Sears Standardizes on Informix-Online Extended Parallel Server and IBM RS/6000 SP as its Platform for Strategic Data Warehouse Projects; Informix/IBM Open Systems Data Warehouse Solution Provides Sears with Unparalleled High-performance, Flexibility and Scalability.MENLO PARK Menlo Park. 1 Residential city (1990 pop. 28,040), San Mateo co., W Calif.; inc. 1874. Electronic equipment and aerospace products are manufactured in the city. Menlo College and a Stanford Univ. research institute are there. 2 Uninc. , Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 26, 1996--Informix Software, Inc. (NASDAQ NASDAQ in full National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations U.S. market for over-the-counter securities. Established in 1971 by the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), NASDAQ is an automated quotation system that reports on : INFX INFX Information Exchange ), the leading provider of innovative database technology, IBM (International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY, www.ibm.com) The world's largest computer company. IBM's product lines include the S/390 mainframes (zSeries), AS/400 midrange business systems (iSeries), RS/6000 workstations and servers (pSeries), Intel-based servers (xSeries) Corp. and Sears, Roebuck and Co. today announced that Sears has selected INFORMIX-OnLine Extended Parallel Server 8.0 (OnLine XPS (1) See XML Paper Specification. (2) A brand name for certain models of Inspiron laptops from Dell. ) and IBM's RS/6000 Scalable POWERparallel Systems server (RS/6000 SP See IBM SP. ) as the standard platform on which to build several very large information data warehouses, beginning with two strategic projects -- Sears Credit and Home Services businesses. Using open systems technology, these initial large-scale data warehouse projects will enable Sears, a $35 billion retail, credit and home services company, to enhance and track customer relationships and to improve its marketing of home owner home owner home n → propriétaire occupant services. After extensive benchmarks, Sears selected the software/hardware combination of Informix's OnLine XPS and IBM's RS/6000 SP based on its requirements for a data warehouse architecture that could handle very large amounts of data without impacting the scalability or performance of the system. Sears expects its data warehouses to grow quickly into the multi-terabyte range. INFORMIX-OnLine XPS, based on Informix's industry-leading Dynamic Scalable Architecture, was designed for customers like Sears who want to take advantage of a new generation of multiprocessor systems, such as IBM's high-performance RS/6000 SP, with superior scalability. The Informix/IBM combination allows customers to take advantage of exceedingly high-performance, cost-effective and flexible open solutions for very large database (VLDB (Very Large DataBase) An extremely large database. What constitutes a VLDB is debatable, but databases of 100GB or more are generally considered the starting point. ) systems. Within its Home Services business, Sears is migrating to the open systems platform from a proprietary Teradata system. "The Sears-Informix-IBM partnership is critical to our success in exploiting the value of the extremely large amounts of data we have. Sears' new, strategic data warehouses, which are based on the Informix/IBM high-performance software and hardware combination, will provide us with a further competitive advantage in our industry," said Joseph Smialowski, senior vice president and CIO CIO: see American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations. (Chief Information Officer) The executive officer in charge of information processing in an organization. of Sears, Roebuck and Co. "This process has clearly demonstrated that an open Informix database running on an open IBM hardware platform can perform and scale to meet the needs of a business the size of Sears, giving us flexibility and options that are not available with a proprietary solution." "By optimizing IBM's RS/6000 SP massively parallel See MPP. servers, OnLine Extended Parallel Server with its powerful shared-nothing parallel processing parallel processing, the concurrent or simultaneous execution of two or more parts of a single computer program, at speeds far exceeding those of a conventional computer. core provides a high-performance, scalable database solution for Sears on which to build strategic data warehouses," said Ron Alvarez, vice president of the Americas at Informix. "Our combined Informix/IBM technology gives customers like Sears a flexible, cost-effective solution for maintaining a competitive advantage." "IBM RS/6000 SP running Informix's OnLine XPS has been a winning combination at a number of Fortune 500 companies building information warehouses on massively parallel technology," said Tom Peterson Tom Peterson was a prominent television weatherman at KCAU-TV in Sioux City, Iowa. He was a popular television personality in the Sioux City area. See also Peterson Tom Peterson started at KCAU-TV during the 1970s. , Sears client executive at IBM Corp. "This winning IBM/Informix combination provides customers with a proven, benchmarked solution that delivers unparalleled performance and scalability in VLDB data warehouse environments." Terabytes of Data The larger of the two initial data warehouse installations will be within Sears Credit business, which already has one of the largest customer databases in the world, tracking 120 million Sears customers in 80 million households. The Credit business's new data warehouse will use the data gathered in the last two years from over 500 million Sears Card customer transactions to improve its sales and marketing analysis. This sales history data is expected to grow in excess of one billion records when other types of customer transactions are included within the data warehouse. To accommodate the exploding growth of the Credit business data warehouse, Sears will install a database loaded with one terabyte of raw data, using Informix's OnLine XPS in combination with IBM's RS/6000 SP and IBM's new Serial Storage Architecture Serial Storage Architecture - (SSA) IBM's proposed ANSI standard for a standard high-speed interface to disk clusters and arrays. SSA allows full-duplex packet multiplexed serial data transfers at rates of 20Mb/sec in each direction. (SSA (Serial Storage Architecture) A fault tolerant peripheral interface from IBM that transfers data at 80 and 160 Mbytes/sec. SSA uses SCSI commands, allowing existing software to drive SSA peripherals, which are typically disk drives. ) disk. IBM's SSA disk, optimized by Informix's OnLine XPS, provided Sears with record performance and reliability during recent benchmarks. The Move to Open Systems Sears' second data