CARREFOUR v1.4 - IDG

Customersolution ata glanceHP hardware• HP Integrity rx8620 servers• HP StorageWorks EnterpriseVirtual Array (EVA) 8000HP services• HP Mainframe Migration Centreof Excellence (MMCOE)Overhaul of the business support infrastructureIn 2005, the support infrastructure for the majority ofthe core business applications depended on a systembased on a Unisys mainframe. Management haddecided to analyse the situation with a view todefining an infrastructure overhaul project. The oldmainframe restricted Carrefour to a single supplier andalso limited the communication with other newerapplication technology platforms. Managementdecided to harmonise the technologies and torationalise the data centre in order to optimisecorporate governance, opening up opportunities forfuture development.“We decided to migrate to open environmentsbecause our mainframe was proprietary: although itwas a high performance machine and completelyappropriate to our needs, it was not in very commonuse. Continuous company growth resulted in theproliferation of various satellite systems – and the moreof these systems there were, the more integrationproblems we faced.”Debora Guma, technology manager, InformationSystems Division, Carrefour Group ItaliaAs a result of years of acquisitions and expansion, thedata-processing landscape was fragmented,consisting of various computer systems in variousbusiness divisions, and was characterised by anheterogeneous application map. The mainframehosted the company’s key applications: asset/liabilitycycle; management of sales items and data registries;as well as part of supply-chain activities. Thecompany’s dynamic growth, as well as volumeincreases in terms of both sales outlets and newapplications, had given rise to solutions developed inMicrosoft and UNIX environments around the Unisysmainframe, which was the heart of Carrefour’sinformation system. As far as the essential corebusiness applications were concerned, the UNIXsystems predominated.“We are a retail operator and our processes aretherefore sophisticated and complex, in terms ofboth type and number. Some of the applicationshad already been written in language that exploitedmore moderate technologies and were thereforeeasier to manage, while others dated back as far asthe early 1980s and, even if they respondedperfectly well to our business needs, they wereoutdated from the point of view of corporategovernance and therefore created considerablemanagement difficulties.”Gabriella Bossi, applications development manager,Information Systems Division, Carrefour Group ItaliaThere were two alternatives, to re-engineer or to rehost.Given the quantity of applications, re-engineering ofthe procedures would have required a great deal oftime. In addition, it would have necessitated a generaloverhaul of processes, which was not a companypriority at the time. The rehosting project was thereforethe most appropriate solution, although it did meanthat the IT division was then faced with a majorundertaking that involved all of the most strategicoperative systems.