Managed service for hosting & supporting Coda, Infor BPCS, SAP & associated hardware

Managed services & support for legacy SAP, Infor BPCS & IT infrastructure

A leading global producer of industrial minerals and a worldwide distributor of chemical products, our client’s presence extends to over 50 countries and its products are marketed to the paper, plastics, paints, adhesive, construction, agriculture and pharmaceutical industries.

Following the successful completion of a global SAP implementation, the client was left with a number of inactive legacy enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems based in different geographical locations across the globe. Our client was faced with a requirement to preserve the legacy ERP archive of chemical products, supply chain and financial data but wished to avoid the challenges of retaining legacy skills and managing changing local (geographical) legislative requirements. The organisation required a multi-vendor ERP data archiving solution capable of being accessed by any of their global sites.

As well as legislative compliance and skill retention, the client wanted to reduce the cost of retaining archive instances of multiple legacy ERP instances (and different ERP systems) based at different geographic locations around the globe.

Proximity delivers IBM i / AS400 ERP Software Managed Services

Proximity were selected to provide a managed service for hosting and supporting Coda, Infor BPCS and SAP archive systems and provisioning the associated IT infrastructure. Our application and IBM i infrastructure skills and experience proved to be fundamental in the selection process.

Additionally, Proximity’s accreditation as the only partner in the UK and Ireland for Infor LX and BPCS, confirmed Proximity as the partner of choice.

Within the project scope, we provided an ERP archive solution across IBM i and Linux platforms capable of being accessed on an ad hoc basis from any global site. All associated hardware and ERP archive applications are hosted in the UK at a secure, manned data centre providing the client with access to the archive information.

The scope of the client requirement, in terms of availability (24 x 7, to accommodate international time zones and multiple work patterns) and workload (a widely varying but potentially large concurrent user community) demanded a highly available, resilient offering.

To ensure all the sites from the different countries could co-exist on the same single hardware and infrastructure environment, Proximity undertook a Global System Planning exercise. This initial exercise meant that the migration of data and systems required minimal resources and was achieved within short timescales.

Proximity provides a single contract and a single point of contact for both operational and non-routine support requirements, administered through our HelpDesk.

The client has benefited from:

• Reduced Total Cost of Ownership for retaining multiple archive instances of the legacy ERP systems
• A secure, available and reliable service accessed by the client from geographically dispersed sites across the globe
• Skilled and experienced team to support legacy SAP, Infor BPCS and IT infrastructure, releasing IT staff to focus on delivering the IT strategy for the business
• Enterprise class solution using best in class architectures and technologies from leading vendors.