Beiersdorf cuts costs and boosts resilience with IBM System z and DB2 for SAP software

Beiersdorf AG is a cosmetics group with headquarters in Hamburg, Germany. The company develops, manufactures and markets skincare and beauty products under a number of high-profile brands, including Nivea and Labello. It also owns a number of self-medication brands, including Elastoplast and Hansaplast. Employing more than 17,000 people, the group achieved sales of more than €5.1 billion in 2006, recording post-tax profits of €387 million.

Like many large companies, Beiersdorf relies on enterprise resource planning (ERP) software from SAP to manage many of its core business areas – including financing, cost controlling, human resources, materials management and production planning.

The group also uses the SAP Advanced Planning and Optimization (SAP APO) application, which provides sophisticated tools to manage Beiersdorf’s complex supply chains, and SAP Business Information Warehouse (SAP BW), which helps business users make timely management decisions based on precise analysis of the latest business data.

The SAP software environment for all 5,000 of Beiersdorf’s users is hosted and managed by the group’s IT and accounting services subsidiary, Beiersdorf Shared Services GmbH (BSS), as Dr. Winfried Sturm, Network and Technical Systems Manager at BSS, explains:

“Having a single SAP software environment for the entire group is a very cost-efficient model. It is easier to manage than a lot of decentralized systems, and it ensures that the whole company is using a standardized platform, which makes upgrading much simpler. More importantly, having a single repository for business data helps us gain insight into the business as a whole, with no need to collate information from each country or subsidiary.”

Supporting a growing business

As the business grew, BSS realized that its existing hardware environment was running out of capacity, and would not be able to handle planned upgrades to the SAP software environment.

“We intend to move to SAP ERP ECC 6.0 in the near future, and want to replace our existing SAP BW application with SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence (SAP NetWeaver BI) software,” says Dr. Sturm. “To support this move, we decided to upgrade our hardware infrastructure.”

BSS used eight Microsoft Windows 2003 servers for its SAP software environment, and was running the underlying DB2 database on IBM System z mainframes.

“We looked at many different solutions, but soon realized that the IBM System z was still the best platform for our needs,” says Dr. Sturm. “The new System z9 Enterprise Class (EC) offered us the performance and reliability we needed, at a value that other vendors just couldn’t match.”

BSS implemented a pair of System z9 EC mainframes, each with four standard processors and one System z Integrated Information Processor (zIIP) engine, designed specifically to handle DB2 workload more effectively – and at lower cost – than standard System z9 CPUs. The company plans to upgrade to three zIIP engines in each machine in the near future.

Building a resilient infrastructure

To hold the 13TB of compressed DB2 databases used by Beiersdorf’s SAP software environment, BSS also implemented a storage area network (SAN) based on two IBM System Storage DS8100s.

To aid disaster recovery, BSS operates two data centers in different buildings at its main Hamburg site; each contains one of the System z9 EC mainframes and one DS8100. In normal operation, the mainframes run in Parallel Sysplex with Integrated Coupling Facilities to share the workload, while the storage systems are mirrored using IBM System Storage DS8000 Metro Mirror technology. Should one of the data centers fail, the remaining z9 EC will use Capacity Backup Upgrade (CBU) to activate spare processors and take over the whole workload until the problem is remedied.

Extending the use of DB2

Beiersdorf had been using DB2 as its main database platform for some time, but had chosen to base its SAP BW environment on other database software, running on Intel-based servers. While choosing the new hardware environment, BSS began to reconsider this decision.

“At the moment, we’re using DB2 for our core SAP software environment and another database platform for SAP BW,” says Dr. Sturm. “But this is set to change. The zIIP engines offer such a cost-effective way of dealing with DB2 workload that we have already planned a migration of our SAP BW database to the IBM platform. We will go live with SAP NetWeaver BI and DB2 on the System z9 in 2008.

“DB2 also offers a real advantage in terms of data compression,” he adds. “Our databases are growing all the time, and it is important for us to keep storage costs to a minimum. DB2 helps us demonstrate that BSS is providing great value for the Beiersdorf group.”

Cost-effective, resilient solution

The combination of the advanced features of DB2 with the cost-effective zIIP engines in the new System z9 EC mainframes has provided Beiersdorf with an infrastructure that is highly cost-effective, without compromising on either resilience or reliability.

“We cannot afford downtime in our SAP software environment, so the excellent reliability of the System z9 platform is very important to us,” comments Dr. Sturm. “We haven’t had a single failure in over two years, neither with the z9 EC mainframes we have now, nor with the previous models. But the real advantage of the new infrastructure is that we have a robust disaster recovery solution – even if there is a failure in one data center, we won’t suffer any loss of production.”

Dr. Sturm estimates that the new solution will save Beiersdorf around
€1 million, through reductions in software and processor licensing costs – not to mention the potential savings through reduction in business risk.

“Saving money on the total cost of ownership is very important, and IBM really came through with an unbeatable offer,” he concludes. “But even more important is the ability to give our users continuous access to business-critical SAP applications and software, wherever they are in the world, 24x7. The combination of DB2, System z9, and the DS8100 storage system ensures that our SAP software environment is always ready to meet the demands of our business.”