Fail Safedatabase was up in a minute after both plan-ned and unplanned failovers,

said Karl-Heinz Hess, Member of the Extendedboard of SAP AG. SAP customers immediatelybenefit from this highly-available, cost-effectivesolution. Oracle Fail Safe is included in everyOracle database license for R/3 on NT fromOracle7 Release 7.3.3 onwards, and is supportedfrom R/3 Release 3.1G and later , including R/3Release 4.0 and 4.5 with Oracle8.

SAP has developed a solution package, Ready-to-Run R/3, that is especially adapted to the requi-rements of small and mid-sized businesses. Withthe objective of considerably reducing the intro-duction and implementation phase and minimi-zing the administration needs of R/3 solutions,SAP and its partners have put together a pre-in-stalled, pre-configured packaged solution. Thissolution makes it easier, quicker and more eco-nomical for small and midsized businesses tointroduce the R/3 solution. Oracle is one of thedatabases currently available with the SAPReady-to-Run R/3 solution. The Oracle and SAPcomponents have been optimized to work to-gether and with special configuration files anddatabase procedures operation of the Oracle data-

base is largely automated. Customers can nowbenefit from Oracles industry-leading databasewith solutions from Compaq, Hewlett-Packard,IBM, Siemens-Nixdorf and NCR.

Oracle offers extensive R/3 database services forSAP customers. The expertise available has deve-

loped through day-to-day work with R/3 solutionsat SAP, and it ensures that you receive the bestpossible support for running your R/3 solutionsmoothly. Through the Oracle Center of Excel-lence for SAP, Oracle Consulting offers a com-prehensive set of services including core techno-logy consulting, workshops, also migration andintegration services.

Core Technology Consulting offers expertise inthe areas of performance optimization, OracleParallel Server, hot standby databases, table setupand reorganization especially for management ofvery large databases, and backup/restore/recoveryfor mission critical systems. Workshop themesinclude R/3 specific standard and customized

training for database administrators .

Migration Services are available for companieswhich want to migrate their SAP R/3 installationfrom a non-Oracle database to Oracle.

Integration Services provide tools and servicesfor accessing R/3 data. Customers can create data-base links to access R/3 tables from other appli-cations. The Oracle Center of Excellence for SAPhas also created an interface to connect directly tothe R/3 applications, enabling customers to con-stantly write to and read from the database. Thisinterface is called the Oracle Transactional Bridgefor SAP.

The Oracle Warehouse Integrator (OWI) forSAP R/3 provides an easy-to-use interface to theSAP data repository, integrating the R/3 systemas a data source to an Oracle data warehouse.

Customers can utilize the full range of Oraclewarehousing technology, while taking advantageof SAP-certified interfaces to access R/3 metadataand generate SAP-certified BAPI calls and SQLcode to extract data from SAP R/3.

The OWI for SAP R/3 enables customers to: View the SAP data-dictionary providing acc-

ess to English definitions of table and columnnames from the original German-languageabbreviations

Browse SAP's Business Objects Repository(BOR) Extract, using the Remote Function Call facility Support SAP's BAPIs

Using metadata-driven design and generation,the OWI for SAP R/3 reduces the risk, cost andtime required to develop and maintain extractsfrom SAP for an Oracle data warehouse.

Leveraging the Performance and Scalability ofOracle8i

A data warehouse capable of providing qualityanalysis for the kind of Business Intelligence and

Decision Support necessary to enhance your com-petitive position relies on both scalability andperformance. Oracle8i offers both features, conti-nuing the tradition of ongoing advancement inanticipation of marketplace demands, and theever-increasing requirements of data warehousing.

