abas Business Software on Intel® Itanium® 2 in productive operation

Gebr. Saacke GmbH & Co. KG is a medium-sized business from Pforzheim in Baden-Wuerttemberg. For over 100 years the name Saacke has stood worldwide for the highest quality and innovation in precision tools and grinding machines. Saacke also sets standards for IT within his business. One of the first delivered MAXDATA PLATINUM 9000-4R servers with Intel® Itanium® 2 processor and 64Bit architecture is being used by the tool specialists in Pforzheim. The quick changeover to the new architecture was possible because with abas Business Software Saacke uses an ERP software which is already ported to the Intel® Itanium® 2 64Bit architecture. After the first tests the increase in performance compared to the previous RISC architecture was at a factor of 20, data backup uses about 1/3 of the time and can be done during normal operations.

Innovations with tradition

In 1892 Saacke started to manufacture tools. The increase in demand from the industry for commercial machine tools led to the development and production of their own grinding machines in 1932. Saacke GmbH & Co. KG set standards early on for quality and precision. Nowadays Saacke has a future oriented, market-driven product which combines decades of experience with the most up-to-date technology. The products and services of Saacke are distributed by partner companies in over 70 countries. Saacke has several locations in China and the USA.

Head start by using the most up-to-date business software

In order to secure and expand the standard of quality which has been reached despite the constant expansion, Saacke trusts the most modern technology when dealing with company IT. With abas Business Software Saacke has an integrated ERP software which is customized exactly to the needs of the medium-sized business. The upgrade concept guarantees the status quo of the technology.

Since company-specific adjustments are transferred with the release change of abas Business Software, the upgrade is usually carried out within a day. As such a release change of abas Business Software was available for Saacke they also began to consider the hardware situation within the company. Janietz, Head of IT: „Our company is expanding. Using abas Business Software we have a flexible business software which we can easily adjust to our changing requirements and that grows with our business. On the hardware side the situation was different. The performance limit was reached by the system we had installed - the HP-UX 10.20 server with RISC architecture. The constantly growing number of workstations which access the server could no longer be accommodated.” As Saacke had had a long history of working together with ABAS, they included the ERP specialists from Karlsruhe in the selection process. Mr Janietz: “ABAS straight away mentioned the MAXDATA PLATINUM 9000-4R server with Intel® Itanium® 2 processor and 64Bit. The abas Business Software had only been ported to this server recently and in only 2 days and ABAS was convinced that the scaleable and cost efficient platform would offer the maximum performance for the abas Business Software installed here. The arguments won us over.” Janietz continues: “After a visit from the abas CEO, Werner Strub and Werner Matt, in charge of abas hardware, we ordered the MAXDATA PLATINUM 9000-4R server.”

Real start after the first day

The migration of the old system to the MAXDATA PLATINUM 9000-4R server went smoothly. MAXDATA delivered a server to ABAS which was pre-installed with Suse SLES 8 for Linux. The specific settings for abas Business Software were made on the operating system, performance and stress tests lasting several days were performed. The data was taken from the old system and transferred to Itanium in one day at Saacke. The next day the system went into real operation.

Fulfilled expectations

Janietz, Saacke’s head of IT: “The introduction was trouble-free. All of our expectations were fulfilled. The performance compared to the RISC architecture of our old system increased around twenty-fold. We can now process around twice as many customers requests as before the introduction.” The data backup is three times faster and can be carried out during normal business operation. By investing in the MAXDATA PLATINUM 9000-4R server we have invested in a future-proof system. Using Itanium2 we can address memory > 4GB. This secures our growth in the IT world. Moreover, the great scalability of the system provides more than enough reserves.

The fact that ABAS, Intel and Maxdata provide support over a long period of time was very important in making our decision. We wanted to get away from proprietary systems such as RISC in the hardware and HP-UX in the operating system. Itanium under Linux fulfils these requirements. The 64Bit technology with Itanium is now also affordable for medium-sized businesses. The price/performance ratio is excellent. Through many years of developing, the Intel-Itanium technology has reached a high level of maturity. Intel is the standard and stands for, as abas Business Software does, the highest quality. We have high standards for our products and know, how important a future-proof business IT is for fighting competition. Using abas Business Software, the MAXDATA PLATINUM 9000-4R server and the Linux operating system we have created the perfect package for our business. Thanks to the consolidation of our entire business software to one server, the now available power reserves, the gain in performance, the savings in maintenance effort and the considerable less time effort in administration , we are now able to cut IT costs by 30%.

abas Business Software ported to Itanium® 2 processor in only two days

ABAS, the ERP specialist, already has experience with 64 bit architectures. abas ERP runs under DEC Alpha or on the IBM p-series under AIX. This experience, besides the Intel C++ Complier used for porting, is the reason for the record-breaking porting of the ABAS standard business software to the Itanium® 64 bit chip from Intel. 2 employees need 2 days. Initial tests resulted in an improved database performance by 30% in comparison to the fastest 32 bit processor architectures.

Successful trio: ABAS, MAXDATA and Linux

ABAS and the Marler server manufacturer MAXDATA can look back on many years of successful cooperation. Thus, it is no wonder that the porting of abas Business Software to the Intel Itanium 64 bit chip on a MAXDATA PLATINUM 9000-4R server took place. The new 64 bit architecture of the Itanium processor gives reason for a positive outlook in the future.

The porting of abas Business Software took place under the Linux Red Hat Advanced Server operating system. The Karlsruhe IT experts’ software can run under all Linux 64 bit distributions. ABAS is a Linux pioneer, and on the server-side increasingly uses Open Source software along with other operating systems. The combination of ABAS, MAXDATA and Linux stands for quality, service and the most modern technology with an excellent price/performance ratio. Great interest has been shown by abas Business Software users for the new 64 bit architecture. Numerous existing customers would like to migrate. Because there has been an increase in performance, ABAS now also anticipates an increase in the average installation size of abas Business Software.

Flexible business software for medium-sized businesses

The standard business software from ABAS is tailored especially to the requirements of the medium-sized business. It offers an effective IT based working medium giving production advantages and ensures transparency within the business. 1500 customers worldwide put their trust in the complete business solutions offered by ABAS. abas ERP supports all central business areas within the business, such as production/PPC/materials management/MRP, scheduling, purchasing and sales, as well as finance and financial accounting. Using the optionally integrated abas Web Application, cross-company business processes such as Internet shop, online order tracking, product catalog and the SCM applications can be implemented.

abas Web Applications enables businesses to use Internet applications around abas ERP, which is a real benefit for users and operators. For example, the ERP data is called up via the internet, or is entered into the ERP system through the internet. Further focal points for the ABAS Software AG and its partners is the optimization of business processes and business organization, the increase of the degree of utilization of an ERP system, and also the efficient and cost optimal ERP introduction. The efficiency of the ERP system in combination with a target-oriented introduction management, and a system environment organization, results in a high qualitative and quantitative added value for abas customers.