Microsoft SQL Server
Customer Solution Case Study
Overview
Country or Region: Japan
Industry: Manufacturing—Chemical, rubber, and plastics manufacturing
Customer Profile
Based in Kobe, Japan, Sumitomo Rubber
Industries (SRI) manufactures tires, sporting goods, and industrial products.
It has 6,162 employees and its 2010 sales were ¥605 billion (U.S.$7.9 billion).
Business Situation
SRI needed to update its mission-critical infrastructure to help facilitate global expansion, cut costs, and increase efficiency. The existing solution included a mainframe and systems featuring HP
UNIX, Oracle, and Itanium processors.
Solution
Rather than upgrading its solution, SRI is migrating it to the Microsoft platform and NEC hardware with x86 processors.
Benefits


Will reduce costs by up to 50 percent
Can facilitate innovation and faster

 development
Speeds required infrastructure update
Expects to boost efficiency and competitiveness
Mr. Hideaki Koga, General Project Manager, IT Planning Department,
Sumitomo Rubber Industries
Sumitomo Rubber Industries (SRI), Ltd., is a manufacturer that operates 16 companies including Goodyear Dunlop. To increase global competitiveness, SRI decided to migrate 21 missioncritical systems to the Microsoft platform from Oracle database software, the HP UNIX (HP-UX) operating system, HP Itanium servers, and a mainframe. The new solution, which includes 1 terabyte of data, includes Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2
Enterprise, Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise, and x86 NEC servers. With its new infrastructure, SRI will eliminate data silos, virtualize servers, facilitate business intelligence, and speed the implementation of required IT changes. As a result, SRI expects to cut licensing costs by 50 percent and hardware costs by 30 percent. The company also plans to increase innovation and efficiency, accelerate development, and improve its ability to compete globally.

Mr. Hideaki Koga, General Project
Manager, IT Planning Department,
Sumitomo Rubber Industries
Situation
Founded in 1909, Sumitomo Rubber
Industries (SRI), Ltd., manufactures tires and other rubber products such as sporting goods and industrial equipment. The manufacturing conglomerate employs more than 6,000 people and operates 16 global companies including Goodyear
Dunlop.
To help facilitate success in the face of intensifying global competition and changing business demands, SRI is implementing several new business plans.
One initiative focuses on the development of earth-friendly products such as tires developed with non-petroleum-based materials. Another seeks to lessen any negative environmental impact resulting from tire manufacturing. A third includes the expansion of the company’s international businesses, especially in Brazil,
Russia, India, and China.
IT executives recognized that the company’s computing infrastructure needed to be updated to help achieve fiveyear and ten-year goals mandated by the new business plans. For example, to help facilitate international growth and lessen the company’s impact on the environment,
SRI wanted to consolidate server computers and standardize IT.
To date, subsidiaries and departments used stand-alone data silos that ran almost exclusively on HP Itanium servers, the
Hewlett-Packard UNIX (HP-UX) operating system, and Oracle database software. The infrastructure also included an NEC mainframe and custom applications developed with Java. The unconnected infrastructure hindered growth and innovation because employees could not easily share information stored in disparate data structures. IT personnel also duplicated effort maintaining similar but separate systems. Likewise, developers could not easily share innovative ideas because teams lacked a standardized development framework.
In addition, the solution’s high costs and use of previous-generation Itanium processors were becoming obstacles. “The expense of our Oracle solution was growing exponentially, and this was a longstanding problem that we needed to overcome,” says Mr. Hideaki Koga, General
Project Manager, IT Planning Department, at SRI.
By implementing a standardized IT infrastructure throughout the enterprise,
SRI could reduce data-center requirements, streamline processes, reduce expenses, and improve collaboration between business units. At the same time, by replacing its
Itanium server computers with nextgeneration 64-bit systems, the company could boost hardware performance and protect investments by developing on a platform that offered long-term support.
Despite the potential benefits of a new IT solution, the company’s culture tended to see IT as an indirect cost that was difficult to link directly to business returns. To gain consent for a new solution, IT executives needed to explain how changes to the existing infrastructure could facilitate a measurable return on investment. To do so,
IT executives established a four-phase solution plan:

The first phase includes the consolidation of storage and server hardware by implementing virtual servers wherever
 possible.
The second phase involves standardizing all database software to facilitate data sharing and process integration between departments.