Now you can leverage Oracle8is new functiona-lity in several major areas directly related to thedemands of data warehousing, among them: Summary Management Performance Improvements Data Management Data-Movement Infrastructure 3

ReadyReady-to-Run R/3Oracle8 for SAP

for NT Oracle Fail Safefor SAP R/3

High Availability Solution

Servicesfor SAP R/3 CustomersOracle Consulting Services

IntegratorIntegrator for SAP R/3Oracle Warehouse


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Built on the foundation of Oracle8i, the Oraclefamily of warehouse products includes OracleWarehouse Builder (OWB), an integrated systemfor design, implementation and ongoing mana-gement of enterprise data-warehouse and data-mart solutions; and Oracle Discoverer and OracleExpress server and tools for reporting, querying,and analyzing metadata.

Management tasks, including generating and

building the warehouse, scheduling jobs, crea-ting extracts, viewing job status, and restartingjobs, are all managed via the Oracle EnterpriseManager (OEM).

Meeting your business goals with Hewlett-Packard

Goodyear continues to lead in the market

with cutting edge solutions from HP and

SAP on Oracle

The scalability and high availability of Hewlett-Packards NetServers running Windows NT, aswell as the companys extensive presence in Asia,have become critical success factors for Goodyear

Asias rollout of its SAP R/3 enterprise resourceplanning (ERP) system throughout the region.

Following a recently announced joint venture withSumitomo Rubber Industries of Japan, Goodyearis set to become the largest tyre manufacturer inthe world. Goodyear, which has been operatingin Malaysia for the past 25 years, was the centreof this regional deployment, and the first to golive last December. The rest of its operations inAsia, Japan and India will follow suit through-out this and next year, ending with Goodyearsoperations in Greater China by 2001.

We worked for 15 months to develop an ITstrategy that could be consistently implemented

across all our operations in the region, said JohnWronkovich, Goodyears Information SystemsManager (Asia). We put together a cross-func-tional team and surveyed the business require-ments in the region. We also assessed the exi-sting IT infrastructure and benchmarked theavailable hardware and software solutions.Goodyears IT operations throughout Asia hadevolved independently over the years, with eachsite implementing its own system.The only common system was a global accoun-ting suite running on an IBM AS/400 system.

As we set our strategy for the future, it becamepainfully obvious that we cannot implement a

regional IT system with different legacysystems, said Mr Wronkovich. The commonaccounting system was transaction-based, andcould not provide critical management informa-tion needed for decision making.Mr Wronkovich benchmarked leading ERP andhardware vendors before deciding on a combina-tion of the SAP R/3 system running underWindows NT on HP NetServers.

We had zero Unix experience in the company,and our research shows that NT is a viable ope-

rating platform. Its a big move from our AS/400and RPG environment, but the transition waseasier as NT was already making inroads throughour client PCs and the local area network.Goodyears strategy was to implement SAP R/3in Malaysia, with the supply chain, order fulfill-ment, human resource management, productionmanagement and Financial modules. These wouldautomate more than 1600 internal business pro-cesses, and integrate with a custom productionscheduling system.

"We had zero Unix experience in

the company, and our research

shows that NT is a viable opera-

ting platform. Its a big move

from our AS/400 and RPG envi-ronment, but the transition was

easier as NT was already making

inroads through our client PCs

and the local area network."

- Mr John WronkovichInformation Systems Manager Goodyear, Asia

Scalability wins the day.

The object was to develop a common templatethat could be deployed across all other sites inAsia. However, Mr Wronkovich was also mind-ful of the fact that Goodyears computing requi-rements would differ from site to site.

After extensive evaluations, Goodyear selecteHP as its hardware vendor. We were impresseby HPs strong regional presence and local support capabilities, he said. Our evaluations alsshowed that HP and SAP was a proven combnation.

The scalability of HP NetServers was also a crtical success factor in the regional deploymenFor example, Goodyear Malaysia uses two H

NetServer LX Pro. The multi-CPU systems abased on Pentium Pro processors. Similar systemwere installed in Japan. In India, Goodyear brught in the countrys first HP NetServer LX8000 system with the latest Pentium III Xeoprocessor.

