You’ve never had so many choices for your information systems. For a time, there seemed to be universal agreement among media, consultants, analysts, and industry observers that IBM mainframe environments—including those with VSE—were a “wrong” choice. That opinion has radically changed, and these systems are now recognized as key components of modern, cost-effective solutions for businesses of all sizes and types. This article illustrates how two representative VSE customers in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) use it to meet the business challenges of today’s on demand world.
CC-Bank Moves Into the Finance Fast Lane
CC-Bank (http://www.cc-bank.de) is the leading independent car financing institution in Germany and number one in financing of consumer goods to provide loans for private car purchasers. The bank also is a long-time VSE customer. CC-Bank installed a new IBM zSeries 990 server in 2004 in order to:
- Improve response times, ultimately helping to improve customer satisfaction
- Handle large increases in daily transaction volume
- Benefit from greater flexibility for the future.
Breaking the Speed Limit
Faced with continually increasing transaction volumes and the prospect of new workload, in 2003, CC-Bank began to analyze the possibility of increasing the capacity of its then existing mainframe environment. Says Manfred G. Hanke, managing director of CC-ITS GmbH, the IT service company of CC-Group: “Our external partners place great emphasis on response times, so our number-one IT goal is always performance, assuming of course that systems are also totally reliable. In the banking industry, reliability is fundamental to everything.”
Based on advice from IBM, the bank chose to replace an older IBM mainframe with an IBM zSeries 990 running VSE/ESA and z/VM. An IBM zSeries 800 was also installed as a backup system in a second data center, 5km from the production site. Each zSeries is connected to an IBM TotalStorage Enterprise Storage Server (ESS) and peer-to-peer remote copy is used.
The bank’s previous production mainframe had four processors, each rated at 100 MIPS, running CICS under VSE/ESA. The new z990 has two processors enabled and is rated at more than 850 MIPS, more than double the peak transactional processing capability. Hanke comments: “Previously, our response times were superb, thanks to the power of CICS, but business growth had been taking its toll on performance. With the z990, the performance is extremely impressive, providing us with an average response time of 0.1 seconds.
“When one of our customers puts in a request for credit, they now get a very fast response, which helps them keep their end-customers happy. So, the outstanding performance of the z990 has made a direct and positive impact on our business.”
Beating Congestion
Business for the bank tends to peak around Christmas, and the merger with another bank in 2003 placed an added strain on systems, increasing the average daily volume from 500,000 to 600,000 transactions. “Without the z990, we simply couldn’t have managed this dramatic increase in business,” remarks Hanke.
In addition to enhanced performance, the new zSeries brings flexibility, supporting sub-processor divisions for logical partitioning, and the possibility of running Linux partitions. In the future, the bank is considering introducing IBM WebSphere Application Server on zSeries and migrating from Oracle 9i to DB2 Universal Database, both systems it already uses on IBM iSeries.
Hanke concludes: “We are very progressive and future-oriented, so the new zSeries with VSE and VM is an ideal solution. The z990 has delivered the same excellent reliability and stability as before, but with far superior performance—we consider it to be the best server of its kind on the market. As a bank, our systems must be accessible 24 hours a day, every day of the year, because business never stops. With zSeries, we don’t have to worry about this. We can simply assume the system will run reliably all the time.”
Impol Takes Legacy Applications to the Web
Impol (http://www.impol.si), a VSE customer in Slovenia, is one of Europe’s leading aluminum manufacturers. The company produces a wide variety of specialized alloys, which are in turn used by manufacturers in the auto, aerospace, and industrial sectors.
Dealing with approximately 400 customers in 25 countries by phone, fax, and mail was proving inefficient and slow. For every alloy product enquiry, a critical Certificate of Quality describing the precise chemical and physical properties had to be printed out and faxed to the customer prior to sale. All stock level and order process enquiries were manual, too. Impol looked at updating its IT environment in order to:
- Reduce fax-based communications
- Deliver up-to-the-minute production information to customers over the Web
- Address new application opportunities with no change to core legacy systems
- Reduce costs when possible.
