The Challenge
Australia's largest food retailer has been serving
customers across the country for 77 years. The
supermarket group includes more than 15 store
brands. The organization has over 2,000
stores across the country and employs over 130,000
Australians. In fact, one in every 100 Australians
is employed by this retailer.
Coordinating sales data from every store is a
massive undertaking. From one central office, the
retailer manages point of sale (POS) activity,
including daily sales, in-store stock levels, price
changes and weigh scale information, by a network of
several thousand servers located in individual
stores across Australia.
The Situation
The
food store chain was in need of a solution that
would automatically monitor changes in database
files and transfer newly updated files to the home
office and visa versa. The accurate and prompt
exchange of updated files was needed to ensure that
both the servers in the stores and home office
management had the most up-to-date information
available to manage the stores.
Additionally, company IT staff members were
searching for a product that would help them manage
their growing number of servers. Each of the stores has at least one server that communicates
with the home office. IT staff were in need of a
product that would monitor system log files and
critical events, execute data backups and notify
them at headquarters if any errors were detected on
the disparate servers.
The Solution
The
company decided to try Opalis automation
software at the suggestion of Information Gateways (IG),
an integrator based in Sydney, which exclusively
distributes Opalis Software in Australia.
The senior Windows Server specialist
for the food retailer said, “After testing the
flexible power of Opalis, it was quickly
determined that the software was one of a suite of
products that was up to the challenge. We are
currently rolling out the installation of Opalis at all of our food stores and we have
plans to expand the project to every store.” The
software is now installed on more than 1,000 servers.
Opalis monitors for changes in database files
at each store at which it is installed. When a
change in these files is detected, Opalis automatically detects the change and initiates a
third party file transfer mechanism which sends the
information via a permanent ISDN connection file to
the company’s headquarters.
The Benefits
Opalis now automates fifteen to twenty
different routine server management jobs on
individual servers at over 1,000 supermarkets and
stores, and
the project will grow to potentially many more
servers.
Opalis has also proven itself from a cost
standpoint. “By using Opalis, we have kept our
total cost of ownership low. Without it we would
need far more man-hours, and correspondingly more
staff, dedicated to the management of our servers
across the country,” concluded the senior Windows
Server
specialist.
Software:
OpalisRobot running on Windows NT 4.0 or Windows
2003 Servers
Intel Processors
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