The scalability of the NetServers allowed us tuse the latest processors available, and still leavroom to grow to future processors as our needdictate, said Mr Wronkovich. Our experiencrunning the HP NetServer LX Pro for 150 useshows that the performance has been good. ThXeon processor will give us enough headroom tgrow for the next three years, but were also excted about the forthcoming Merced processor.

Goodyear Malaysia operates on a 24 X 7 basiwith its 700 employees working on three shiftThat leaves little room for computer downtimThe HP NetServers have features for high avalability, but we have also signed up for HPs Cato Repair (CTR) service package which will ensuminimum down-time, said Mr WronkovicThe CTR package guarantees a six-hour turnround on any hardware problems. With thregional deployment, Goodyear Asia is well oits way to a higher level of performance. Wehave more information for decision support, angreater consistency in our business processes, hsaid. Weve done our benchmarks and the nex

6 to 12 months will provide measurable proof the benefits of this new system.The infrastructure weve put in place will enable us to extend our business into the Interneand into business-to-business e-commerce, hadded. This may increase our computinoverhead as Internet transactions increase, buwere confident that we can scale easily with ouHP NetServers.

Goodyears

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SAP on Oracle: SAFE RELIABLE SCALABLE

HPs scalable NetServers win the day atGoodyears Asiawide project


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Meeting your business goals with HewlettPackard and Oracle

Industry

Manufacturing

Challenges

Rapid business growth of over the past 10years pushing IT systems to the l imit;

Legacy systems on IBM AS/400 ageing andhighly customised making upgrades to latversions extremely difficult;

Sales offices linked in slow network, makingreal-time market information inaccessible

Solution

Rebuild the entire IT infrastructure to createan integrated enterprise system based on SAPR/3;

Speed up time to market by implementingSAP R/3 using SAPs implementation toolAccelerated SAP (ASAP);

Ensure best-in-class solutions through separatetenders for enterprise servers, networks andsystem integration;

A fully integrated IT infrastructure consistingof High Availability HP 9000 servers, FrameRelay links for sales offices and a comprehen-sive range of OpenView network and desktopmanagement tools from HP;

Manage risks by building in Risk MitigationPlan within the contracts;

Develop Service Level Agreements (SLAs) withthe business to manage internal customer ex-pectations and embody the SLAs into Vendorcontracts.

Benefits

Faster closing of accounts from seven to 1.5days

Better information management and decisionmaking as a result of accessing real-timeinformation

Accomplish more with same number of people

The tobacco industry operates on a highly inela-stic demand curve. Rothmans of Pall Mall (Ma-laysia) Berhad continues to record rapid growthyear on year. Established in 1961, this Malaysianlisted company commands a whopping 59 pluspercent market share in the country. Managingrapid growth presents fresh challenges for a

long-established company like Rothmans, whoseinformation systems are strained to meet thebusiness needs for timely, accurate and rapidflow of information.

For many years, Rothmans ran a mix of legacypackages such as Computer Associates PRMSpackage for manufacturing and product costing,and a number of custom applications such assales statistics and merchandising all on a pro-prietary IBM AS/400 system.The company is growing at such a rate that itwas difficult to translate the changing businessneeds and rapid growth into our highly customi-sed systems, said Angelo Grasso, InformationServices manager at Rothmans. We didnt evenhave e-mail links between our sales and headoffices! Substantial new investments wererequired, not just in its manufacturing and dis-tribution operations, but also in the vital IT infra-structure. This included the enterprise applicati-ons servers as well as the nation-wide and inter-national networks that linked its off ices together.The need to solve the Millennium Bug problemalso made a review of the IT infrastructure needstimely.

