into the cloud case study

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Page 1: Into the cloud case study

Into the Cloud

Key B e n e f i t s

Global trading partner expansionAs a pioneer in the direct-to-customer PC market, Dellhas one of the top supply chains in the world and isknown for its build-to-order customization and on-timeproduct delivery.

Dell fine-tunes its supply chain in real-time to ensureservice excellence. But keeping its supply chain runningsmoothly took more than fine-tuning when the companydecided to leverage and integrate original designmanufacturers (ODMs) and greatly expand the numberof global retail partners.

The move to ODMs meant increased demand on thesupply chain communications infrastructure. Instead ofsending orders, updates, inventory data, and trackinginformation back and forth to a few internalmanufacturing units, Dell now needed to securely sharethis information with dozens of external manufacturersaround the world—many of them with differenthardware, software, and business processes than Dell.

Expanding the number of retailers meant even greaterdemands on the infrastructure. Hardware and softwaresystems at Dell’s data center facilities would have toaggregate, process, and cross-reference millions moretransactions with retailers each day.

Dell was already supporting more than twenty differentsupply chain software platforms running on 200 servers.Those systems were processing a total of 5 million dailytransactions and 300 transaction types, ranging frombuild-to-order transactions for single systems to largeorders valued in the millions of dollars each.The IT teamestimated that over time, the new manufacturer andretailer additions would more than double thetransaction volume.

Adding to the complexity was the fact that Dell’s tradingpartner integration systems directly impacted some ofDell’s global business processes, including: financialsettlements, warranty parts, purchase orders, invoices,shipments (ASN), factory communications, logistics andproof-of-delivery (POD), and services dispatch.

Supply chain project outstrips Dell’s internal resourcesAdding to the project scope, the process of onboardingnew trading partners—certifying them, establishingconnections to their hardware and software, and bringingthem into the supply chain system—would require largestaffing additions for Dell IT.

Staffing and infrastructure requirements were expectedto fluctuate for other reasons as well. “Seasonalvariations in the sales cycle cause the demand for supplychain processing to go up and down, sometimesdramatically,” says Amend.“Big fluctuations can also comefrom new product introductions or shifting a product toa new manufacturing site. In turn, that changes the levelof staffing required to help trading partners use thesystem and resolve any differences between theirrecords and ours.”

Dell IT team decides to outsource andmove to cloud computing After evaluating all the requirements, the Dell IT teamdetermined that the expansion of the trading partnercommunication systems would outstrip the internalinfrastructure and employee resources available.

• Inovis cloud service helpsDell decommission threelegacy platforms, 200servers, 20 data centerracks and 20 privatecircuits.

• Dell reduces IT costs byusing a single globalplatform to manage 5million daily transactionsacross more than 2,000trading partners.

• Cloud computing modelreduces the time toonboard new partners frommonths to days, enablingDell to keep up with tradingpartner growth.

• IT service requests arerouted through a SaaSapplication and billed-backto cost centers, improvinggovernance.

“ Both the volume and complexity of transactions wereabout to skyrocket. Our systems would be translatingback and forth between more than 300 transactiontypes and thousands of integration maps.”

Michael AmendDirector of Enterprise Architecture, Dell

Dell uses outsourcing and cloud computing to simplify its 5 million dailyinteractions with thousands of trading partners, decommission more than200 servers and reduce partner onboarding times from months to days.

I n o v i s C a s e S t u d y

“ The sheer volume of new retail partners, multiplied bytime zones, languages, customs, and standards, wasdaunting. Staffing up internally was not the best optionbecause we would have to downsize quickly when theonboarding work was done.”

Michael AmendDirector of Enterprise Architecture, Dell

Page 2: Into the cloud case study

www.inovis.com

The team decided to outsource the trading partnerprocessing and communications, including infrastructure,management, and the onboarding process, to a managedservice provider. “By working with a service provider, wewould be able to simplify our IT infrastructure and focuson our core business,” says Amend.

Amend’s team also decided that a cloud computing modelwould be the best fit for Dell’s partner requirements.“With cloud computing, we could scale services likepartner onboarding, order processing, shipment tracking,invoice delivery, and problem resolution to meet demandwithout having to add or remove resources,” says Amend.“We wouldn’t have to purchase hardware or software thatmight become idle when the demand changed. We’d beable to access resources over the Internet and pay only forwhat we actually used.”

