case study

Breakthrough: CooperVision Establishes Clear Vision for Future.

Imagine It Business Challenge: IT Infrastructure When CooperVision acquired Ocular Sciences, Inc. in Experiences Growing Pains 2004, the company became the world’s third largest CooperVision has been helping contact lens wearers “see contact lens company. The acquisition dramatically beyond the ordinary” since 1958. The company has long increased the demands on CooperVision’s IT been recognized as a market leader for toric lenses — infrastructure and staff. manufacturing premium-quality soft lenses that help people with astigmatism and spherical vision conditions see more Done clearly. With the acquisition of Ocular Sciences, Inc. in Thanks to the new 64-bit solution from , 2004, CooperVision became the third largest contact lens Microsoft® and Intel®, CooperVision has realized company in the world. Based in upstate New York, profound performance improvements — enabling the CooperVision now maintains a network of facilities in 14 company to maintain its global data center model countries — and plans to grow even more. without incurring additional subsidiary site costs. Of course, with rapid growth come major challenges for any company’s IT team. CooperVision is no different. In 2004, Results: Managing Growth and the IT team was supporting 550 concurrent users in three Enabling Future Agility countries and about 14,000 orders per day. But by 2006, the firm expects to have about 1,550 concurrent users in CooperVision deployed a scale-up solution using Unisys 14 countries — and to process about 50,000 orders per day. ES7000 servers with Intel ® 2-based processors, ® Server 2003, Datacenter Edition, and Clearly, enhancing the company’s IT infrastructure was Microsoft SQL Server 2000. This allowed the company critical to the success of the OSI acquisition. In fact, as to remain a 100-percent Microsoft shop while providing Lorrie Watson, CooperVision’s vice president of Global IT, enhanced processing support as well as backup and explains, “The IT hardware and people resources at disaster recovery for its SSA iBaan enterprise resource CooperVision were identified by the business as the biggest planning (ERP) application. risk for our integration process.” With that in mind, Watson and her team knew they’d have to make wise choices to Metrics support the integrated — and much larger — operations. • Cost: Avoided $400,000 in anticipated costs for CooperVision decided to remain committed to its version of additional equipment per subsidiary site the SSA iBaan ERP application. But the company needed to • Strategic Growth: Provided a scalable foundation for upgrade the existing server — a 16-processor Unisys continual growth ES7000 server employing 2.0GHz Intel Xeon™ processors MP running in a Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Datacenter • Reliability: Delivered enhanced backup and disaster Edition and SQL Server 2000 environment. recovery • Performance: Enabled monthly invoices to be processed Back in 2003 — during the selection process for the in half the time it took prior to the upgrade 16-processor ES7000 — CooperVision had considered a switch to UNIX. As Watson explains, “We needed something that would scale beyond eight processors and thought we might have to switch over to a UNIX solution, which we didn’t want to do. We’re a 100-percent Microsoft shop and

3 very comfortable with the Microsoft environment. We tried very hard to find a solution that Profile: CooperVision could be scalable, allow for continued growth and keep us in the Microsoft family. The option • Based in upstate New York, that fit us perfectly was the Unisys ES7000 server.” operates a network of facilities in When faced with another upgrade, CooperVision again considered UNIX — but soon decided 14 countries across five to stay the course with a 64-bit server solution from Unisys, Microsoft and Intel. continents. • The world’s third largest contact Solution: Aligning IT to Boost Performance, Meet Growth and lens maker and the number one Disaster Recovery Demands manufacturer of toric lenses • A business unit of the Cooper In a word, CooperVision needed power. And that’s what they got with the Unisys ES7000 Companies, Inc., a rapidly growing servers employing Intel Itanium 2 processors running in a Microsoft Windows Server 2003, specialty healthcare company Datacenter Edition and SQL Server 2000 (64-bit) environment. “We migrated to 64-bit technology as a natural progression from the 32-bit technology we Solution At a Glance were on previously,” Watson says. “By continuing on the Intel platform — now on the •Unisys ES7000 enterprise servers Itanium 2-based system — it allows us to realize the continued cost advantages we had on •Unisys Server Sentinel system the previous Intel systems.” management software Indeed, the Intel Itanium 2-based ES7000 server allows CooperVision to maintain its strategy •ES7000 implementation services of centralization. “We have a central data center model; we wanted to keep that,” Watson •High-availability services and says. “Upgrading to the 64-bit processor allowed us to realize that plan — and avoid spending training about $400,000 per site for additional servers and infrastructure in individual country locations.” •Migration services •Microsoft Windows Server 2003, CooperVision’s IT executives also appreciated the self-healing capability of the ES7000 server running Unisys Server Sentinel system management software. With operations that stretch Datacenter Edition across five continents, 24/7 system availability is critical. Unisys Server Sentinel monitors the •Microsoft SQL Server 2000 ES7000 server, assessing performance and proactively taking action to correct problems (64-bit) and notify technical staff if necessary. •Microsoft Cluster Service •Intel Itanium 2-based processors To support the significant growth of the company, CooperVision also wanted to enhance •EMC Symmetrix DMX Series disaster recovery capabilities. Thus, the company purchased a second 24-processor ES7000 storage solution server employing Intel Itanium 2 processors running the Microsoft Windows Server 2003, •EMC CLARiiON storage Datacenter Edition and SQL Server 2000 database. The new ES7000 servers are clustered in an active/passive node configuration using Microsoft Partners Cluster Services. The active node supports the ERP production environment. Located offsite, •Microsoft the passive node is divided into a 16-processor partition for the database and an eight- •Intel processor partition for the application. No longer relying on tape backup, CooperVision uses log shipping from the production server to the backup server. Every 15 minutes, all transactions are sent across the network and applied to the offsite backup database.