Project ASASWe realised that we needed to go back to ourbasic needs and build upon them, explained MrGrasso. For that, Rothmans came up withProject ASAS (or Foundation, in Bahasa Malaysia).However, the enormity of this project made itvital to have careful planning, evaluation andexecution. Rothmans commissioned PriceWater-houseCoopers to undertake a Business ProcessReview and to outline an IT masterplan. Thereview confirmed our internal view that mana-ging such rapid growth would require timelyand accurate information.It also demanded an integration of all the busin-ess processes and systems to get a full and com-

plete picture, and the ability for top manage-ment to gain access to this information as andwhen they needed it. The IT infrastructure, en-compassing the applications, computers and net-works, had to integrate information and operateacross the enterprise. At the application layer inparticular, the enterprise system had to havebuilt-in best practices. In a way, the choice ofenterprise application had already been made.Rothmans decided to standardise on SAP R/3enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution,which had been installed in more than 20 otherRothmans sites around the world. To ensuresmooth and rapid implementation, the companyadopted a blend of the Accelerated SAP R/3

ASAP R3 implementation tool and Summit-DIT Project Management methodology.

The IT Infrastructure

With that choice made, Rothmans was able tofocus on other parts of the IT infrastructure.

It was important for us to define the standardsfrom the start, and to have a well-defined met-hodology in evaluating and selecting our vendor

partners, said Mr Alfred Sava, Technical ServicesManager, at Rothmans. Because Rothmans opera-tes around the clock, the mission-critical systemshad to run on a Unix platform in a High Availa-bility environment. Less strategic systems couldrun on lower-cost Windows NT servers. To ensu-re seamless connectivity, the networks are basedon the TCP/IP protocol. To attract the best ofclass vendors in each layer of this infrastructure,Rothmans decided to issue three separate ten-ders. Four vendors were evaluated but only onewas chosen Hewlett Packard. The enterpriseservers included three HP 9000 K-class and twoD-class servers in a High Availability configura-tion. HP also installed disaster recovery facilities,which switched processes to a backup system over

a high-speed ISDN line. It also committed to a six-hour turnaround for system failures. Rothmansalso installed 10 LAN Servers running WindowsNT and 150 new desktop systems to augmentthe existing PCs. The LAN servers support the 10sales offices throughout the country. These officesare linked to the head office by high-speed FrameRelay links. We operate in a 24 X 7 environment,and no downtime is tolerated, said Mr Sava.

Indeed, HPs ability to commit and deliver ahigh system uptime was a critical success factor,as shown by subsequent events. The evaluationof the network vendors was equally rigorous.Our network partner had to have the rightexpertise, both in local and wide area networks as

well as in network management, said Mr Sava.The national Wide Area Network based on FrameRelay was won by a consortium of TelekomMalaysia Berhads subsidiary COINS (CorpOrateInformation Network Service) and HP. HP alsowon the third tender the system integration tocreate Rothmans new IT infrastructure. It alsoprovided a comprehensive range of network anddesktop management tools based on HP Open-View. The evaluation of the separate tenders wasas rigorous as the specifications. Mr Grasso andhis project managers visited reference sites andeven evaluated the resumes of the post-sales staffwho would service them. We were not just eva-luating the products but also the expertise of the 5

Pall Mall

HP Builds New-Age IT Infrastructureto Spur Growth of Rothmans of Pall MallMalaysia) Berhad

"HP recognised our anxiety to get the project

done on schedule, and corrected the problem

on its own accord. HP showed genuine good-

will and respect, and shared our commitment

to make our project a success."

- Mr Angelo Grasso,Information Services Manager, Rothmans of Pall Mall (Malaysia) Berhad


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people behind them, he said. This is a betterway of ensuring you get high-quality support.There was a separate team evaluating each ten-der, explained Mr Grasso. That HP won themall speaks volumes of their capabilities.

