www.wipro.com ENGINEERED SYSTEMS: TOMORROW S ANSWER TO RUN-THE-BUSINESS AND TRANSFORMATION Mahesh Dixit
Table of Contents 03... Introduction 03... Business overview 04... Engineered systems to the rescue of CIOs 05... Some difficult technology decisions for CIOs 06... When is it a good time to change over to an engineered solution? 06... A simpler and more logical solution 06... Conclusion
Introduction Business Overview Disruption is the new change. There is a new app, a new business model or a start-up just around the corner that threatens to disrupt your business. To meet the challenges from change, strategies have to be rethought and business plans need to be flexible. How can IT platforms provide your organization the required agility and scale to ensure you are ahead of the change? This paper discusses the growing business demand that CIOs are facing to keep the lights on and simultaneously transform the business -- and Oracle Engineered Systems that help meet those demands. In the face of large volumes of data, finance organizations struggle to complete Period Closure on time. Manufacturing organizations aspire to accelerate global R&D and their product development process, but are unable to leverage the data they have. The Utilities industry is constantly trying to improve billing accuracy and its meter-to-cash process by managing and harnessing exploding volume of data from smart meters. Retail is trying to analyze past customer buying behavior to improve customer experience. There is data all around. There is a need for businesses to coax more information from the enormous amounts of data at their disposal. Today, businesses are at the threshold of the Zettabyte Era meaning, annual IP traffic will go well past the zettabytes threshold in the next year or two. This is good news, and bad, at the same time. It is good because data helps businesses improve operating efficiencies and drive accurate decisions. And bad because everyone will have to store, back up, process and analyze these daunting volumes of data. There is no escaping this eventuality. 3
Engineered systems to the rescue of CIOs CIOs across industries are under pressure to manage growing data. In addition, they must keep pace with the transformational needs of the organization. Oracle has responded to the demand. It has created systems that ensure customers have choices that match today s changing needs. This has been in the form of optimized, integrated, purpose-built, Engineered Systems. Engineered systems bring together applications, middleware, database, operating systems, servers and storage so that they run better, faster and at massive scale. The good news is that these engineered systems go a step beyond -- they can be integrated with existing investments, ensuring that current assets are optimized as well. means the performance of IT systems must improve at the same pace as the growth in data. To meet these demands CIOs have two options. One is to create savings to buy the required hardware while the second is to get business to sponsor the budget. For the latter, CIO should explore systems that improve business-related processes and transactions such as: How can my IT impact business by enabling faster finance period close? How can I implement a superior order-to-cash solution for faster order management and fulfillment? How can our systems deliver immediate on-demand processing instead of my customers waiting for overnight batch processing? What if the organizations procurement management can be improved by several magnitudes? Can I reduce time spent on compliance reports even while improving the insights we deliver to management? What about the pressure that CIOs find themselves facing? They need to show continuous improvement in IT systems by being able to process data and deliver meaningful information to all stakeholders at the right time. This 4
Some difficult technology decisions for CIOs Each of the above business expectations are putting pressure on data centers and forcing them to add servers, storage often from multiple vendors. Hardware manufacturers are responding with larger machines. Processors are becoming faster. And the pipes running between applications, database and storage are becoming thicker. Suddenly, buying a technology stack with applications, middleware, database, server and storage from different vendors is becoming difficult. There are questions over integration and CIOs are uncertain if that can match budgets for these systems, if the systems can be deployed on time and if they will meet business demand. Sometimes, organizations face a dilemma as there are many vendors offering commodity hardware systems in the form of Integrated Infra Systems (IIS) and Integrated Ref Architecture (IRA). What CIOs actually need is an Integrated Stack System Solutions that matches business needs by creating an IT ecosystem where each component is matched with the capabilities of the others, resulting in efficiency at minimum cost. Oracle delivers an integrated solution that is completely assimilated in every layer of the technology stack, and that translates into a modern infrastructure characterized by increased flexibility, lower risks, and reduced costs. They call this an Oracle Engineered Systems. ENGINEERED SYSTEMS & COMMODITY HARDWARE ENGINEERED* Pre-tuned, pre-configured, especially for business application