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1 1 of 5 12/01/ :44 Offering Information Customer Reference Search> Global Value IBM Customer Reference Published 30 Mar 2004 Last updated/reviewed 30 Oct 2006 Solution synopsis Customer information Special handling instructions Business need Solution implementation Benefit of the solution Contact information Customer printable version Additional reference details Solution synopsis A European business solution provider reduces IT costs while improving performance and simplifying management by migrating its spare parts data warehouse to IBM DB2 UDB Enterprise Edition software running on a resilient IBM eserver pseries server Customer information Customer name: Global Value Location: Torino Italy Industry: Computer Services Geography: Southwest Europe Customer background: Formed in 1996, Global Value is a joint venture between IBM Italia, IBM Business Solutions and the Fiat Group, dedicated to providing business services to southern Europe. The multicompany accord offers the expertise of IBM Global Services - Integrated Technology Services, IBM Business Solutions and IBM Italia's Access Consulting Group, as well as the experience of a Fiat Group sector featuring Proxima Information Srl, Banca Intesa and SAP Italia Consulting. Global Value's industrial sector knowledge comes from the Fiat Group (part of which manufactures exclusive Italian automotive brands), and its Internet technology knowledge is supplied by IBM. In addition to its vast territorial coverage, these are the distinctive elements of this alliance. Capitalizing on these strengths, Global Value has become a leader in providing implementation, integration and support services for enterprise resource planning (ERP) platforms; an expert in customer infrastructure services for the operational management of hardware systems and data communications networks; a provider of custom application management solutions; and a key developer of e-business solutions. The company also Web-enables traditional applications for its customers, offering fresh solutions in an application service provider (ASP) model. Employing approximately 3,100 professionals and expecting 700 million in revenue for 2004, Global Value plans to offer a complete and wide range of services and solutions in the field of information and communication

2 2 of 5 12/01/ :44 technology. URL: Project start: 04/2003 Project end: 01/2004 Special handling instructions The customer has agreed to be a reference for sales situations. The status of any installation or implementation can change so you should always contact the IBM person named in the reference prior to discussing it with your customer. Any public use such as in marketing materials, on WWW sites, in press articles, etc. requires specific approval from the customer. It is the responsibility of the IBM person or any organization planning to use this reference, to make sure that this is done. The IBM account representative will, as appropriate, contact the customer for review. You should not contact the customer directly. Business need For the past several years, Global Value had been charged with the management of several of the Fiat Group's key applications. Included in these managed systems were the support applications for the Fiat Group's spare parts business. A joint venture between IBM and Fiat, Global Value had run these Common Business-Oriented Language (COBOL) applications from the car manufacturer's legacy IBM S/390 mainframe. The core data of the system was housed in an IBM DB2 database, while IBM Customer Information Control System (CICS) transactions provided the necessary application integration. In late 2002, however, an Oracle, Sun Microsystems and Accenture alliance approached the Fiat Group in a bold attempt intended to seduce the organization from its IBM standard. Although the Fiat Group had been completely satisfied with the performance of its applications on the IBM hardware, the alliance pointed out that key performance advantages could be obtained by migrating the applications associated with the parts business to a UNIX environment. The Fiat Group was clearly excited about the possibilities of a UNIX environment and began discussing with Global Value the necessary measures required to expand its environment to incorporate UNIX. Global Value, in turn, began searching for the best UNIX platform to offer its customer. Solution implementation Much to the chagrin of the alliance, Global Value chose to partner with IBM to provide the Fiat Group with a solution centered on IBM AIX. Global Value added two IBM eserver pseries 690 servers, running the AIX 5.2 operating system, to the Fiat Group's production environment. The systems were equipped to operate in a High Availability Cluster Multi-Processing environment, and the first of these pseries servers was selected to run the spare parts applications. Global Value ported the previous COBOL programs to MicroFocus COBOL to be used in conjunctions with IBM TXSeries integration software. In addition, the organization created AIX shells to provide backup and recovery capabilities for these mission-critical applications. The second pseries server acts as the data warehouse of the environment, with IBM DB2 Universal Database (UDB) Enterprise Edition V8.1 information management software chosen as the key platform. In addition to housing all data related to the spare parts business for Fiat Group's Italian branch, this system contains records for Fiat activities in over ten European countries. The new database instance was the product of a deep technical redesign of the previous database environment. The previous database environment, which had been running on the S/390 server, was composed of multiple databases. Rather than performing a one-to-one migration to the UNIX platform, Global Value chose to consolidate its data stores into a single location, with the previously separated databases being assigned to separate tablespaces in the new DB2 instance. Business Partner information:

3 3 of 5 12/01/ :44 Both SIOR and Accenture were active in porting the COBOL code and converting the underlying JCL scripts to AIX. Benefit of the solution Upon the completion of this project, both Fiat Group and Global Value noticed an immediate increase in application performance for both the spare parts applications and remaining core applications on the S/390 server. While recognizing an improvement in system efficiency by switching to the robust, reliable pseries and AIX platform, the Fiat Group has also experienced a reduction in overall information technology (IT) costs. Furthermore, by staying with the DB2 software standard, Global Value could retain application portability. The improved functionality of the environment is only bested by the simplified management. By choosing to go with a single hardware and software vendor, Global Value has been able to reduce the necessary resources to maintain the Fiat Group systems. Customer quote: "We started to work with DB2 UDB for AIX with this project, on the basis of a very good knowledge of DB2 for z/os. We have been pleased with DB2 UDB for AIX and the way it showed capable of holding a heavy workload as the one posed by the applications we have ported to it." --Nicoletta Guglielmotto, DBA Architect, Global Value Solutions/Offerings Hardware: System p: pseries running AIX 5, pseries 690 Software: Information Management: DB2 UDB Enterprise Edition, DB2 for AIX Contact information Contact information for this reference: L Walter Sartori Data Management Technical Sales IBM Div IS Italy Phone: Fax: Tie Line: Walter Sartori/Italy/IBM@IBMIT @it.ibm.com

4 4 of 5 12/01/ :44 Customer printable version This document describes IBM products and services used to solve IBM customer problems. Situations can and do change; therefore, you should always obtain approval from the IBM contact listed for this reference in the Worldwide Customer Reference Database before this document is shown to your customer. View customer printable version Additional reference details Competition: Accenture, Oracle IBM's offering was evaluated against a competing offering from an Oracle, Sun and Accenture alliance. Competitive winback: No Key factors that led to the IBM sale: IBM was able to beat the competition based on Global Value's confidence in IBM and IBM's ability to provide a single vendor solution. Sales approach: Fiat had almost signed an agreement to give the project to the alliance, but IBM, working closely with Global Value, moved quickly to provide Fiat with an alternate bid. In particular, IBM leveraged the advantages of staying within the DB2 family for the new UNIX platform. Since project timing was also a factor, IBM also emphasized the low risk of staying with IBM. Reference type: The following reference uses are ones which the customer was willing to do at the time of publication. This may or may not reflect the current situation. Reference in Proposal Other Hardware used in this solution: RS/6000 Other Software used in this solution: AIX Software Group Details: VERSION NUMBERS DB2 UDB Enterprise Edition for AIX V8.1 Information Management and Raw data size of total database in MB/TB: 250GB

5 5 of 5 12/01/ :44 Data Management Tools Details: Total quantity of users and quantity of concurrent users allowed: 1,000 Information Management Details: Data access tools (IBM and non-ibm): COBOL transaction programs Number of servers, SMP or SP nodes: One SMP node