Managing the RisksA project of this scale which encompasses localand nation-wide implementations is not with-out its inherent risks. To manage these risks, weinsisted on a Risk Mitigation Plan (RMP) whichanticipates problems and minimises them, saidMr Grasso. our board of Directors signed off theService Level Agreements (SLAs) which togetherwith the RMP forms an important part of thevendor contracts. Indeed, Rothmans foresightin establishing SLAs, which link to the RMP,

prevented any major problems. Two weeks beforethe systems cutover, a major fault occurred inone of the systems. Foreseeing the impact, HPwas able to nip the problem in the bud before iteventuated and averted any potential disasters.In spite of this, HP recognised our anxiety to getthe project done on schedule, and corrected theproblem on its own accord, Mr Grasso recalled.HP showed genuine goodwill and respect, andshared our commitment to make our project asuccess. To me, this was partnership at its best.

Making a Big Difference

Project ASAS will make its impact felt at thevery core of Rothmans business, especially in itsability to access and manage information. The

most visible impact will be in our ability to shor-ten the closing of our monthly accounts fromseven days to only one and a half days, said MrGrasso. This means faster reporting and conso-lidation across all levels of the organisation. Thenew IT infrastructure will also enable Rothmansto exchange information more effectively withall its offices throughout the country. This willenable managers at the head office to see the per-formance of each business unit or territory inreal-time. With greater integration of our busi-ness processes and timely information, we canmake more accurate and in-depth analyses of oursales performance based on up-to-the-minuteinformation, said Mr Grasso.

Most importantly, the new IT infrastructure willenable Rothmans to accomplish more withoutany staff redundancies. We can get more workdone with the same number of people, headded. This is vitally important in the currenteconomic conditions. Mr Grasso credits the speedand capabilities of the new infrastructure to thepartnership philosophy of the company that isalso shared by HP. Were committed to themutual success and growth of our respective

companies, he said.

HP has amply demonstrated that throughoutthis project, and this has more than vindicatedour choice and confidence in them. Commit-ment and personal involvement from bothRothmans and HPs top management was a cri-tical success factor for the project.

When United Automotive Electronic Systemswas founded in 1996, the managers of the youngenterprise proved both foresight and determina-tion to meet and exceed market requirements. AsGeneral Manager You Yichen says, Quality,Service and Price were identified as the threecritical factors to make the Sino-German JointVenture the market leader in its field. UAES-renowned parents are Zhong-Lian AutomotiveElectronics Co, Ltd., member of the SAIC group,

and Robert Bosch GmbH.

We produce world-class Engine ManagementSystems which not only improve the enginesperformance but also reduce fuel consumptionand pollution, adds Thomas Schoenenberg,First Deputy General Manager. With Chineseregulations for environmental protection approa-ching the strict European norm, we are well pre-pared to meet the demands of the growing auto-motive sector. The Pudong-based high-techenterprise is the automotive parts enterprisewith largest investment ever in China and hasbeen listed as one of the key development pro-jects in Shanghai. But UAESmanagement alsoknew that high-tech products alone will not

guarantee success in an increasingly complexenvironment. Only quality management canensure good service and quality products. This iswhy we decided to use state-of-the-art Enter-prise Resource Planning software to increasetransparency and efficiency of our operations,continues Schoenenberg. After rigorous evaluati-on of available software packages, UAES decidedto go for SAP R/3 on Oracle8. What was the rea-son? Its easy: We want to be the market leader,thats why we chose the market leader. And SAPR/3 on Oracle may be more expensive, but allother packages have limited functionalitieswhich would not have supported all of our pro-cesses, explains the General Manager. And,

whats more, SAP R/3 on Oracle was the onone to offer a full Chinese version. One oUAESmain assets are its highly qualified stafhowever, we did not have enough expertise tdo the implementation all by ourselves. We decded to work with experienced consultants fromSiemens Nixdorf to help us with the modeling our business processes and the implementatioitself, says Thomas Schoenenberg. SiemenNixdorf, which is wholly owned by Siemens, h

