Working with IBM, Sony Europe migrated from Oracle to IBM DB2, running on the IBM System z mainframe platform, with SAP applications running on IBM AIX on IBM Power Systems servers. The company has continued to upgrade and extend this architecture, and has also introduced new systems such as the IBM Systems Solution for SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse Accelerator.

1. Sony Europe maximizes availability Overview
for SAP applications with IBM Challenge
System z, Power Systems and DB2 Sony Europe’s original SAP ERP
implementation could not deliver
Sony Europe is the Sony Corporation’s database server was struggling to cope the level of performance that
marketing, sales and distribution with the workload, and performance the company’s international
organization for the whole of Europe was suffering,” says Gill Hanlon, Senior operations required as further
and Russia. It operates across 38 Technical Consultant at Sony Europe. countries were being added to
countries and 13 time zones, employs “We had expanded our existing server the platform.
6,000 employees, and generates annual hardware as far as we could, so we
revenues of €8 billion. needed to change to a new platform.” Solution
Upgraded to IBM System z10 for
Originally, Sony’s European operations The company had two options: move improved performance, enabling
operated independently in each country, Oracle onto an even larger and more the introduction of new web
and each national subsidiary was expensive UNIX server from Sun, or shops and a sophisticated online
responsible for its own IT systems. migrate to IBM DB2 for z/OS, running ‘Configure To Order’ capability for
on the IBM System z mainframe the Sony VAIO product range.
To increase efficiency, improve data platform.
quality and reduce management costs, Key benefits
Sony Europe began a major project to “We have always been an IBM shop The combination of System z10,
standardize the IT architecture across from a hardware perspective, and Parallel Sysplex® and PowerHA on
Europe, and began migrating to a single we had built an excellent working Power Systems servers delivers
central SAP ERP solution. The company relationship with IBM, so we were keen very high availability for the
initially chose to support SAP with an to stay on an IBM hardware platform,” company’s business-critical SAP,
Oracle database, which ran on an IBM explains Hanlon. web and reporting environments.
AIX platform.
“We had some mainframe expertise as
“Within a couple of years of the there was a legacy system running on
implementation, our SAP landscape an old mainframe, and this application
had expanded to the point where the was due to be phased out. We ordered
Case study

2. a new mainframe to act as our SAP
database server, and migrated the
system. There were some challenges “We have always been
at first, as we were fairly early adopters an IBM shop from a
of SAP on the DB2 platform, but the hardware perspective,
Business Challenge
system soon started to deliver what we and we had built an
had hoped.” excellent working
Sony Europe’s original SAP ERP relationship with IBM,
implementation, based on an Oracle
High availability with System z so we were keen
database running on high-end UNIX
The combination of System z to stay on an IBM
servers, was struggling to deal with
mainframes in a Parallel Sysplex cluster hardware platform."
configuration and DB2 for z/OS in
the demands of business growth,
and could not deliver the level of
data sharing mode provides a highly "We were confident
performance that the company’s
available and scalable data-serving that the combination
international operations required –
platform, which is ideal for supporting of DB2 and
especially as further countries were
business-critical applications such as System z would offer
being added to the platform.
SAP. the best solution on
the market in terms of
This level of availability is critical for availability. ”
Sony Europe, because the company
operates across many time zones and
Gill Hanlon
users need to be able to access the
Senior Technical Consultant Sony
SAP systems 24 hours a day.
Europe
“Any SAP downtime could potentially
have significant cost implications,
especially in important sales periods a low level of unplanned downtime
such as the lead up to Christmas,” in the last seven years of continuous
comments Hanlon. “We were confident operation.”
that the combination of DB2 and
System z would offer the best solution Meeting the demands of
on the market in terms of availability. business growth
Sony Europe used its System z990
“The resilience of the cluster is mainframes to support the SAP
excellent, and we have experienced database successfully for more
2