Mr. Hideaki Koga, General Project
Manager, Sumitomo Rubber Industries


The third phase implements a uniform development environment to facilitate greater data sharing and code reuse.
The final phase establishes a master data model across the enterprise.
“After establishing the four phases, we positioned the new solution as the
‘business-restructuring infrastructure for the whole company,’” explains Mr.
Masahide Kittaka, Manager in the IT
Planning Department at Sumitomo Rubber
Industries. “By doing so, we were able to demonstrate the necessity of a new IT solution in helping to achieve business goals.”
In September 2009, SRI decided to update its mission-critical infrastructure to support server virtualization, improve data insight, and streamline processes.
Solution
IT personnel began an extensive evaluation of database technologies including
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 data management software. “Traditionally, it was common sense to build high-load-bearing systems on the UNIX platform,” says Mr.
Koga. “However, we found that the combination of Windows Server and SQL
Server delivers mission-critical performance and is very affordable. For those reasons,
SQL Server looked very attractive.”
Engineers who were handling IT operations and the construction of the new solution— from SRI and third-party SRI Systems— showed some resistance to migrating from
Oracle to SQL Server. “When considering
SQL Server as a standardized platform that could help us integrate and virtualize servers, I knew that SQL Server would be a low-cost solution that would also be easy to understand,” says Mr. Takayuki Ishida,
Technical Manager of the IT
Implementation Office at SRI Systems.
“However, migration to a completely different platform is difficult, and it is impossible to predict what types of problems there could be. My true feeling at the time was that I didn’t want to change platforms.”
What overcame this resistance was the insight provided through an assessment and training session conducted by third parties NEC and Insight Technology in
September and October of 2010. SRI engaged NEC and Insight Technology to conduct the assessment to clarify the level of difficulty and cost of migrating from
Oracle to SQL Server. In addition, the assessment would establish the performance level of the proposed
Microsoft solution. “We chose the highest load-bearing system for the assessment, which is the dealer management system used by retail tire stores,” says Mr. Ishida.
The system includes 1 terabyte of data.
Meanwhile, engineers from SRI and SRI
Systems attended classes to better understand the capabilities of the Microsoft platform. “Consultants set up a training session for us that did a lot more than just simply outline the merits of SQL Server,” says Mr. Masaki Nishimoto, Assistant
Manager of the Business Partner
Department at SRI Systems. “We learned about SQL Server from an Oracle user’s perspective. For example, consultants explained the differences between Oracle and SQL Server using Oracle terminology.”
Consultants also provided comparative information about the Microsoft development environment, product life cycles, and support programs in relation to other offerings including Oracle and opensource products such as PostgreSQL.
During the training sessions, IT personnel learned about the seamless compatibility between the Microsoft platform and

Mr. Masahide Kittaka, Manager, IT
Planning Department, Sumitomo Rubber
Industries applications developed with Java. “I was surprised that we could use SQL Server as a database for our Java applications,” says
Mr. Nishimoto. “For SQL Server, I had assumed that the appropriate technology for developing applications was ASP.NET.
Finding out that we could use Java with
SQL Server was a major bonus.”
Based on information from the assessment and training sessions, SRI saw that it could reduce software license costs by ¥88 million
(U.S.$1 million) in five years just by migrating its dealer management system to the Microsoft platform. “We decided to migrate our mission-critical infrastructure from HP-UX and Oracle to Windows Server and SQL Server because it could deliver superior cost performance,” says Mr. Koga.
Mr. Ishida adds, “The assessment tests revealed extremely good performance results, and so any resistance to migrating to SQL Server disappeared.”
In December 2010, IT personnel established a roadmap to implement the new solution.
In addition to migrating databases to the
Microsoft platform, the company would replace its Itanium server computers with
64-bit hardware from NEC that feature x86 processors, and virtualize servers wherever possible. Engineers would also develop all new software with the Microsoft .NET
Framework or Java.
In January 2011, the company migrated a
SAP system from Oracle to the Microsoft platform including the Windows Server
2008 R2 operating system and SQL Server
2008 R2. IT personnel also took advantage of Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Analysis
Services to begin building a business intelligence (BI) solution that will give employees in every division fast and comprehensive insight into corporate data.
In 2012, IT personnel will begin to migrate additional systems to SQL Server 2008 R2
Enterprise and Windows Server 2008 R2
Enterprise—including the NEC mainframe and 20 systems running HP-UX and Oracle.
To help facilitate the process, IT personnel will use the SQL Server Migration Assistant for Oracle. In 2012, the company also plans to extend its use of the Microsoft platform by replacing IBM Lotus Notes—currently used by employees to facilitate electronic communication—with Microsoft Office 365.
SRI expects to migrate the majority of its mission-critical systems to the Microsoft platform by 2016.
Benefits
By moving its mission-critical infrastructure to the Microsoft platform, SRI expects to cut licensing expenses by as much as 50 percent, facilitate innovation, streamline development, accelerate required infrastructure changes, increase efficiency, and boost competitiveness.
Will Reduce Costs by up to 50 Percent
By 2016, SRI will reduce the amount of money it spends on software licenses by 50 percent. Mr. Koga explains, “Until now, we had a dedicated server computer and software licenses for each system, which was quite expensive. By migrating our mission-critical systems from Oracle to the
Microsoft platform, we are expecting to reduce our software licensing costs by $1 million.”
SRI also plans to reduce its hardware footprint by 50 percent with virtualization.
“As a result of migrating to Windows Server
2008 R2 and SQL Server 2008 R2, and consolidating servers with virtualization technologies, we anticipate a 30 percent reduction in hardware costs,” says Mr.
Kittaka.