been the very first SAP implementation partnin China and possesses comprehensive consultinexperience in various industries, especially imanufacturing. It was also the only SAP partnwith a proven track record for full scale implementation services.Furthermore, Siemens Nixdorf was able to offUAES a total solution, including high-perfomance Primergy 560 and 760 NT servers.The fact that UAES had just recently been founded and did not have firmly established busineprocesses, yet turned out to be an advantage: Wdid not need to do any business process reengineering, but had the possibility to get a fresstart, says Project Manager Wu Ying.Which was UAES approach to R/3 implement

tion?Schoenenberg: Since we did not have mucexperience, we asked our Siemens Nixdorf consultants to take us by the hand. We wanted keep everything simple in the first step in ordto allow for learning by doing. Our plan is texpand the use of more advanced functionalitias we learn more about the system.In the first phase, modules FI, CO, SD and MMand PP are implemented for the baseline business processes. Additionally, PM and QM will bintroduced in Phase 2. UAES additional planin Wuxi and Xian will also be included in thR/3 rollout after the pilot project in Shanghhas been completed.6

TechnologyUAES -On the way to the top with SAP R/3 on

Oracle Technology and Siemens


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Linux

The FI/CO modules were prepared in just twomonths and have been productive since January1998. On June 30th, UAES celebrated its Readyto go Live ceremony, where sample workflowssuch as the creation of a purchase order weredemonstrated to an interested audience. Aftersome additional user training, the actual Golive was scheduled for September 1st, 1998.We are already benefiting from the improvedinformation flow. And with the whole system

productive, we will not only have an excellentcost controlling tool, but many opportunities toserve our customers even better, says Wu Ying.Which advice would General Manager YouYichen give to other companies thinking aboutusing SAP R/3 on Oracle? Do it, and pay muchattention to defining processes and customizing,ensure top management commitment and makesure everyone is on board.With SAP R/3 on Oracle up and running, plusthe ISO 9001 and ISO 14000 (environment) cer-tificates which are currently being prepared,UAES is also in an excellent starting position forits planned growth. From currently over 400employees, UAES plans to grow to more than2500 staff, and to generate revenues of 700

Million RMB.

40,000 Linux Developers running on Oracle8

Leveraging their industry leadership positionsfurther to meet customer business requirements,Oracle Corp. and the Oracle/SAP CompetenceCenter in Walldorf have announced this springthat Oracle8 for Linux is available. Oracle alsoopened Internet developer registration for Oracle8ion Linux via the Oracle Technology Network(OTN), and announced that the first 20,000registrants will receive a free early access CD.Through this special offer OTN members can

register at http://technet.oracle.com and havean Oracle8i on Linux CD shipped to them directly.As part of the previously announced OraclePartner Program First-to-Market initiative forindependent software vendors (ISVs), SAP haschosen the Oracle dataserver as one of their majorLinux database platforms. Intensive tests at SAPwith Oracle8 on Linux have confirmed Oraclesposition as the leading provider of database pro-ducts for the ERP market. The availability ofOracle8 for SAP R/3 on Linux will allow custo-mers to choose a proven alternative operatingsystem for their Intel-based database servers. Itexpands the scalability of their SAP environment,and increases performance and high availability.

Even for the most profitable of companies, these timeshold the greatest of uncertainties. Shifting customer preferences, stiffening government regulations, skyrocketing information demands each alonecould dampen the fire of corporate growth. Manyof todays most foresighted companies have leapt ahead of such stagnation by implementing therobust power of an enterprise information mana-gement solution from SAP and Oracle.

With a commanding two-thirds domestic marketshare, Imperial Tobacco Ltd. (ITL) handily ranks as

Canadas largest tobacco company. Headquarteredin Montreal and with seven plants in Canada,ITL employs more than 2,000 people and earnedCA $800 million on CA $1.7 billion in 1998revenues. Integrating that kind of heady success,however and preparing for even more to come threatened to overwhelm the firms disparateinformation management systems.

