SHORT TAKES
PITNEY BOWES CHOOSES IBM
London, ENGLAND — IBM has announced that Pitney Bowes UK, the leading provider of informed mail and messaging management, has installed an IBM RS/6000 S80 server to run SAP R/3, an enterprise resource planning (ERP) software solution, at its UK headquarters in Harlow, Essex. IBM technology was chosen as the most effective platform to manage the latest version of SAP as well as ensuring the smoothest future configurations to support Pitney Bowes’ anticipated growth in Europe. The deal, worth almost GBP1m, was the result of a joint venture between IBM and Acuma, an IBM Business Partner Dave Wiggins, IT Director Pitney Bowes commented, “We are delighted with the change of processing platform which was completed in a weekend. SAP is at the core of our business processes so IBM’s role was absolutely key. The British, German, Irish and Swedish divisions are all run off one platform and the uniformly improved performance was immediate and sustained throughout June, a very busy month being the quarter end. The system provides the platform to roll out SAP to the rest of our European operations in France, Norway, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Austria and Finland.”
The S80 server, the most powerful pSeries 64-bit multi-processor system, will replace HP equipment and represents IBM?s largest installation for Pitney Bowes UK. The technology comprises one 12-way database server and two six-way servers, an Enterprise Storage Server (ESS) with 630 GB disk capacity and six drive tape library storing 330 tape cartridges. Terry Davies, Vice President Northern Region, IBM Webserver added, “Many businesses are discovering the value of having consistent, up-to-date data across the enterprise. We believe that the S80 is the ideal platform to support mission-critical and data-intensive ERP solutions in any sized organisation based on its scalability, flexibility and reliability. The S80 also offers the best of both worlds in terms of price and performance.”
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