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CIO■
According to Henry, SerCom SerCom uses the open source
develops and enhances MySAP software Nagios.org as its moni-
ERP on an ongoing basis and he toring tool. A useful feature,
frequently refers to its flexibility Henry says, is the facility for
as a key attribute. His team looks sending text message alerts to the
at new processes on a monthly team in the event of an outage or
basis and must integrate them about an issue that needs to be
within SAP very soon after, in addressed. “Around the periph-
some cases, this is stipulated in ery, such as network monitoring
service-level agreements with tools, helpdesk applications or
customers. He recalls one client document management systems,
in the consumer electronics sec- we’re using a number of open
tor recently asking SerCom to source tools and we’re delighted
provide distribution services cov- with how well they’re working for
ering the Americas from a base us. At the coalface of delivering
in Chicago. “Part of that commit- the business day-to-day needs we
ment was, can we be live in eight have exclusively commercial
weeks? Without our internal products, such as SAP, and I don’t
team and without SAP, the envisage that changing, but open
answers to these questions source has been good to us and we
become no, and we’re in the busi- tinker around the edges,” says
ness of saying yes,” Henry states. Henry.
Other sites have gone live in sim- “We run all of our enterprise
ilarly speedy timescales – a loca- systems on Unix and I think
tion in Poland took four weeks to things like Red Hat have been
go live and another in China was enormous enablers for organisa-
online in a fortnight. tions to take cost out of their IT
SerCom naturally has a close infrastructure,” he adds. “I think
relationship with SAP on the the maturity of the low-cost
ground in Ireland and its efforts hardware and the maturity of
in bringing flexibility into the the lower-cost Unix operating
supply chain have been endorsed systems has allowed me, this
by the software giant. “We find it time, to migrate away from the
to be a very supportive organisa- higher-cost platforms to some-
tion. I think it likes some of the thing that is better for us. At one
things we’ve been able to do,” point we were running big, large
Henry remarks. blue-chip servers. For enormous
SerCom also makes use of radio sums of money you get one or
frequency (RF) technology in its two boxes, whereas during our
warehouses and Henry points out recent hardware upgrade – for a
Padraig Henry, director of IT,
the “amazing” processes driving reasonably substantial invest-
SerCom Solutions
quality assurance through RF ment – I’m getting huge main
scanning. “Every box coming into servers, separation of database
these buildings is scanned at the and application servers and mes-
unique carton level. There’s also saging servers, and then a full
matching off of scanning part set of resilient servers to move
numbers, serial numbers and all into our offsite DR location, so
of that stuff using RF,” he says. I’ve got failover. And all within a
He is full of praise for Irish sup- far lower cost than I was playing
plier Heavey RF, which installed with until that upgrade.”
and maintains the Techlogix RF For all the talk of cost, Henry
>>
system. The internal IT team at says the annual IT budget –
SerCom developed a compatible “north of a million euro” – is suf-
RF application within SAP ficient. “For an organisation of
Console so that it integrates this size I don’t think we spend
seamlessly. overly but we do maintain a good
As with any modern IT chief, internal team, a lot of sites and
Henry is always looking at ways hubs and we would have a lot of
to remove cost from doing busi- infrastructure to support that,”
ness and, to that end, he has been he says. “It is more than enough
an enthusiastic adopter of open to keep us innovating and I don’t
source and Unix variants where think it’s excessive in any way.”
appropriate. For example, There’s plenty of debate about
September 2008 Knowledge Ireland 25
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