Challenge

ITLs success had brought about the challenge ofmanaging ever-increasing volumes of information.In the past, ITL sometimes hired temporary helpto overcome the inefficiencies of i ts systems. Thiswas getting more difficult to do. We were at a

point where hours of work became weeks of workand our information systems just couldnt keepup with, much less integrate, our exceptionaleffort, acknowledged Margret Nodwell, Imple-mentation Services Manager for Imperial TobaccoLtd. With six distinct inventory systems, askingfor an inventory status would soon take a coupleof days. We simply had to fix our systems.

Solution

ITL integrated its systems by implementing theSAP R/3 ERP suite of applications, includingfinancial, materials management, payroll, HR,and production planning. The solution gives morethan 800 users real-time access to a 180-gigabyte

Oracle7 (and soon to be Oracle8) database.Oracle8 is the worlds leading universal data ser-ver, enabling simple, cost-effective, and reliablenetwork computing. ITL also makes extensiveuse of Oracles Designer tools to design data-bases for complementary applications.

Why Oracle and SAP

SAP people really knew their application andthat gave us great confidence in the functionality,explained Paul Goyetche, Manager of Data andApplication Integration at ITL. On a higherlevel, we also knew that SAP would help usstreamline our business processes by replacingredundant systems and applications. When itcame to the database, Oracles engine offered themost robust, most mature database management

system. Weve never had a problem with Oraclein three-and-a-half years. Oracle runs smoothly,its like its not even there.

Benefits

Reduced financial cycle time

Integrating data from throughout the company,the new system has reduced the time needed togenerate crucial management reports. This isclearly seen in accounting. Both our month-endand year-end processing have been reduced dra-matically, reported Goyetche. Year end used totake us well into February; now weve got it doneby mid-January. 7

ImperialImperial Tobacco Ltd.

The SAP and Oracle solution hasdone Imperial Tobacco a great ser-vice and will continue to help usmove ahead.

Margret Nodwell, Implementation Services

Manager, Imperial Tobacco Ltd.

Oracle on LinuxOracle8 for Linux forSAP R/3 available


8/8

mproved Teamwork

Being able to share information has broughttogether formerly distant segments of the com-pany. We were a very divisional company, ex-plained Nodwell. Everyone had their ownsystems. Divisions now share any informationthat will help us all to understand the business as

a big picture.

Increased inventory accuracy

The solution has eliminated redundancy andincreased inventory accuracy. A single bill ofmaterials instead of four allows raw materialsto be inter changeable between products and fac-tories. There was time when our products sel-dom changed, now they change often for market,regulatory, or quality reasons. The system hassimplified this transition.

Improved regulatory compliance

Keeping up with the government can be tough,but ITL is doing so more efficiently than ever.Were closely regulated by both the federal andprovincial governments, concluded Nodwell.We pay CA$3.5 billion in taxes and they wantto know exactly where its coming from SAPon Oracle lets us get to information quickly andreliably.

Increased vendor flexibility

The new systems ability to handle multiple lan-guages and currencies also allows ITL to pur-chase globally. The solution has facilitated pro-curement, sped up billing, and helped in ournegotiations with vendors, added Nodwell.

Increased MIS productivity

The new R/3 system has also freed IT staff tospend less time programming and more timeanalyzing the business. We used to have a lot ofmanual work interfacing and troubleshooting,detailed Goyetche. Since we have eliminatedmore than half of our distinct systems, thenumber of interfaces has reduced drastically.Additionally, through SAPs configuration, theuser can customize things that formerly involvedchanges at the programming level.

Y2K saving

Switching to a new R/3 solution saved ITL sig-nificant costs related to the Y2K bug. Becausewe were running on an old mainframe platform,Y2K compliance threatened to become a hugeproblem, relayed Goyetche We figured that,by eliminating the lines of code that we wouldhave had to rewrite, we saved CA$15 million bybeing on SAP and Oracle.