Mr. Takayuki Ishida, Technical Manager,
IT Implementation Office, Sumitomo
Rubber Industries
Can Facilitate Innovation and Faster
Development
Engineers at SRI are enthusiastic about how the new solution can help facilitate strategic business goals. Mr. Ishida reflects,
“Until now, developers have worked independently on systems that support tire-related business processes and were unable to collaborate as a team. If one department or division invested time and energy into designing and implementing a new solution, the new capability was not always incorporated into the systems at other divisions—and so, in a sense, there was a loss of ideas and innovation.”
With its new solution, engineers can use existing skills to develop software with Java and take advantage of innovative capabilities in the .NET Framework. In addition, SRI can boost collaboration between IT personnel throughout the enterprise. “By migrating to a unified infrastructure on the Microsoft platform, we can implement a standardized framework for application development so that we can better share ideas and increase innovation.”
Speeds Required Infrastructure Update
The company’s choice to migrate its systems to a new platform rather than update its UNIX and mainframe environment helps SRI implement its new business plans. For example, by deploying a
Microsoft solution, SRI saves money and lessens its impact on the environment with capabilities such as virtualization. In addition, the new solution is easy to implement so that the company can accomplish business goals on schedule. Mr.
Ishida says, “We have found that it would take about the same amount of work to upgrade our Oracle solution to the next version as it would to migrate our databases to SQL Server.”
Elaborating on this point, Mr. Keiichi
Tanaka, Senior Leader of the Business
Partner Department at SRI Systems, says,
“With SQL Server Migration Assistant for
Oracle, we can migrate our databases to
SQL Server without any trouble. In the future, as we migrate databases with large and complex structures to the Microsoft platform, we plan to take advantage of all of the capabilities in SQL Server to improve database structures and speed performance.”
Expects to Boost Efficiency and
Competitiveness
As IT personnel migrate previously isolated databases into more open, enterprise systems that run on SQL Server, SRI can increase its ability to compete globally. For example, as SRI moves more data out of silos and into databases that use common structures, people can more easily access the information they need, collaborate with others throughout the enterprise, and improve efficiency. “Establishing data integrity and improving data insight are vital goals of our new IT infrastructure,” says Mr. Kittaka. “Once we finish consolidating data in SQL Server and implementing our new enterprisewide BI solution, we will realize the true worth of our standardization on the Microsoft platform.”

For More Information
For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft
Sales Information Center at (800) 426-
9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft
Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-
2495. Customers in the United States and
Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone
(TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234.
Outside the 50 United States and
Canada, please contact your local
Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to: www.microsoft.com
For more information about Insight
Technology products and services, call
(81) (3) 5524-2259 or visit the website at: www.insightech.co.jp/english/index.html
For more information about NEC products and services, call (214) 262-
2000 or visit the website at: www.necam.com
For more information about SRI Systems products and services, call (732) 326-
5888 or visit the website at: www.srisystemsinc.com
For more information about Sumitomo
Rubber Industries products and services, call (81) (72) 65-3004 or visit the website at: www.srigroup.co.jp/english/
Microsoft Server Product
Portfolio
For more information about the Microsoft server product portfolio, go to: www.microsoft.com/servers
Software and Services


Microsoft Server Product Portfolio
− Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise
− Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2
Enterprise
Technologies
− Microsoft .NET Framework
− Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2
Analysis Services

Services
− Microsoft Office 365
Partners

Insight Technology


NEC
SRI Systems
This case study is for informational purposes only.
MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Document published February 2012