Fr"ankische Rohrwerke improves the flow with Vision Solutions` ORION

German-based Fr"ankische Rohrwerke (FRW) produces tubes and pipes for a range of industries including automotive, heating and sanitary engineering, and drainage/underground engineering. The company uses state-of-the-art technology for its manufacturing operations, employs more than 1 300 people, and produces more than 1.5 million metres of corrugated pipe every day on over 250 production lines.

As FRW grew, it became increasingly dependent on its IT infrastructure. This was especially true for its ordering, storage and delivery process, which relied on an IBM eServer iSeries 830 system and multiple PC servers.

For backup and recovery, the company was using a proprietary solution, which could not meet its target of recovering from unplanned system downtime within 60 minutes. Overnight backups were resulting in a four-hour downtime for servers, which meant systems were unavailable to the US offices after 6pm, a major business interruption.

Stefan Wagmann, Head of Computing at Fr"ankische Rohrwerke, explains: "As an automotive factory supplier, fast recovery from unscheduled downtime was critical. If we failed to deliver orders on time, we incurred penalty payments of $1 million. This would seriously damage our supplier status and result in the loss of around 25% of our business."

Fr"ankische Rohrwerke implemented Vision Solutions` high availability solution ORION for iSeries. ORION is a multi-platform information availability solution, designed to enhance productivity and guarantee continuous availability of data.

"What we liked most about ORION was that it offers us one administration software for all three operating systems: IBM OS/400, Windows and Linux," explains Wagmann. "ORION`s multiplatform capability results in low administration costs as we don`t have to pay for different training courses and talk to three different manufacturers when setting up systems or solving problems."

All changes to the primary servers are replicated to the backup servers using ORION software. Planned and unplanned downtime scenarios have been intensively tested and documented on this multiplatform, high availability software solution.

ORION is designed to enhance productivity by managing disaster recovery, high and continuous availability, as well as data integration needs all from a single consolidated graphical user interface. It is built on Java/XML engine-based component architecture, so companies have the flexibility to `plug-in` key components according to their specific availability needs. This eliminates the costs and time associated with implementing a new solution.

Wagmann considered three principal vendors for the high availability solution, and selected ORION principally because of its multiplatform support, the potential reduction of administrative costs, and the ability to tailor the software to meet Fr"ankische Rohrwerke`s needs.

"The systems we considered have different approaches: you can map entire processes or single database transactions. Mapping the complete process would have meant rebuilding our complete application suite software to achieve this, a costly and time-consuming exercise. With ORION, we were able to build a solution that maps the transaction after its commit [end]. By having flexible software able to meet our exact business demands, we have a cost-effective, high-availability solution that is right for Fr"ankische Rohrwerke," says Wagmann.

The company estimates there are more than 170 million database record changes in every 24 hours of operation, every one of which is mirrored by the ORION software with no interruption to business systems.

ORION offers multiple levels of replication integrity, checking byte for byte that the data being replicated is identical on both the source and target servers, so that a transition from one system to another is absolutely seamless. The underlying technology is designed to manage the entire range of activities from simple file updates to complex applications. It also includes intelligent technology to analyse conditions that might pose a risk to the integrity of the data being replicated, and automatically correct those conditions to ensure guaranteed information reliability.

"This was a particularly challenging project for our multinational team as we were the first ORION customer in Europe and only the third worldwide," says Wagmann. "IBM Global Services, the local IBM business partner PROFI, and Vision Solutions collaborated to produce a right-first-time solution for Fr"ankische Rohrwerke.

"The result is a solution that delivers outstanding availability for our critical business systems, keeps our administrative costs low, and helps us keep our competitive-edge," concludes Wagmann.

"ORION`s multiplatform capability results in low administration costs as we don`t have to pay for different training courses and talk to three different manufacturers when setting up systems or solving problems."