warehouse installation is in its Home Services business, the largest U.S. repair service organization. The Home Services business provides customers with maintenance and repair services for Sears Kenmore and all national brands of appliances, home electronics and lawn and garden equipment. Information -- such as the type and frequency of service calls and the equipment used to make repairs -- is gathered in a 300-gigabyte data warehouse that currently runs on a proprietary Teradata system. This system, which will be migrated to Sears' new open platform combination of OnLine XPS and RS/6000 SP, will provide improved marketing of home owner services and will enable Sears to provide better maintenance products to address customer needs, improve profitability, and ensure proper assortment of required parts and tools. Sears Benchmark Results Sears selected Informix's OnLine XPS and IBM's RS/6000 SP after extensive benchmark testing, in which one terabyte of data was processed on a 60-node RS/6000 SP to demonstrate the scalability and performance of OnLine XPS. In these benchmarks, Informix's OnLine XPS achieved a high degree of scalability as additional data and nodes were added to the data warehouse. The Informix/IBM combination surpassed the results produced by competing parallel-processing platforms. About INFORMIX-OnLine Extended Parallel Server and IBM RS/6000 SP INFORMIX-OnLine Extended Parallel Server (OnLine XPS) is a high-performance, scalable database server based Refers to hardware or software that runs in the server. Contrast with client based. on Informix's industry-leading Dynamic Scalable Architecture (DSA (1) (Directory Server Agent) An X.500 program that looks up the address of a recipient in a Directory Information Base (DIB), also known as white pages. It accepts requests from the Directory User Agent (DUA) counterpart in the workstation. ). OnLine XPS extends DSA to loosely-coupled or shared-nothing computing architectures, including clusters of symmetric multiprocessing (SMP (Symmetric MultiProcessing) A multiprocessing architecture in which multiple CPUs, residing in one cabinet, share the same memory. SMP systems provide scalability. As business increases, additional CPUs can be added to absorb the increased transaction volume. ) systems and massively parallel processing (MPP (Massively Parallel Processing or Massively Parallel Processor) A multiprocessing architecture that uses up to thousands of processors. Some might contend that a computer system with 64 or more CPUs is a massively parallel processor. ) systems. OnLine XPS's data partitioning, enhanced parallel SQL SQL in full Structured Query Language. Computer programming language used for retrieving records or parts of records in databases and performing various calculations before displaying the results. operations, high-availability, systems management and other features are designed to make the management of VLDB applications easier and more cost effective. Achieving near linear scalability, OnLine XPS also offers a significant improvement in performance for mission-critical, data-intensive tasks associated with data warehousing, decision support, imaging, document management and workflow, and other VLDB operational environments. The RS/6000 Scalable POWERparallel Systems server (SP) is IBM's general-purpose, high-performance parallel processing computer capable of handling very large amounts of data while offering unparalleled performance and price/performance to customers. The RS/6000 SP is part of IBM's RS/6000 product line of technical and commercial workstations and servers, providing customers the most extensive line of UNIX-based solutions available in the marketplace. The RS/6000 product line is marketed worldwide through the IBM sales force and IBM Business Partners. More information about IBM and the IBM RS/6000 SP is available at http://www.ibm.com and http://ibmlink.ibm.com/usa.home.html. About Sears Sears, Roebuck and Co. is a leading U.S. retailer of apparel, home and automotive products and services, with annual revenue of nearly $35 billion. Sears serves the needs of American families through 1,100 department and specialty stores across the country, including HomeLife furniture and Sears Hardware stores. Its network of 2,500 automotive product and service outlets includes Sears Auto Centers, Western Auto, NTW NTW Navy Theater Wide (BMDO) NTW National Tourism Week NTW Not to Worry NTW Norwegian Travel Workshop NTW National Training Wage NTW Napoleonic Total War (game) NTW No Time Wasters , Parts America and Tire America. Sears merchandise also is sold in more than 375 authorized dealer stores serving rural America. About IBM The IBM Distribution Industry provides a broad range of hardware, software and services to consumer goods consumer goods Any tangible commodity purchased by households to satisfy their wants and needs. Consumer goods may be durable or nondurable. Durable goods (e.g., autos, furniture, and appliances) have a significant life span, often defined as three years or more, and manufacturers, wholesale distributors, and retailers. Its offerings span all aspects of the distribution supply chain, including traditional and electronic retailing, point of sale terminals, micromarketing and merchandising, logistics, forecasting, and replenishment. IBM also provides business transformation and IT consulting services to a wide range of industries. Browse the IBM home page at www.disu.ibm.com. About Informix Informix Software, based in Menlo Park, Calif., provides innovative database technology that enables the world's leading corporations to manage and grow their businesses. Informix is widely recognized as the technology leader for corporate computing environments, ranging from workgroups to very large OLTP (OnLine Transaction Processing) See transaction processing and OLCP. OLTP - On-Line Transaction Processing and data warehouse applications. Informix's database servers, application development tools, superior customer service, and strong partnerships enable the company to be at the forefront of many leading-edge information technology solution areas. More information about Informix is available via the World Wide Web at http://www.informix.com and http://www.illustra.com. -0- Note to Editor: Informix news releases are available at no charge through Business Wire's NewsOnDemand fax service. To immediately receive an index of available releases, call 800/356-0851. CONTACT: Informix Software, Inc. Cecilia Denny, 415/926-6420 cdenny@informix.com or Sears, Roebuck and Co. Janice R. Drummond, 847/286-8316 or Cunningham Communication, Inc. Kristin Kryway, 408/764-0713 kristink@ccipr.com or IBM Ray Gorman, 914/766-3835 rgorman@vnet.ibm.com |
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