3. than five years. During this time, the processors offers greater performance
company continued to roll out SAP and energy efficiency, enabling the
ERP, SAP CRM and SAP Supply Chain company to process more data, more
Management to more countries across quickly, for the same cost.
Europe, and also saw a considerable
expansion in online sales via its SAP The new machines deliver a boost to
Solution
Customer Relationship Management database performance for the SAP
system. environment, making it easy to support
Working with IBM, the company
the growing SAP environment.
migrated from Oracle to IBM
“The launch of the Sony Style web
DB2, running on the IBM
shops was a huge success, and we Simpler maintenance,
System z mainframe platform, with
also introduced a ‘Configure To Order’ slimmer storage
SAP applications running on IBM AIX
system for our VAIO product range,” DB2 is famous for its ability to reduce
on IBM Power Systems servers. The
explains Gill Hanlon. the need for planned outages by
company has continued to upgrade
eliminating offline maintenance
and extend this architecture, and has
“This added to the size and complexity processes.
also introduced new systems such
of the SAP landscape, and placed
as the IBM Systems Solution for SAP
additional strain on the database. “DB2’s online reorg feature is a huge
NetWeaver Business Warehouse
advantage,” says Hanlon. “If we had
Accelerator.
“We were frequently hitting maximum to take the database offline every
capacity on the z990 machines, and time we needed to do a reorg, the
although we were able to use On-Off potential downtime involved would be
Capacity on Demand to handle peaks significant – but DB2 can handle it on
in workload, we realized that we the fly, without any significant impact on
needed a more permanent solution.” users.”
To meet the additional performance The SAP Computer Centre
requirements, Sony Europe decided to Management System (CCMS) is used
upgrade from System z990 to System to monitor the SAP systems, passing
z10 Enterprise Class machines, linked SAP alerts to the company’s monitoring
to IBM System Storage DS8300 disk systems. Other tools, such as the IBM
systems via FICON Express4 channels z/OS Resource Management Facility
for extremely fast I/O performance. (RMF), help to measure performance
and tune DB2 for optimum
This generation of mainframe performance.
3

4. Key Solution Components The company is also using DB2 data
compression technologies to reduce
Industry the impact of growing data volumes “This high availability
Electronics, Consumer Products, on its storage landscape. The SAP setup for the
Wholesale Distribution production environment now contains application servers
4 TB of data, which is held using IBM works as an excellent
Applications System Storage DS8300 disk systems. complement to the
SAP ERP Financials, Sales
®
The combination of the compression 99.999 percent
Order Processing, Supply Chain technology and the highly cost-effective availability of the
Management and Human Capital enterprise-class DS8300 disk storage database that is
Management; SAP Advanced ensures that Sony Europe keeps its delivered by the
Planning and Optimization; SAP storage costs to a minimum. System z Parallel
Customer Relationship Management; Sysplex.”
SAP Supplier Relationship In the near future, the company intends
Management; SAP NetWeaver ®
to upgrade to the latest version of DB2
Gill Hanlon
Application Server, SAP NetWeaver for z/OS, which promises to deliver
Senior Technical Consultant Sony
Business Warehouse, SAP significant performance improvements
Europe
NetWeaver Business Warehouse and further improve cost-efficiency by
Accelerator. reducing CPU usage and allowing for
index compression.
Hardware in progress, with pairs of partitions
IBM System z10 Enterprise Class,
®
SAP applications on Power clustered between the two machines to
IBM Power 795, IBM BladeCenter
® ®
Systems ensure high availability.
H with Intel Xeon processor-based
® ®
From the application perspective, Sony
HS22 and IBM POWER7 processor- ®
Europe is running a wide range of SAP “If one partition crashes, or one of the
based JS22 blade servers, IBM solutions, including SAP ERP Financials, processors develops a fault – or even
System Storage DS8300.
®
Supply Chain Management and Human if one entire machine fails – we can just
Capital Management, SAP Customer fail the SAP Central Services over to the
Software Relationship Management, SAP other node of the cluster and keep the
IBM AIX , IBM DB2 for z/OS ,
® ® ®
Supplier Relationship Management and application running,” explains Hanlon.
IBM z/OS, SUSE Linux Enterprise
®
SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse.
Server, Microsoft Windows Server,
® ®
“This high availability setup for the
SAP Computer Center Management These run in IBM AIX partitions on application servers works as an
System (CCMS). two IBM Power 595 servers, with excellent complement to the 99.999
a migration to two IBM Power 795 percent availability of the database that
4