running on Oracle database Integrated components work together, eliminating the need for fixes and patches Excellent performance from the initial level and bundled as a package for the long run Networking (Infini Band)and speed capabilities are best when compared with peer products COMMODITY Increased time and energy on configuration, Tuning to maximize database investment returns Increased integration overhead, added extra layer of costs, complexity and risk Effort required to enhance the performance of the hardware to nearly match the engineered systems Networking and speed have dependencies and do not match what an engineered system delivers Compact, reduces real estate requirements Large hardware footprint Low power consumption Power hungry Lowered system complexity demands minimal maintenance and support Requires coordination between vendors for maintenance and support * Engineered Systems from Oracle include The Oracle Exadata Database Machine and Oracle SuperCluster which consolidates cloud deployment 5
When is it a good time to change over to an engineered solution? The best window to implement engineered solutions is when one of the following happens: App upgrades are released: this is the right time to think of application modernization Hardware and data centers reach end-of-life or storage capacity becomes inadequate: this is the right time to think of a system refresh The company goes through a merger or an acquisition: this is when demand and capacity can become mismatched and is the right time to look at apps and platform transformation Changes in business performance: (data volumes grow, batch processing cycles become long, wait times for processes becomes unacceptable, SLAs are impacted or there are new reporting and analysis needs) this is when a more efficient technology becomes imperative A simpler and more logical solution The challenge is to standardize and harmonize processes, make them scalable, address volumetric needs. Simultaneously, architecture must be simplified to reduce management and budgetary overheads. Wipro s response to this challenge is App-down approach. Once an organization s business needs are mapped to applications, middleware and hardware requirements are determined, using an engineered system then helps integrate the complete technology stack, end-to-end, reducing complexity and deployment time. The result goes beyond expectations application performance improves, the hardware footprint shrinks and power consumption is reduced. At Wipro, we have worked with Oracle and leaders in industries such as semiconductors, financial services, manufacturing, retail, utilities and telecom, to understand how engineered systems must also be tweaked based on industry needs. Our constructs for these industries have been built in collaboration with Oracle. We call these services Oracle on Oracle (Oracle Applications on Oracle Systems). This is a reflection of the fact that industrial-strength future-ready Oracle applications are run on specially engineered Oracle hardware. Our experience of implementations across industries has demonstrated some clear benefits: Business Process performance improvements IT operations witness several magnitudes of efficiency through streamlined processes Faster batch jobs processing Cost of running IT drops favorably CIOs can eliminate the pain of responding to scale Conclusion The potential of Oracle Engineered System to maximizing efficiencies in tomorrow s business processes is significant. This is especially true when combined with Wipro s app-down approach to boost application performance. Organizations are taking the decision to move to integrated engineered system systems. This decision is a positive step toward acquiring a future ready platform where the investment is likely to pay-off quickly. An engineered system implementation for a global semi-conductor leader resulted in: 99% improvement in finance report tracking 99% faster availability of inventory information 96% faster analysis of collection for improved credit planning 95% faster payable analysis for improved Cash management Advanced supply chain planning / collections (2X faster) Headroom for 3-year capacity at 40% growth 6
About the Author Mahesh Dixit is the Global Head of Oracle & Emerging Applications Solutions group. With more than 19 years of experience, he is responsible for building future ready solutions, rolling out Oracle on Oracle solutions leveraging Oracle Engineered Systems. He has helped many clients successfully implement these solutions. Mahesh has also pioneered the Wipro s EasyU Solution on Oracle Apps Upgrades. About Wipro Ltd. Wipro Ltd. (NYSE:WIT) is a leading Information Technology, Consulting and Business Process Services company that delivers solutions to enable its clients do business better. Wipro delivers winning business outcomes through its deep industry experience and a 360 degree view of Business through Technology - helping clients create successful and adaptive businesses. A company recognised globally for its comprehensive portfolio of services, a practitioner s approach to delivering innovation, and an organization wide commitment to sustainability, Wipro has a workforce of over 150,000, serving clients in 175+ cities across 6 continents. For more information, please visit www.wipro.com 7
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