Gas turbine manufacturer Mitsubishi Power Systems (MPS) needed to improve its remote monitoring system by making it accessible over the Web. They replaced their Microsoft system with a new one based on a combination of Oracle and Sun technology.

The old system was based on a Windows NT platform that had flat files only and no relational database. Other shortcomings were its limited scalability, minimal searching functionality and inaccessibility over the Web.

MPS selected Oracle 8i, Oracle Customer Relationship Management software and custom applications for remote monitoring vision with access to applications and data from any browser with the necessary security clearance. MPS also chose Sun FireTM servers and Sun StorEdgeTM devices, including a pair of clustered Sun FireTM 4800 servers, another pair of Sun FireTM 280R servers, Sun StorEdgeTM T3 disk arrays and a Sun StorEdgeTM L1000 tape library.

The Sun Fire 4800 servers run the Oracle 8i database. Clustering is accomplished through a combination of SunTM Cluster 3.0 software, which offers improved availability and scalability, and an Oracle Parallel Server. Two servers provide off-site disaster recovery. Sun Services provides service for the system under the SunSpectrum PlatinumSM support plan.

The MPS project engineer, Brian Hollar stated, "Sun got off to the right start by sending in a team who did a superb job of explaining Sun's long term strategy, and what a strategy it is -- one processor family, one operating environment, and binary compatibility up and down the product line. Sun's scalability allows us to easily add power to the system by adding memory and processors, even new CPUs with higher clock speeds. Adding up those advantages, we could see that with Sun our investment would be protected for the foreseeable future."

"The final and very important factor that influenced the decision to go with Sun was the company's close relationship with Oracle," Hollar added. "We did quite a bit of research that made it clear how closely the two firms work together to satisfy the needs of their joint customers."

Other goals of the new system included improving customer service by connecting the system to the call center so employees could help customers with up-to the-minute answers. The system also gathered data and warehoused it for future use such as increasing uptime and improving inventory management.

"Our new Sun-based remote monitoring system is an important competitive differentiator for MPS," said Hollar. "We feel our system has a lot of unique strengths and our customers seem to agree, given all the interest it has generated."

Read More ...

		fullsource
Print Email Current Profile Archive Blog Generate newsletter