5. at full capacity, so the Sony team
decided to implement 10 POWER6 IBM
“The ability to add BladeCenter JS12 blade servers to run
individual POWER this new environment. Within the last
blade servers to meet few months, another four blades have
specific workload been added – this time BladeCenter
Business Benefits
requirements is a PS701 servers.
major advantage • Upgrading to System z10
of the platform, “The ability to add individual POWER
has improved performance,
and helped us deal blade servers to meet specific workload
accelerating SAP response speed
with the additional requirements is a major advantage of
and enabling the introduction of
demands of our new the IBM BladeCenter platform, and
new web shops and a sophisticated
Java environment.” helped us deal with the additional
online ‘Configure To Order’
demands of our new Java environment
capability for the Sony VAIO
quickly and effectively,” says Hanlon.
Gill Hanlon product range.
Senior Technical Consultant Sony
Sony Europe is currently in the process
Europe • The combination of Parallel
of replacing its Power 595 servers with
Sysplex on the System z servers
a pair of new Power 795 machines.
and PowerHA on the Power
Built around IBM POWER7 processors,
Systems servers delivers
is delivered by the System z Parallel these new servers should significantly
very high availability for the
Sysplex.” increase the capacity of the SAP
company’s business-critical SAP
application environment.
environments.
Recently, the company worked on a
project to upgrade its SAP Customer SAP applications on • The Business Warehouse
Relationship Management application, BladeCenter
Accelerator solution has greatly
and increased the use of the SAP In addition to the Power Systems
improved business intelligence
Virtual Machine Container to run Java environment, Sony Europe also runs
performance.
workloads within the SAP environment. some of its SAP applications on Intel
This increased the CPU requirements processor-based hardware from IBM.
of the system, in terms of both capacity SAP NetWeaver Application Server
and speed. runs on IBM BladeCenter HS22 servers
in a Microsoft Windows environment,
The existing POWER5 processor- supporting the Sony Europe website
based servers were already running and the front-end for the web shops.
5

6. IBM Deutschland GmbH
D-70548 Stuttgart
ibm.com/solutions/sap
IBM, the IBM logo, and ibm.com are trademarks of
International Business Machines Corporation,
registered in many jurisdictions worldwide. A
current list of other IBM trademarks is available on
the Web at “Copyright and trademark information”
at http://www.ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml
“We also use the IBM Systems
Intel, the Intel logo, Intel Xeon and the Intel Xeon
solution for SAP NetWeaver Business logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of
Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United
Warehouse Accelerator, which is an “POWER7 technology States and other countries. UNIX is a registered
promises to
trademark of The Open Group in the United States
IBM BladeCenter-based solution,” and other countries. Linux is a trademark of Linus
says Gill Hanlon. “It uses Intel Xeon provide even better Torvalds in the United States, other countries, or
both. Microsoft, Windows, Windows NT, and the
processor-based blades to significantly performance for the Windows logo are trademarks of Microsoft
Corporation in the United States, other countries,
improve business intelligence query future, and innovative or both.
performance: we have seen response solutions such as the Other company, product or service names may be
trademarks, or service marks of others.
times reduced significantly.” Business Warehouse This case study illustrates how one IBM customer
Accelerator give us a uses IBM and/or IBM Business Partner
technologies/services. Many factors have
Significant business benefits significant advantage contributed to the results and benefits described.
IBM does not guarantee comparable results. All
Hanlon concludes: “With the in terms of rapid, information contained herein was provided by the
featured customer and/or IBM Business Partner.
combination of IBM hardware and responsive reporting IBM does not attest to its accuracy. All customer
across the entire
examples cited represent how some customers
the DB2 database platform, we have have used IBM products and the results they may
built an infrastructure that delivers European business.” have achieved. Actual environmental costs and
performance characteristics will vary depending
class-leading availability for our SAP on individual customer configurations and
conditions.
application landscape, combined with
Gill Hanlon This publication is for general guidance only.
the performance we need to support Photographs may show design models.
Senior Technical Consultant Sony © Copyright IBM Corp. 2011. All rights reserved.
our growing business. This has enabled
Europe
us to extend our use of SAP Customer
Relationship Management to support
the Sony Style web shops and provide
a more tailored service for customers
of our Sony VAIO product range, since © Copyright 2011 SAP AG
SAP AG
they can now customize their order Dietmar-Hopp-Allee 16
D-69190 Walldorf
online and get a computer built to their
SAP, the SAP logo, SAP and all other SAP products
exact specifications.” and services mentioned herein are trademarks or
registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and
several other countries.
Gill Hanlon concludes, “The move
to POWER7 technology promises to
provide even better performance for the
future, and innovative solutions such as
the Business Warehouse Accelerator
give us a significant advantage in terms
of rapid, responsive reporting across SPC03321-GBEN-01 (June 2011)
the entire European business.”