Dell selects Inovis as its outsourcing service provider Amend’s team conducted a rigorous procurementprocess to narrow the field and eventually invited twoservice providers to participate in a trial onboardingprogram. Based on the results, Dell chose Inovis as its B2Boutsourcing partner. “The trial included moving seventrading partners from our internal systems to the serviceprovider’s cloud platform,” says Amend.

The scope of work included consolidating Dell’s platformsinto a global service center, onboarding and supportingover 1,900 trading partners over five years, and managingthe day-to-day aspects of Dell’s supply chaincommunications with ODMs and retailers.The work alsoincluded providing analytics to help Dell manage tradingpartner performance and a service portfoliomanagement software-as-a-services (SaaS) application forDell to manage the governance of service-orientedrequests to the IT group.

Private cloud service provides security and cost savings Inovis helped Dell implement the largest B2B privatecloud computing model in the world for its tradingpartner processing and communications. “The privatecloud model we’re using gives us the perfect mix ofsecurity, flexibility and cost savings,” explains Amend.“Costs are lower because Inovis uses the sameinfrastructure for multiple clients, who share the expense.Our partner communication connections are secure overthe Internet because the traffic is protected by Inovisthrough strong encryption in both directions.”

Outsourcing simplifies Dell IT By outsourcing its trading partner communications andprocessing to Inovis,Dell has greatly simplified its IT operations.

Time to onboard partners reduced from months to days Outsourcing has accelerated partner onboarding timesand created a more elastic environment to better react tobusiness changes, and has enabled the IT team to keep upwith the rapid growth of Dell’s global supply chain. “Wenow have expanded global capabilities to rapidly onboardODMs and retailers in more than 30 countries aroundthe world,” says Amend. “On average, we can now bringa new trading partner into the system in just a few days.Previously, the process could take months.”

End-to-end visibility provides “preventative healthcare” Since the new cloud service is constantly monitoring thehealth of the underlying transactions and providingvisibility to all parties, Dell can proactively reach out topartners to improve their service delivery. Problemtransactions are quarantined before being sent, minimizingor eliminating the impact of downstream problems. Thecombination of help-desk-to-help-desk integrationbetween Inovis and Dell and partner workflows speedsthe remediation process.

Governing IT service requestsDell’s trading partner IT group is tasked with providingservices to thousands of constituents, including ODMs,retailers, and third-party logistics (3PL) providers.To helpDell govern service delivery, Inovis provided Dell with anIT Portfolio Management SaaS application as part of itscloud service to manage the flow of trading partnerrequests to IT group. This SaaS application not only tracksthe flow of requests and projects, but also managesprocess governance and provides a way to charge-backthe cost of services to the originating business unit.

With the Inovis B2B integration services running on acloud computing model, Dell is well equipped for thefuture.“The Dell trading community is constantly growing,and many of our new customers come from emergingmarkets in Asia and elsewhere,” says Amend. “Thoseemerging markets have thousands of smaller retailers thatwe need to connect with, and not all of them havesophisticated IT systems. Inovis and cloud computing giveus flexible access to the enabling technologies, languagecapabilities, and other tools we need to do business in thedecades ahead.”

About Inovis

Inovis provides software and services that enablecompanies to do businesselectronically across theirentire trading community.Each day, over 20,000companies across the globerely on the Inovis platformto reliably send and receivepurchase orders, synchronizedata, exchange critical filesand manage exceptions.Founded in 1983, thecompany is based in Atlanta,Georgia and has officesacross the United States,the United Kingdom and Hong Kong.

For more information,please visit www.inovis.com or email [email protected].

© 2010 Inovis, Inc. All rights reserved.

“ Inovis completed the project ahead of schedule, hadthe most flexible systems and partnership approachand also did the most thorough job.”

Michael AmendDirector of Enterprise Architecture, Dell

“ So far we have eliminated three legacy supply chainplatforms and decommissioned more than 200servers, 20 datacenter racks, 20 private networkcircuits, 10 databases and 6 TB of storage that we nolonger need for internal supply chain processing,”

Michael AmendDirector of Enterprise Architecture, Dell

Case Study: Into the Cloud