Saving a Million
The information required by customers, such as stock levels, invoice details, delivery schedules and the all-important certificates, resides in Impol’s existing ERP and Materials Resource Planning (MRP) applications that run on IBM systems with VSE/ESA. Impol wanted to make this information available to customers via the Internet. To meet this need, Alcad developed a new service, called ePIS (e-Production Information System), which gives customers fast access to live data over the Web. The solution was implemented on an IBM S/390 Multiprise 3000 server running VSE/ESA and z/VM. The WebSphere-based ePIS application is in a partition under SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. It connects to an IBM DB2 database located in a partition. Approximately 450 users access the system.
“Customers can now see all the information they need immediately, including stock levels, production schedules, packing lists, invoices, and certificates. They can order goods on the Web, too. With customer orders delivered directly into back-end systems, showing alloy types and delivery schedules, Impol can exercise much closer control over materials planning and inventory levels,” says Branko Hmelak, Director of Alcad, the outsourced IT service provider for Impol.
“More important, the zSeries and WebSphere solution is contributing to lower stock levels, making anticipated savings of approximately $1 million (U.S.) a year. In addition, it helps Impol deliver outstanding levels of customer service, becoming a closely integrated partner in the value chain.”
Building on a Legacy of Success
The zSeries, WebSphere, and Linux solution has enabled Impol to exploit existing enterprise applications and data, while creating sophisticated new Web solutions. Customers see the information they need regardless of the source of the original data.
The typical production cycle is three weeks. With nothing more than a Web browser, customers are able to check manufacturing progress and delivery dates online. The data is taken directly from the legacy systems, eliminating rekeying errors and removing the delays involved in faxing report sheets.
“Using WebSphere, we are able to link to legacy production systems, including proprietary systems, and provide what customers want. We chose zSeries because of its high availability, scalability and ease of management, and the very attractive price point for such a powerful system,” explains Hmelak.
Modernizing With WebSphere
Impol is now consolidating customer data to DB2 and has implemented a pilot data-mining program, which will be the foundation for a full business intelligence system.
Hmelak adds, “The beauty of the IBM solution is that it has allowed us to develop new customer relationship, supply chain management and business intelligence tools, without the need to change the core applications. With WebSphere and Linux we have modernized existing legacy applications to deliver a cutting-edge information tool for customers.”
Other Customer Responses
Several other VSE customers offered input for this article. Here’s a sample of what they had to say about how VSE helps them meet business challenges:
“We’ve found that the mainframe . . . can be integrated quite easily, and I encourage anyone who wants to extend the use of a VSE-based mainframe to try it. We’ll be doing just that by creating an environment in which our mainframe will work as a powerful database server. We’ll mix the best that each of our platforms has to offer and thereby continue to provide cost-effective, high-quality service . . .”
“We simply have to exploit the Web, and we’re doing that with VSE/ESA. Today’s VSE/ESA offers a great variety of connectors to the Web; and in doing so, it has again shown its fundamental value . . . to our IT environment.”
“Keeping current means all the difference . . . We benefit from lower costs, a competitive edge, and better service. I’d hate to think where we would be today if we had never changed our running system.”
“We have created a hardware and software environment that is a solid basis for future innovations. With it, we will provide our system’s users with the best support possible, and we will grow as our business needs and goals grow.”
“For more than 75 years, our business has been based on the newest technology. If we don’t stay ahead of our competitors, we’d be out of business in a short period of time . . . S/390 and VSE/ ESA have continued to play the lead role of the server because of this system’s reliability, availability, performance, and cost-effectiveness.”
Additional Information
z/VSE V3 is the newest in a classic series of operating systems that began 40 years ago with DOS/360. The evolution of DOS/360 to DOS/VS to DOS/VSE to VSE/System Package to VSE/ESA to z/VSE didn’t just happen. It came about because of IBM’s commitment to provide customers a system that offers practical, cost-effective solutions—a system that meets their needs while allowing for future growth.
VSE has changed over the years, and it has changed for the better! We’re proud of VSE; we’re proud of our heritage, and we’re proud of customers such as those profiled here. For more information about z/VSE, visit www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/ zseries/zvse/.
The complete text of the CC-Bank IBM case study (in English and German) is available at http://www.ibm.com/soft-ware/success/cssdb.nsf/CS/DNSD5XRLJB?OpenDocument&Site=default.
The complete text of the Impol IBM case study is available at http://www.ibm.com/software/success/cssdb.nsf/CS/DNSD-62EEE3?OpenDocument&Site=default.
