Content Services Switch improves productivity, giving 10,000 employees at hundreds of stores easy access to corporate Web portal and PeopleSoft applications.
Business Challenge
Managing growth and maintaining consistent business practices within a dynamic workforce creates unique challenges for retailers. With hundreds of stores spread across the U.S., one retailer set out to give all store employees access to more corporate information and the company's Oracle® PeopleSoft® enterprise applications. Success of the project-and the ability to offer consistent services to all employees-put increased focus on the application delivery solution and the company's Web portal. Human resources (HR) and other corporate information, messaging, and policy definitions would all be distributed through the Web site. The new intranet and the company's enterprise applications took on huge proportions for supporting all stores.
The retailer had previously deployed Oracle PeopleSoft applications for approximately 100 employees at the company's corporate offices. Oracle PeopleSoft applications support mission-critical functions including:
• Customer relationship management (CRM)
• Enterprise performance management
• Financial management
• Human capital management
• Service automation (project management)
• Supplier relationship management (procurement)
• Supply chain management
To give all company employees access to the PeopleSoft applications required extending the current deployment to more than 10,000 employees. Success would require efficiently scaling applications across the data center server farm, as well as optimizing delivery over the Web. The company also wanted to minimize disruptions to users by providing fault tolerance and high availability through the entire application infrastructure.
Ease of installation and management were critical requirements. The retailer also wanted a solution from a vendor that could provide the assistance and expertise required by the in-house IT team, and at the levels of excellence they had come to expect based on their experience with Cisco.
Cisco Application Networking Services Solution
Over the years, this retailer had established a very effective working relationship with Cisco. The retailer had equipped all stores with Cisco routers and switches, and the corporate campus uses Cisco 6500 Series and Cisco 3750s in an all-Cisco network that includes security solutions and wireless access. Success with previous Cisco deployments led the retailer to invite Cisco to demonstrate an application delivery solution for PeopleSoft. The Cisco platform, including a pair of Cisco 11501 Content Services Switches (CSSs), was deployed in the retailer's test environment. The retailer did competitive comparisons including evaluations of failover capabilities, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) off-load, and application availability features for PeopleSoft and other enterprise applications that would take advantage of the expanded Web portal.
"A corporate portal can provide cost-effective access to data center applications and information-but only if employees want to use it. Cisco Application Networking Services products provide the availability, scalability and acceleration required to enhance the overall online experience and compel employees to make optimal use of enterprise software and information resources."
-Doug Silverstein, Alliance Manager Cisco Systems
Any included product information should explain how the customer specifically benefited from the features of the Cisco products and underlying network. Do not describe so much what the technology or products can do in general because that information is available elsewhere in Cisco documentation.
The retailer chose Cisco Application Networking Services product CSS for its:
• Optimized user experience-An integrated, high-capacity application networking product allows off-loading SSL to improve the overall performance of the Web and application servers, helping to ensure the best experience possible for remote users.
• Higher performance with less consumed bandwidth-The Cisco CSS provides a high-capacity Web application (Hypertext Transfer Protocol, HTTP) compression module that improves application response times by 20 to 50 percent. This feature also off-loads compression from Web servers, which reduces server workload and decreases required WAN bandwidth.
• Application Availability-Session persistence or "Stickiness" for remote user sessions means that employee sessions are not disrupted even when the retailer's IT team changes Web back-end servers during normal business hours. This helps users and gives the corporate IT group maximum flexibility for making changes and adjusting to fast-changing user and corporate requirements.
The retailer has gained a very scalable solution, both in terms of keeping up with employee growth and the expansion of business software. Today, the current deployment supports about 10,000 active employees with capacity to grow.
Business Results
Cisco Content Services Switch helps the retailer achieve a more scalable business model, and enables the ability for enterprise applications to keep pace with the company's growth in stores, employees, and customers. A year after deployment of the solution, it has proven to be totally transparent to the business and has operated flawlessly. Other benefits have included:
• Proven ability to deliver excellent online experiences-The relatively small company portal has given the company confidence to extend the Cisco Application Networking Services solution to its customer-facing portal for online sales of their products.
• Improved support-The retailer gets quick answers to questions and resolutions to any support issues that arise. The Cisco solution integrates well into the retailer's data center architecture and the Cisco team has been able to effectively troubleshoot any issues. For example, a problem arose during the pilot deployment. The Cisco team was able to find the problem, which turned out to be a bug in a business software application.
"A corporate portal can provide cost-effective access to data center applications and data-but only if employees want to use it," says Doug Silverstein, alliance manager, Cisco Systems. "Cisco Application Networking Services provides the Web acceleration required to enhance the overall online experience and compel employees to make optimal use of enterprise software."