“With our new disaster recovery strategy, we’re able to assure upper management that we would be able to continue the business in the event of a major disaster,” says Frank Manzo, manager of Global Systems Support.

4 CooperVision’s IT team worked closely with Unisys and Microsoft consultants to plan the migration from the 32-bit technology to the new 64-bit ES7000 and Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition platform. The planning paid off, and the migration took just a day. “We were able to bring the system down for no more than 24 hours to do the migration,” “With the recent growth that Manzo explains. “And then we were up and running on the new box — which was seamless to the users.” CooperVision has enjoyed —

Watson concurs: “As with the original installation of the first catapulting ourselves to ES7000, the Itanium 2 installation went very smoothly. number three in the Performance improvements were noticeable by everyone from Day One. Users have only reported positive remarks in marketplace in contact their gratitude that we upgraded the system for them.” lenses — we really have to Leveraging High Availability Program Support rely heavily on our systems. Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition, running on the Unisys ES7000 gives CooperVision more than just a scalable I have a lot of confidence in and reliable platform. The Datacenter High Availability Program, Unisys. I have a lot of a partnership between Microsoft and server manufacturers such as Unisys, complements the server and operating confidence in Microsoft and system with a mainframe-style support model that helps CooperVision keep its mission-critical ERP solution up and in Intel. I’m glad that we’re running. The program offers numerous benefits: partnering with them. They’ve • A single point of contact for all hardware and operating system issues with direct involvement of the Microsoft proven to us over and over High Availability Resolution Queue for Datacenter issues. that these solutions work • Certification of software updates on CooperVision’s unique hardware configuration before those updates are delivered. and that we can run large- • Mainframe-style change control processes that help reduce scale, high-volume transaction unnecessary downtime and maximize solution availability. business on those platforms Manzo appreciates the peace of mind and simplicity the quite successfully.” program offers: “The Datacenter High Availability Program allows us to have a single resource for all technical support, Lorrie Watson hardware and software. It also confirms that the software is Vice President of Global IT certified on the hardware. All of our problems can go to one resource and we get them fixed in the same place.” CooperVision

5 Results: Gaining Competitive Advantage Watson says they’ve seen other improvements, as well. For through High-Performance Platform instance, the firm is now able to process monthly invoices in half the time it took prior to the upgrade. And, perhaps Since the new Itanium 2-based ES7000 server and Windows most important, they’re positioned well for future growth. Server 2003, Datacenter Edition solution has been deployed, “The competitive advantage we’ve gained with our new CooperVision has experienced significant improvements in Unisys, Intel Itanium 2 and Microsoft solution is that we terms of performance, cost savings and reliability. can now confidently grow our business,” Watson notes. • Ability to improve a number of key performance indicators Watson emphasizes that CooperVision’s experience is a (KPI), including processor utilization and the speed of order lesson for other companies that run SSA Baan applications processing and invoice generation and view UNIX system-based platforms as the only way to • Scalability to support increasing transaction volumes go in a high-volume/high-transaction level environment. “We • Highest levels of availability to support worldwide operations have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that you can run • Greatly reduced costs by continuing to maintain a single SSA iBaan ERP with Microsoft Datacenter Server, SQL datacenter to support worldwide operations Server and Unisys ES7000 servers,” she says.

And, with the power of Intel’s Itanium 2-based processor “Some of the performance goals that we measure here at technology, “We know that these systems will keep up with CooperVision revolve around CPU usage, which we like to business flow. We can handle increasing transaction volumes,” see no higher than 50 percent,” Watson says. “Currently, she says, adding, “We have absolutely no reason to switch the CPU runs at about 20 percent, and that is largely because to anything else.” of the upgrade to our new ES7000 64-bit technology.”

This performance boost ensures that online order processing The Relationship: Power of Partnership and report generation in the SSA iBaan ERP application run In tackling IT challenges associated with integrating Ocular much faster. That, coupled with high system availability, has Sciences, CooperVision is fortunate to work with tightly greatly increased the confidence that CooperVision employees integrated technology partners: Unisys, Microsoft and Intel. have in the system. In fact, Watson says that the companies’ partnerships were However, CooperVision employees aren’t the only ones who a major factor in evaluating potential solutions. “As part of have noticed the difference. “Our customers appreciate our our decision making, the Unisys and Intel partnership provided new systems because when they call to place an order, the us with predictability and reliability on the 64-bit technology,” order process goes very fast,” says Watson. “We also keep she comments. Equally important, she says, “The Microsoft a lot of patient order history on the ES7000 that we need and Unisys partnership provided us with a stable platform to to search through to answer questions about previous be able to run our 1.3 terabyte SQL database.” orders. This system provides the performance we need to do these complex searches quickly.”

“The competitive advantage we’ve gained with our new Unisys, Intel Itanium 2 and Microsoft solution is that we can now confidently grow our business.”

Lorrie Watson

Vice President of Global IT

CooperVision 6

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