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|  Meeting the ever-changing pressures of the electronics industry is not new for Conrad Electronic International HK Ltd (CEI HK). Since its conception in 1988 as a buying and sourcing arm of its German-based Conrad Electronic, IT has played a central role in CEI HK to provide the scalability and competitive edge it required to maintain its helm.
The 48-strong company buys and sources for its German head office through its China offices in Shenzhen and Shanghai, and agent offices in Taiwan and South Korea. The Hong Kong-based company oversees the design, manufacturing, quality audit and shipment electronics items, in partnership with its China offices and serves Conrad Electronic’s over 26 retail stores and outlets, and regional retail offices in Austria, Switzerland, France, Netherland and Slovakia. It has built a voluminous catalogue that lists more than 60,000 electronic items, including measuring instruments, multimedia products, telephony products, sound and light equipment, automobile systems and a plethora of consumer devices.
Ever-increasing customer demands and shifting business environments in Asia has made the company rethink its IT strategy and environment. In 1997, the company decided meet their challenges head on with a new strategy and a new environment starring IBM’s Lotus Domino and Linux. It has never looked back since. |
 CEI HK’s first move was to deploy IBM’s Lotus Domino.
Since 1997, collaboration and messaging application has always been CEI HK’s centrepiece greasing the company’s region-wide supply chain. Providing a dual role as a communications platform and a workflow environment, Lotus Domino proved to be crucial for the company to integrate data from multiple sources and to facilitate efficient data exchange.
Although Lotus Domino met the company’s needs, the underlying platform Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 was proving to be a headache for CEI HK. The company was constantly plagued with security and performance issues.
So the company decided to take the second move to search for a better alternative platform. They had two: Linux and Windows 2000.
At the same time, CEI HK wanted to continue utilising the various advantages that Lotus Domino offered them in terms of distributed databases, layers of security, rapid development environment and a complete workgroup system with email functionalities.
To combine both elements as part of their framework, the IT team initiated the Domino Infrastructure Rollout (DIR).
After a period of detailed examination, DIR took a revolutionary step in 2000. In that year, CEI HK decided to become the first in Hong Kong to deploy Lotus Domino on Linux to fulfil their company’s pressing requirements |
The decision was no leap of faith. Realising that the company’s profitability and bottom lines were at stake, the company studied the issues on migrating their entire system onto Linux.
One big motivator for DIR to use Linux was cost, said Holger Okruch, Assistant IT Manager at CEI HK.
“We have been running Windows NT 4.0, so we are thinking of upgrading to Windows 2000, or change the operating system to Linux. Cost was the main motivation as we realised that through integration with Linux we can save on manpower,” he added.
Explaining the advantages of Lotus Domino on Linux to the company’s board was also simple. Once the IT team pointed out the savings that can be acquired, they got the Board’s full backing.
After weighing the advantages of the Lotus Domino on Linux, the IT team, in one weekend, took the bold step to changeover the platform. “When people came to work the next week, they were wondering how they were able to carry out their work faster,” said Mr Okruch.
And the proactive step paid immediate dividends to the company, in terms of stability and flexibility. |
Linux eliminated nagging performance issues.
Database indexing improved by 100 per cent and access time of the servers and response times were quicker. New searches on their product 22GB-database, which hosts over 300,000 documents, was executed within seconds, without the worry of slow response times and system hangs due to memory dumps.
“Once the Linux system was running, we did not need to touch it,” said Mr Okruch.
Lotus Domino on Linux is also scalable, which gave an important competitive advantage for CEI HK and made the company more nimble to demands.
“The markets are Asia Pacific has been developing in different directions, and so we needed to adjust the systems according to the market needs. You need a fast database system so that you can efficiently run reports on all the suppliers and this system provided us exactly that,” said Mr Okruch.
At the same time, the combination of Lotus Domino and Linux removed the kinks in their security that worried the company. With the new setup, the IT team could concentrate on developing value-added applications and tools instead of being bogged down with maintenance and security issues. |
Operating costs were reduced. As Lotus Domino on Linux was stable and met the company’s performance expectations, technical support was minimised and patching work was minimised. “Besides, the technical support available on the Linux forums is already more than sufficient to meet your needs,” said Mr Okruch.
With reduced maintenance, the IT team need not have to fly constantly to its regional offices to resolve performance headaches. This saved valuable man hours and travelling cost, and indirectly mitigated the risks associated with travelling.
At the same time, with the environment running smoothly, CEI HK was also able to reduce their IT team from six to four, thereby saving on precious manpower cost.
Initial capital expenditures were also reduced as the migration did not need new hardware.
At the same time, deploying Lotus Domino on Linux opened a whole world of possible add-ons that eases management. “Lotus Domino is not standing alone in the market. There are a lot of companies giving you products that you can use,” said Mr Okruch.
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Although CEI HK was treading new waters in Hong Kong with the deployment of Lotus Domino on Linux, it was not all alone.
Although most of the challenges were handled by the IT team itself, they were impressed with the support given by IBM throughout the entire migration.
The IT team was helped by informative articles from the IBM knowledge base, which helped us a lot. At the same time, they had a two-way communication with IBM’s technical support team which answered all of the company’s answers.
This was important as the Lotus Domino system they initially installed was a beta version. With ample documentation, support and hands-on training, the IT team was able to coast through deployment and was even able to help IBM identify and fine tune their system for final release.
“The adventure was easy with IBM and we would not been able to do it without the support. Many other companies would have just looked at support as a revenue stream, but IBM was with us on this since the beginning and there is nothing more perfect that these kinds of relationships,” said Mr Okruch.
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With IBM behind CEI HK’s bold moves, the company is staking their future growth on Domino and Linux.
“The system has been stable for four years, and we are definitely staying on Lotus Domino,” said Mr Okruch.
The company is currently looking forward to the new Lotus Domino 7 release while improving security and business continuity in their environment.
The new system has also allowed the company to put into action previous plans that were left on the back burners, said Mr Okruch.
For example, the IT team had wanted to deploy an online quotation system, developed to grease the supply chain and allow business processes across their head office and various offices to run faster and more efficiently. With Lotus Domino on Linux, the company had a more stable system and could finally rollout this new system.
“There is no system in the market that has all the features that Lotus Domino provides. I think for small enterprises like us, and for department in large enterprises, who want a fast set up and flexibility, Lotus Domino on Linux is perfect,” said Mr Okruch.
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