St. Marys Cement
In Five Months, Capgemini Built a Complete Enterprise System for St. Marys Cement on Windows 2000 and SQL Server 2000.
- Region
- Canada
- Alliance partner
- HP
- Microsoft
- Solution
- Application Development & Integration
- Business Intelligence
- Infrastructure and Security
- IT Transformation - Strategy and Architecture
When Votorantim acquired St. Marys Cement, it had to build an entire enterprise system from the ground up. Microsoft’s Infrastructure solutions provided best fit and were chosen over the competition. Capgemini planned, designed, and built the system in just five months. This included integrating three critical applications and designing and installing the infrastructure from cables to Servers, Networking and PCs.
The Microsoft environment is stable enough to reduce hardware and network costs, and flexible enough to serve as a prototype for future Votorantim acquisitions outside Brazil.
The Challenge: Build an Enterprise Information System from the Ground Up in Just Six Months
St. Marys Cement (SMC), founded in 1912, is one of Canada’s largest cement and aggregate manufacturers and distributors with more than 1200 employees. Headquartered in Toronto, it has offices in over 50 locations across Canada and the northern United States. In 1997, it was purchased by Blue Circle based in Atlanta. From that point, all SMC systems—email and file servers, all back office functions, and so on—were centralised in and run from Atlanta, requiring only a small staff of four and minimal hardware to handle the few remaining Canadian IT functions.
In mid-2001, the Votorantim Cimentos group, a multi-billion dollar enterprise based in São Paolo, Brazil, bought SMC—the first Votorantim purchase outside Brazil. The purchase precipitated the need for entirely new systems including a network and server infrastructure for the company. The terms specified completion within six months from the date the deal was consummated. There was substantial financial pressure as well: SMC was paying Blue Circle (itself purchased by a large company) for the SMC share of IT costs, a significant monthly expense..
“We hired Capgemini for its technology strengths and because of the expertise
of the firm’s staff who could not only tell us how to do the job, but help us
get it done.” Ben Fong, Director of Information Technology,
St. Marys Cement
St. Marys Cement faced a herculean task: in just six months build an entire enterprise information system from the ground up—everything from buying hardware and software to hiring IT staff—with minimal interruption to business. Enter Capgemini.
Finding the Right Partner: Capgemini Has the Technical Know-how to Give Solid Advice and Put It Into Practice
St. Marys Cement invited Cagemini to submit a proposal for the project along with IBM and Deloitte & Touche. Capgemini won the contract based on the strength of its very specific and highly detailed bid, and— so strapped was SMC for resources—and for the expertise of staff who could actually do the work, not simply tell SMC how to do it.
One of the earliest decisions SMC confronted was deciding which technologies to use to build the solution. Votorantim systems were home grown and heavily influenced by the legal and regulatory environment in Brazil as to be ineffective for use in North America. This meant building a system from scratch. But should it be built using a leading competitor’s database on a Unix platform, Microsoft SQL Server databases on Microsoft Windows 2000, or a combination?
Choosing the Right Technology: SQL Server 2000 and Windows 2000 Are Easy to Implement and Cost-Effective to Run “First,” says Mauro Cappuccio, the SMC Project Technology Manager from Capgemini , “we advised against supporting two databases. It’s more expensive to buy two software packages. It introduces the complexity of getting two systems to work together which further contributes to higher costs. And, on a very practical level, St. Marys Cement would be hard-pressed to find a database administrator and other IT staff who have sufficient command of both environments.”
Having dispensed with the issue of whether to support two databases, the Capgemini team focused on the choice of systems. SMC didn’t have much time, so speedy implementation was essential—the basic functionality had to be available out of the box, and easily integrated with the applications that run the business, primarily Great Plains, Maximo, and Command. Keeping risk low was also vital, so the company required a platform that was industry-proven and endowed with rock solid reliability. (Imagine a US$100,000 truck full of hardening concrete because of a system crash during a pour!) Finally, it had to be inexpensive to purchase and maintain.
“At the end of the day, the key accelerators were first choosing a common platform and database, and then making that environment SQL Server 2000 and Windows 2000. The combo is rock solid, the price is right, development time is fast, and SMC can easily find experienced people with the skills in Microsoft technologies.” Mauro Cappuccio, SMC Technology Project Manager, Capgemini
According to Paul Lau, Senior Consultant at Capgemini, “We were able to install the applications and establish new databases on SQL Server 2000 extremely quickly thanks to its intuitive and powerful tools. It would have taken a lot more work to pull this off as fast using the leading competitor’s database in the Unix environment. Also, the .NET enterprise servers snap directly into Windows 2000, so integration efforts were minimal.” Cappuccio notes, “Furthermore, the cost of the competition is greater than that of SQL Server. And because Votorantim in-house systems are standardised on Microsoft technologies, SMC could benefit from the parent company’s pricing advantages.”
Ultimately the Microsoft solution will simplify the management and reduce the cost of supporting our systems.” And finally, it’s easier to hire developers and database administrators skilled in the use of Microsoft technologies. All these factors reduce the total cost of ownership compared with the competitor’s solution.
“We have never had downtime attributed to either SQL Server 2000 or Windows 2000.” Ben Fong, Director of Information Technology, St. Marys Cement
A Concrete Solution: The St. Marys Cement solution integrated three critical applications that run every aspect of the business. All are built on SQL Server 2000 running on Windows 2000 Advanced Server and highly dependable HP Compaq ProLiant equipment.
- Great Plains, the back office financial system which includes inventory, general ledger, and accounts payable.
- Command, the cement truck dispatching and management system which uses GPS to track trucks in real time, and includes billing, sales, and accounts receivable.
- Maximo, the plant maintenance and labour tracking system, primarily used at the cement plants.
Building the infrastructure included network design, cabling, and racking, as well as purchasing and installing servers (all Windows 2000-based), designing the Active Directory services, building out the new LAN infrastructure, and redesigning the WAN based on Cisco switching and routing technology, firewalls, and proxy services. Capgemini also implemented an Exchange 2000 Infrastructure which included dedicated hardware (an SMTP appliance) to scan Internet email for viruses, and the integration of real-time anti-virus software.
