IBM DB2 Gains New Enthusiasts in Search of Better Performance at Lower Cost

More than 100 SAP Clients Have Switched their Database Software to DB2 in Last Six Months

ARMONK, N.Y. - Hundreds of SAP clients are now reaping quantifiable benefits from moving to IBM’s (NYSE: IBM) DB2 database software to support their SAP business applications. With higher transactional performance, advanced analytics and lower cost, DB2 is becoming the preferred database software for business applications across all industries.

The pace of data growth is fueling the need for organizations to boost the speed at which they generate insights from their data and confidence that their decisions will yield the best outcomes. Companies across industries, such as manufacturing, healthcare and real estate, understand that operating without full knowledge of the information available to them means operating with blind spots. Industry leaders are looking to quickly gain access to greater depths of data -- and more cost-effective ways to synthesize that information -- more than ever before.

U.S.-based Coca-Cola Bottling Co. and Rossi Residencial of Brazil recently upgraded to the latest versions of SAP applications and switched to IBM DB2. These companies have been able to reduce their IT costs by 35 percent and improve efficiency by 65 percent while shifting their focus to delivering the business analytics capabilities needed to make smarter business decisions.

Coca Cola Bottling Co. Improves Efficiency by 65 percent
The second-largest bottler of Coca-Cola products in the U.S., Coca Cola Bottling Co. recently moved its implementation of the SAP ERP application to IBM DB2 from Oracle Database in order to derive greater performance and lower software and hardware costs. By choosing DB2, it reduced its storage needs by approximately 40 percent. In addition, the client drastically reduced the time of batch runs by more than 65 percent and in turn, improved its supply chain efficiency overall. The company expects significant savings over the next five years because of the value realized with IBM DB2.

Global Clients Turn to DB2 for Lowering Costs
Rossi Residencial, one of the leading engineering, construction and development groups in Brazil, also completed a switch recently to IBM DB2 for its implementation of SAP applications. Rossi Residencial had seen data volumes grow by up to 50 percent annually. This not only increased operational costs, but also decreased system performance. IBM DB2 optimized for SAP solutions allowed Rossi Residencial to gain a complete, accurate and up-to-date view of all its operations. DB2 deep compression also helped reduce data storage growth and lower operational costs.

“We concluded that Microsoft and other databases were too limited in terms of performance and security for what we were planning to do, so we needed to choose between Oracle Database and IBM DB2,” said Reginaldo Mobrizi, Chief Information Officer at Rossi Residencial. “We decided on DB2 mainly due to the partnership between SAP and IBM, and secondly because DB2 offers lower expected total maintenance costs.”

SAP and IBM are working together to ensure rapid support of the latest software in order to deliver maximum client value. As an example, SAP has already certified the recently available DB2 9.7 as a preferred platform for implementations of SAP applications. Integration of DB2 database administration and performance monitoring tools within SAP solutions results in ease of use that delivers reduced administration effort and cost. Clients that use DB2 for their SAP environments also benefit from deep compression technology, which reduces storage required in the range of 40 to 50 percent.

“Numerous clients worldwide running SAP applications on DB2 software have benefited from our collaborative relationship,” said Arvind Krishna, general manager of IBM Information Management software. “Many of the DB2 features that were jointly developed by IBM and SAP specifically for SAP environments have resulted in outstanding performance and lower costs for companies of all sizes.”

IBM DB2 helps clients lower costs and improve performance of more than just their SAP applications. An example is Neusoft, a Shenyang, China-based software company specializing in healthcare. Neusoft helps hospitals manage their patient information more effectively; helps doctors make accurate diagnoses; and maintains a public health information system to prevent and control the spread of disease.

“The latest release of DB2 9.7 and its Oracle Database compatibility features, drastically reduced the time it took migrating these critical core healthcare applications,” said Jian Yuankun, director of healthcare industry development for Neusoft. “It just took five days to move data from Oracle Database to DB2 9.7.” The original estimate was more than three months.

Since 2003, IBM DB2 on POWER Systems has demonstrated consistent performance leadership. DB2 uniquely holds the number one position in the online transaction processing (OLTP) (1), warehouse (2), and SAP standard application benchmarks. Recent results on the two-tier SAP Sales and Distribution (SD) Standard Application Benchmark showed that IBM DB2 running on a POWER 550 System delivered high performance of 3,752 SAP SD Benchmark users (3).

For more information, visit http://www.ibm.com/software/data/db2/sap/ and http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/information/sap-demo.html.