OverviewEstablished in 1977 in Lahore, Pakistan, Descon Engineering provides engineer-ing services to process plants. Today, Descon is a major player in the region, serving the oil and gas, chemical, cement and petrochemical sectors throughout the Middle East.

ChallengeDescon Engineering Limited (Descon) wanted to bolster its leading position in the engineering and construction ser-vices industry. To achieve this, the com-pany decided to migrate from its legacy process management applications to an integrated solution based on SAP ERP software.

Syed Aftab Afzal, CIO at Descon, said: “Our success as a business depends on our

ability to quickly react to customer orders. We determined that an SAP ERP solution would enable us to maintain agility as our business grows.”

To ensure high availability for its new SAP ERP applications, the company conducted a full review of its infrastructure.

Amir Iqbal, Basis Administrator at Descon, said: “In the past, we ran Microsoft Windows Server 2003 on a distributed server land-scape. However, we realized this platform would not offer sufficient stability to meet our end-to-end SAP ERP uptime goal of 98 percent. We decided to search for an operating system with proven reliability for SAP ERP workloads.”

SolutionDescon decided to implement SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications on its Dell server platform.

Bilal Hussain, ERP Architect at Descon, said: “Ultimately, we chose SUSE Linux be-cause of the option to have a version fully optimized for all of our SAP ERP applica-tions. In addition, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server includes built-in high-availability components, so we were confident that we could easily build and maintain a clus-ter environment by leveraging our exist-ing in-house competencies.”

Descon Engineering LimitedPakistani engineering and construction company Descon Engineering Limited wanted to maintain its leading position in the market. To achieve this, the company implemented SAP ERP on SUSE® Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications—gaining a highly available platform to deliver the full benefits of its ERP software.

Success StoryEnterprise Linux Servers

Descon Engineering Limited at a glance:

Industry and Location Engineering and Construction, Pakistan

Product and Services SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for

SAP Applications

Results

+ Offershighresiliencytohelpkeepmission-criticalSAPERPapplicationsrunningatalltimes

+ Cutsdailyadministrationworkloadby63percent,thankstouser-friendlyinterfaceandresilientdesign

+ Enablesrestorationofproductionservices80percentfasterthanlegacyenvironment,throughhigh-availabilityconfiguration

“Working with NDS was a very positive experience. Thanks to the help we received from their experienced team, we were able to complete the SUSE Linux imple­mentation in just three months.”

BILAL HUSSAIN

ERPArchitectDescon Engineering Limited

www.suse.com

“Our success as a business depends on our ability to quickly react to customer orders. We determined

that an SAP ERP solution would enable us to maintain agility as our business grows.”

SYED AFTAB AFZAL

CIODescon Engineering Limited

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Working with trusted business partner NDS Technologies, the Descon IT team configured a number of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server instances to create a high-availability cluster. Today, the com-pany’s Oracle database and SAP ERP applications both run in the SUSE Linux environment.

“Working with NDS was a very positive ex-perience,” said Mr Hussain. “Thanks to the help we received from their experienced team, we were able to complete the SUSE Linux implementation in just three months. They also transferred the required know-how to our SUSE Linux team so that they could manage the high-availability cluster.”

Today, all of Descon’s business processes are supported by SAP ERP applications running on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.

“We run a variety of SAP ERP applications on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server,” said Mr Hussain. “In the two years since the initial implementation, we have experienced no major difficulties with the SUSE Linux en-vironment. Whenever minor issues have arisen, the support from SUSE has been excellent—if we open a support ticket, we are always confident that we will receive a timely solution from the helpdesk.”

ResultsSince implementing SUSE Linux Enter prise Server for SAP Applications, Descon has achieved its goal of building a stable SAP ERP platform with 98 percent uptime.

Muhammad Mazhar, Basis Administrator at Descon, said: “In the past, registry cor-ruption in Microsoft Windows was an ever-

present business risk. When it occurred, we would have had to take our produc-tion systems offline for an extended pe-riod while we tracked down and repaired the problem.

“By contrast, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications is simple, resilient and user-friendly. Because of this, we have been able to reduce our risk of unplanned downtime significantly and cut the daily administration workload from eight hours a day to just three hours—an improvement of 63 percent.”

Configured with the SUSE Linux Enter-prise Server High Availability Extension, Descon’s SUSE Linux landscape provides a stable platform for its essential SAP ERP applications.

“In our legacy environment, a server failure could disable our production systems for up to five hours—reducing our ability to keep the tight delivery deadlines,” said Mr Hussain. “Today, if one of our servers goes down, SUSE Linux automatically trans fers the workload to a secondary system— meaning that we can restore affected production services in within an hour.”

Following the success of its SUSE Linux Enterprise Server solution, Descon plans to implement VMware vCenter. “Working with NDS and deploying SUSE Linux tech nolo-gies, we have gained the highly reliable SAP ERP platform we needed to drive business growth,” said Mr Afzal. “By con tin uing our close collaboration, we aim to further reduce the cost and complexity of our SAP ERP en-vironment by virtualizing it using VMware.”