DGRecord breaking results - surpassing 4,900 SDPhiladelphia, September 13, 1999 - Oracle hasonce again proven itself as the underlying highperformance database by beating previous per-formance results for SAP R/3 with Data Generalon an 8-way 8,900 platform.

These outstanding results demonstrate that theOracle8 database on Data General provides themaximum performance and scalability for SAPR/3 solutions. This combination delivers the pro-ven reliability, scalability and flexibility deman-ded by large SAP R/3 implementations, saidDonald Haig, Vice President of CorporateAccounts, Oracle Corporation. Both the Oracle

and Data General have worked together as aseamless team to achieve this fantastic bench-mark result, Haig continued.

The user number was achieved with SAP's R/3Sales & Distribution (SD) standard applicationbenchmark running on Data General's AViiONenterprise servers using Intel's Pentium III Xeonprocessors and Data Generals CLARiiON fullfibre channel storage solutions.

"We are also very pleased with this result of bothteams, and the value implications it has forcustomers, said Rich Clifton, Vice President ofApplications Competency Centers at DataGeneral Corporation. By applying the latest

Oracle8i technology, our 8-way 8900 platform,and our expertise in large ERP configurations,we were able to set this significant new recordwith a much smaller configuration. This result ismore than 8.6% higher than the previous bestNT result, and it was done with 1/3 fewer CPUs.When coupled with the industry leading HighAvailability characteristics and performance gua-rantees we offer for this environment, we havenow pushed cost effective computing based onWindows NT, Intel, and Oracle to new heightsof enterprise computing.

Ask for more information at the Oracle booth atSapphire US, #515, Data General #332 or sendan e-mail to [email protected].

Oracle Corporation and IBM Corporation todaannounced the highest performance results evfor the SAP R/3 4.0 application suite running oan UNIX server. 16,640 Sales & Distributiousers with 4,908.433 dialogsteps/hour and aaverage response time of 1,9 seconds is the neworld leading benchmark.

This record-setting performance was made possble by IBM RS6000 S80 with 24 CPUs, CPtype RS64 III and 32 MB total L2 cache oOracle8.05.

We are especially proud of this world recorbenchmarks because compared to previous releses of SAP R/3, version 4.0 has a 30% highe

consumption rate and generates more load to thdatabase. So the fact that we have a higher numbof users in this configuration proves onces agathat Oracle8 provides the scalability and higperformance that SAP customers need, saDonald Haig, Vice President of CorporatAccounts, Oracle Corporation.For more information ask at the Oracle boot#515 or send an e-mail to [email protected]

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Imperial Tobacco Ltd. from Page 7

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69190 Walldorf, GermanyTel. ++49 (0) 6227-7 -31 252Fax ++49 (0) 6227-7 -31 299

Albrecht [email protected]: http://www.oracle.com/sthttp://www.sap.com/partner/index.htm

Additional Contributors to his issue:D. Bryant, Jrgen Fhrer, Donald Haig, Uwe Heinz,Knut Hofmann, Jan Klokkers, Gerhard Kuppler,Tom Stickler, Burkhard Thomas

Translationservice,Falkner Translationservice, Munich, Roswitha Greig

Logistics:Cretschmar Cargo, A. Lotzwick

Lithos by:G+A Repro, Oeffingen

Photos:Photos on Page 2-8 from SAP archives, Uwe Heinz

Printed by Gaiser GmbH, Schwaebisch GmuendPrinted on bleached, chlorine-free paper

Designed by:Gross Art, Stuttgart

Reproduction allowed only with the publishersexpress permission

Oracle, Oracle8, Oracle8i, Oracle Express, Discoverer,Designer, Developer, and the Oracle Logo are trademarksor registered trademarks of Oracle Corporation.

SAP, R/3, and all SAP product names mentioned are usedfor identification purposes only, and may CopyrightOracle Corporation 1999. All rights reserved.

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RecordUNIX SD Benchmark

World Record 16,640User with IBM on Oracl

R/3 NT Benchmarkwith Data General onOracle 8

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