Founded in 1919, Peerless Clothing, Inc. is the largest domestic producer of men’s tailored clothing in North America, producing clothing for designer labels including Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren and TALLIA. The company supplies men’s tailored clothing to most every major department and specialty store retailer in the United States.
The challenge
Peerless Clothing has doubled its revenue in the past few years and maintaining its business on UNIX was becoming too costly and inflexible. The company needed a stable and flexible platform to introduce many new SAP applications. Consolidating its IT environment as much as possible would also help reduce maintenance and hardware costs. With three geographically dispersed locations, the IT staff spent much of its time travelling to other offices to manage and update workstations. Imaging a new machine could take up to four hours and tracking its IT assets was a manual, timeconsuming process. As a result, centralised desktop management was a top priority for the small IT staff at Peerless Clothing.
The solution
When evaluating platforms for its new SAP business applications, Peerless Clothing selected a Novell solution. The company worked with Adaris Technolgies, a Novell Gold partner, to implement this solution.
“Moving our UNIX environment to Linux made a lot of sense because our staff didn’t require a lot of retraining,” says Joffrey Bienvenue, IS infrastructure and operations manager at Peerless Clothing. “We looked at Red Hat Enterprise Linux, but found that SUSE Linux Enterprise Server offers better support for open standards.”
Peerless Clothing deployed several of its mission-critical applications on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, including SAP NetWeaver, SAP Business Warehouse applications, SAP Enterprise Portal, SAP Knowledge Management, and Novell GroupWise as well as its shop floor application. Using SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and VMware for virtualisation, the IT staff has consolidated its HP and IBM servers tenfold. “SAP systems require a lot of memory so had we gone with a UNIX-based platform, we would have been forced to make a significant investment in new hardware,” says Bienvenue. “SUSE Linux Enterprise Server allows us to leverage inexpensive mid-range commodity hardware, and by using VMware to virtualise our Linux servers, we can quickly respond to the needs of the business by adding new servers in no time.”
With SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, the IT staff now has a solid development platform and can take advantage of open source tools and applications. The company also runs Novell Open Enterprise Server, including Novell iFolder, Novell iPrint, as well as Novell eGuide which serves as its corporate user directory.
Using Novell ZENworks, the IT staff has created standard desktop images and can now remotely image machines in just 20 minutes. The IT staff can deliver new applications companywide in days, rather than weeks, and without having to visit individual workstations.
The company also uses Novell ZENworks Linux Management to centrally manage its Linux servers and plans to upgrade to Novell ZENworks Configuration Management to integrate its desktop and server management. Novell GroupWise provides a solid collaboration platform and the BlackBerry Enterprise Server for Novell GroupWise makes it easy for BlackBerry users to stay current with their e-mail and calendars, regardless of their location. “We hear horror stories from our peers that are managing other collaboration packages, such as Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes,” says Bienvenue. “Novell GroupWise is stable and requires very little administration.”
The results
By deploying its SAP environment on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, Peerless Clothing has saved at least $700,000 compared to the cost of a UNIX solution. By virtualising its servers, the company has also consolidated its hardware by 90 per cent and can deploy new servers in a matter of hours. Novell ZENworks has reduced desktop imaging time by 90 per cent and allows a small IT team to keep pace with the company’s growth. The company estimates that its Novell solution paid for itself in the first six months. “By leveraging Novell solutions, we’re able to support the company’s growth without having to add additional IT resources or make considerable investments in hardware and software,” says Bienvenue. “SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and Novell ZENworks give us the biggest bang for the buck with all the tools we need to deploy, manage and monitor our IT environment.”
This case study is sponsored by SUSE.
This article was first published in Inside SAP Yearbook 2012 (published in September, 2011).
