Beaverton, OR — Budgens, operator of around 180 small supermarkets and convenience stores, has invested over GBP 700,000 in Sequent Computer System’s powerful NUMA-Q 2000 enterprise servers and professional services as part of an overhaul of its core retail online transaction processing (OLTP) and accounts systems. The contract represents the largest ever spend in a single order for Budgens’ IT department. Budgens has been a Sequent customer for over 10 years and is upgrading to NUMA-Q 2000 from Sequent’s Symmetry range.
Budgens has chosen to upgrade to NUMA-Q 2000 as a result of growth and expansion into the petrol station forecourt market. Garry Barr, IT manager at Budgens explained, “We initially selected Sequent for their excellent reputation for removing risk. The scalability of the Sequent server architecture and low upgrade costs also attracted us. NUMA-Q 2000 provides us with the increased processing power we require for today’s forecourt developments and will allow us to cope with the ever increasing needs in the future.” He added, “We are confident that Sequent’s professionalism and impeccable service will ease the logical step into this relatively new technology.”
Paul Kelly, UK managing director at Sequent added, “Budgens is a long established and valued Sequent customer. We see the decision to upgrade to NUMA-Q 2000 as an endorsement of Sequent’s technology and of our relationship with Budgens. The scalability of NUMA-Q means that the system will continue to grow with them, which in turn will strengthen our relationship into the future.”
Transactions registered in Budgens stores using electronic point of sale (EPOS) are transmitted to the company’s centralised retail system, where orders are married for distribution. All software packages are integrated onto a single quad NUMA-Q 2000 server which runs the core retail system, including distribution, order processing and accounts. A secondary quad is used for research and development with a view of a data warehouse to supply merchandising, accounts and management information and third party reports.
Budgens will continue to use the Symmetry system for the next 2-3 months, but users are expected to switch over fully to NUMA in the autumn. In the future Budgens is looking to deploy an NT/Unix environment on the same system using Sequent’s multi operating system NUMACenter, thus reducing the need for a stand-alone system.