It was an ambitious project, but for a saving of£2 million, you'd be daft not to do it. That was the underlying message behind Littlewoods' decision to remove the EMC computer systems that store all the data generated by its high street, mail order and online businesses and replace them with systems from EMC's arch rival IBM.
'It was a big-risk project for us, but we can't ignore multi-million pound savings,' says Littlewoods computer services director David Davies.
The important thing here is that this saving is in real money. This year the bill for leasing IBM systems is£2 million less than that for leasing EMC storage systems last year.
Littlewoods isn't saying how much it pays annually for the storage systems, but this was a deal that both suppliers were keen to win.
Littlewoods clearly pushes a hard bargain. The job was tendered twice: the first time the deal was not right and the tenders were sent back.
The second time the price was right, but time was running out on the EMC lease.
Work began on the project with less than two months left on the lease, which, considering the vast quantity of data - estimated at 67 terabytes - was no mean feat. To put this in perspective, the books in the US Library of Congress, the largest library in the world, contain about 20 terabytes of text.
Asked if migrations of this magnitude are unusual, Davies says: 'It's not unheard of, but it is unusual to do it in such a short period. We wouldn't have done it for (a saving of)£200,000.'
Before it committed to the deal, Littlewoods had to be certain that there was a firm with skilled personnel able to move the data successfully and complete it before the lease ran out and EMC started levying 'severe financial penalties'. Storage specialist CNT was selected to help design the system and implement it.
Security measures
'(Littlewoods) sought technical and financial guarantees (from IBM and CNT) as part of the project that would protect it from a shortfall in the technical specification and from any financial penalties if the project overran,' said Davies.
There was one 'fairly serious fault', but otherwise the process took place without any major interruptions. When CNT needed to take the systems down, it was planned to take place between 1am and 4am and took no longer than three hours.
The project was completed in 48 days, with a comfortable margin before the lease ran out. The switch from EMC to IBM wasn't just a matter of changing vendors, it also involved a change of IT architecture, which involves different types of technology.
Littlewoods had been an EMC customer for six years. Davies describes EMC technology, used previously, as the 'Rolls Royce' of IT. However, since choosing EMC, competing technologies had improved dramatically, convincing Littlewoods to make the switch.
Hitting the target
It's not just about getting the same for less. Six months on, Davies can point out where the new data centre has exceeded specified performance targets and where tangible improvements have been made to the previous system.
On the first count, Davis says the system has 'more headroom', explaining that it is able to process 40 per cent more information at a given time than was specified in the contract.
On the second count, each weekend the company prepares a monthly statement for a quarter of its home shopping customers. The processing of this data used to take 36 hours. It now takes 18. So Davis is pleased, mostly. He says that on a happiness scale from one to 10, he's at 9.5.
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