In 2004, British Sugar decided to replace its mainframe-based ERP package with JDE One World, running on iSeries. One World, now running on an i5 system, supports British Sugar’s six manufacturing and two packaging sites which operate 24x7x365. With 300+ users, One World’s performance and availability is critical to the smooth running of the organization. Key to the success of this implementation was the ability to replicate the high availability of the mainframe environment without adding unacceptable system management overhead.

Part of Associated British Foods, British Sugar is the leading supplier of sugar to the UK market. The company produces an extensive range of sugars and sweetener blends which are represented in the leading brands of all the major global food and drink manufacturers.

Paul Morley, operations & infrastructure development manager, British Sugar, says: “British Sugar was one of the first companies in Europe to achieve a ‘lights out operation’ on the mainframe. Excellent system monitoring enabled the company to replace 20 operators working four shifts, with four people working during one prime shift.” With the move to iSeries, then i5, it was vital to achieve the same levels of high availability and the low cost of ownership. Having undertaken a thorough review of system management tools, British Sugar opted for the High Availability Suite from Halcyon Software.

“Lights out operation” typically implies a fully-automated computer room. However, another term of “lights dim operation” was also coined in the past, where there is automation of such tasks as message suppression, and people are still very much in charge. The phrase “lights out operation” seems to be one that’s slipped into the vernacular generally.

“The goal for any organisation is to limit the number of IT suppliers and products in use,” says Morley. “Achieving objectives with one skills set, one vendor relationship and no need for complex product interaction delivers a far lower cost of ownership and minimises operational risk.”

Richard Card, senior operations analyst, says, “Halcyon’s single product suite provides the complete monitoring and alerting, batch scheduling and message management solution British Sugar requires to achieve a lights out environment for the iSeries.”

The company also uses Halcyon’s Enterprise Console to provide colour-coded views of the iSeries performance. The console is used both by operations personnel to proactively manage the environment and, via a large plasma screen, by the help desk to improve the quality of service delivered to users. Alerts are also forwarded via SNMP to HP OpenView, British Sugar’s console for overall management.

In October 2005, British Sugar implemented new i5 hardware and opted to upgrade to Halcyon’s Operation Center product. “Operation Center provides British Sugar with the ability to see inside the iSeries. The more focused information available to the support team, the better the service delivered to the business. Potential problems can be identified before they occur and can be addressed to minimize business impact,” Morley says. “Furthermore, by ensuring the help desk is already informed of the system status, British Sugar can deliver far more proactive service and support to users across the business.”

With a large number of critical batch applications, including reports and daily sales updates, running overnight, the company is highly reliant on Operations Center. The combination of job scheduler and message manager ensures any out of hours problems are immediately notified to staff via text message.

“The system also highlights unexpected issues, such as long running tasks or those using more than a certain level of CPU, which is enabling the support team to take early action to avoid potentially serious problems,” says Card.

Since 2004, the company has undergone numerous upgrades and patches to both the iSeries and One World, many of which have required updates to the Halcyon product set. “Halcyon’s support is particularly impressive,” says Morley. “The company is always professional and responsive. Indeed, for British Sugar, Halcyon’s customer service ethos is as important as the product and has been an essential component of British Sugar’s smooth transition to the iSeries.”