B2bfrica recently upgraded its Sun Microsystems infrastructure to meet increasing demand on its Ariba business-to-business (B2B) electronic procurement system.
A wholly owned Transnet subsidiary, b2bafrica is a supply chain solutions company focusing on the enablement of Internet solutions in the logistics and procurement environment. Its Ariba e-marketplace processes all Transnet's internal B2B procurement transactions, with purchases valued at R50 million per month going through the system.
Because of increased demand on the e-marketplace, b2bafrica recently procured and installed a clustered, three-tier environment comprising SunFire V1280 database servers, V480 application servers and Sun's blade technologies at the Web and small application tiers.
"This environment was replicated in a clustered Quality Assurance and test/development environment to ensure that system updates for the operating systems, database and applications could be thoroughly tested before live deployment," says Alkis Flemetakis, account manager at Sun Microsystems SA.
"Sun emerged as the platform of choice owing to its ability to handle the incredibly high number of users that concurrently access the Ariba platform," says Asgarali Mia, CIO at b2bafrica. He says the platform supports anything from 400 to 1 000 concurrent users at any time.
With procurement for the entire Transnet group going through the Ariba application, Mia notes that security and reliability are absolutely vital to the organisation. "We opted for the Solaris Unix-environment because of its inherent security and better uptime than any other platform," he says.
Full Java compatibility was also a prime requirement for b2bafrica. "Sun is the supplier of Java, so we have every confidence that the latest Java releases will be compatible on the Sun server platform," he says.
Because b2bafrica uses the Sun application layer, including Sun Web server and database clustering, skills can be replicated across its technology platform.
"We already have the in-house skills to support Sun products, and to date we haven't experienced any downtime at all with our existing Sun servers," he says.
According to Flemetakis, b2bafrica needed a platform that was reliable, robust and scaleable. "As an existing Sun customer, and with most Ariba implementations around the world running on our hardware, it made sense for b2barica to stick with a proven platform. The Sun solution also beat the competition in a price/performance comparison, offering better value for money," he says.
Furthermore, the V1280 offers clustering capability and a compact design, with the power of 12 processors in a small chassis. "This leaves the door open for b2bafrica to grow its environment on demand to cater for future expansion," he adds.
Sun direct channel partner Orcom, which supplied the equipment for the entire first phase of the project, says the V1280 was selected after a rigorous evaluation procedure that included gauging support and maintenance costs. "Ultimately, the V1280 was selected on the basis of the headroom it offers for further expansion," says Diana Boytcheve, channel account manager at Orcom.
Solution provider arivia.kom also played a pivotal part in the project, with its highly skilled Unix team providing invaluable knowledge and support.
Launched in the first quarter of this year, the 12-way SunFire V1280 has recorded numerous successes in the South African market. It offers class-leading price/performance, while delivering mainframe reliability and features such as hot-swappable components and binary compatibility.
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Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision -- "The Network Is The Computer" -- has propelled Sun Microsystems, Inc (Nasdaq: SUNW) to its position as a leading provider of industrial-strength hardware, software and services that make the Net work. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the World Wide Web at http://www.sun.com.
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