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Tire manufacturer JK Tyre rolls faster with in-memory SAP HANA and HPE solutions

JK Tyre Blog.jpg

The Indian tire manufacturer has enjoyed 20-times faster reporting, among other benefits, since moving to its new SAP HANA platform with HPE hardware.

In-memory database platforms have emerged as crucial tools for supporting companies through periods of rapid growth, something SAP HANA customer JK Tyre knows all too well. As enterprise IT decision-makers, there's a lot you can learn from JK Tyre's experience. 

Considering new infrastructure needs

Let me paint the picture. The New Delhi-based tire manufacturer JK Tyre is a longtime SAP shop running core modules for sales, materials management, finance, production planning, plant maintenance, project systems, and more. It also has a BI platform built atop SAP's Business Objects software. Its operations are multinational, with 12 plants in India and Mexico churning out more than 35 million products per year.

If your company is in the manufacturing business, then you well know that it's an extremely complex industry, given the challenges of supply chains, shifting sourcing conditions, and ever-increasing pressure from the competition.

The continued success of a company like JK Tyre depends on reliable IT infrastructure that also evolves with the times, delivering improved reliability, better performance, and the ability to generate more insights into supply chain, manufacturing operations, and customer demands—both internal and external.

Making the right investment decision

But evolution in IT doesn't happen of its own accord. You've got to make important and sometimes risky decisions. To that end, JK Tyre decided to replace its underlying Oracle database with SAP's in-memory HANA database. Database migrations are rarely easy endeavors, but JK Tyre believed the risk was worth it, given SAP HANA's deep capabilities for both transaction and analytical processing. Moreover, SAP has positioned HANA as the focal point for all future application development. Adopting it is inevitable for any SAP customer committed to the long term.

The company had another question to ask itself: What to do about the underlying hardware? After all, its UNIX-based servers had been supporting the large SAP footprint well for nearly 10 years with minimal hiccups. In such a situation, you might be tempted to leave what's running well enough alone, for both budget and operational considerations. But the availability of new, high-memory appliances from HPE convinced JK Tyre to invest for the future.

JK Tyre wanted to get up and running quickly, so it selected three HPE ConvergedSystem 900 appliances for SAP HANA, which are preconfigured and tested before arriving at customer sites. JK Tyre is using a three-tier systems architecture, with one HPE CS900 box for production, another for failover, and a third for disaster recovery. It also helped that HPE has experience and market validation for the hardware's ability to work in conjunction with HANA, having been a launch partner when SAP first launched HANA in 2010. Ultimately, JK Tyre rolled out the solution in one month, keeping downtime to a minimum.

Surpassing previous speed limits

The resulting combination of HPE hardware and SAP HANA has provided a jolt of speed to JK Tyre's operations, reducing cycle times from five minutes to fewer than two minutes, while speeding up reporting by 20 times.JK Tyre case study.jpeg

Faster reporting has been a particular boost for JK Tyre, notes Deputy General Manager of IT Deepak Guptra. "Previously the sales teams were getting information with a one- to two-hour lag due to the sheer complexity of the supply chain and the number of SKUs we deal with," he says. "But using HANA live reporting means that we are now able to track month-end sales on a real-time basis."

JK Tyre has also been able to speed up month-end closes considerably and is now using SAP Fiori, which extends processes from core modules out to mobile devices.

It's a big deal to lift and shift a database platform while also undergoing a hardware refresh, but the results have been worth it for JK Tyre, which was an early mover on SAP HANA in its market category. The company cites its strong relationships with HPE and SAP as a key reason for success.

Investments are ultimately about outcomes. JK Tyre's project success is a great example of how the right combination of software and hardware investments can have a major impact on your company, while strengthening the bond between IT operations and the business side of the house. Guptra's teams are no doubt satisfied with results such as 20-times faster reporting, but you can bet there are happy customers in the C-suite, as well.

Envisioning your data center evolution

SAP HANA isn't the only in-memory database on the market, but that underscores my closing point. In-memory computing is here to stay and is delivering powerful results. That said, it requires investment in modern hardware to gain the most benefit. If you're not shopping for a solution now, then it may be just a matter of time, lest your company gets left behind.

Today, I'm happy to say that HPE holds a substantial lead in the market for SAP HANA hardware[i].  In a market where customers have plenty of hardware choices, we see this as a strong validation of our strategy. Trusted partnerships are key when making a move as substantial as JK Tyre's; consider HPE on top of your short list when making SAP HANA purchasing decisions, both for software implementation services and hardware. Already, some of the world's top retailers are using HPE hardware and SAP HANA to wrangle massive amounts of data and streamline their operations.

Read the complete case study for more insights on how JK Tyre prepares for the future with its new SAP HANA platform. And learn more about HPE ConvergedSystems for SAP HANA.

Download a copy of the May 2018 Gartner Research Note: What You Need to Know When Selecting a SAP HANA Server Vendor.  (Registration is required)

[i] What You Need to Know When Selecting an SAP HANA Server Vendor. Gartner, May 2018


 Meet Infrastructure Insights Blogger David Dichmann, Senior Product Marketing Manager, HPE. 

DavDavid Dichmann_HPE.jpegid focuses on the SAP HANA lifecycle and ecosystem for HPE solutions for SAP HANA. He was previously employed by SAP focusing on SAP HANA Enterprise Architecture tools. David has more than 30 years of industry experience in both technical and business roles, working with small, start-up, and established businesses.

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