Hannaford Saves Big

Food retailer Hannaford Bros. Co. has shaved $300,000 a year off its annual software costs following a major system and storage upgrade.

At the heart of the overhaul is an IBM System z9 mainframe, which recently replaced an older z900 machine from the same vendor at Hannafords HQ in Scarborough, Maine. Bill Homa, Hannaford’s CIO, says that as well as being four times faster than its predecessor, the z9 has opened the door to major savings.

“We’re taking advantage of IBM sub-capacity licensing, which means that we only pay for the parts of the system that we use,” he explains. “We’re also taking advantage of capacity on demand.”

IBM is one of a number of vendors, including Sun and HP, currently touting the benefits of new usage-based pricing models for IT gear. (See IBM Clinches ABN AMRO Deal, Sun Makes Cloudy Data Center Play and Utility Computing: Where Is It At?.)

The z9 scales up to 64 processors, unlike the z900, which went up to 32 chips, according to Homa. “Whereas previously the system was running at full capacity and we were paying for all of that,” he says. “Now we’re only paying for the processors we use,” he says.Although Homa would not reveal how much he paid for the new mainframe, he admits that the annual savings in software fees will cover the cost of the system. The z9, which is located in Scarborough, Maine, is also speeding up operations at the firm’s 300 stores.

With the slower z900 staff in stores often waited up to half an hour for month-end online stock reports. “With the new system, it’s done in minutes,” he says. “Because a lot of our systems are online, response time and reliability are critical to us.”

Installing the mainframe helped the retailer reach the halfway mark in a major five-year server consolidation effort, which has already seen 300 Intel-based HP servers removed from Hannaford stores. “We have another 300 that are due to be removed in the next two years.”

Although Homa was unable to say how much money this will save, he admits that the server consolidation will make his life a lot easier. “It’s easier to manage one machine than 300 or 600 machines.”

Unlike some users, Homa is also a fan of virtualization. (See USC's Cluster Buster.) Hannaford is using IBM’s z/VM software to run 60 virtual servers on the z9, which supports most of the firm’s Internet and Intranet services. “It has saved us having to buy 60 physical servers,” explains the CIO.The z9 machine also runs Hannaford’s new Computer Assisted Ordering system from SAF AG, which collects data from stores and helps generate stock replenishment orders. “We didn’t have the capacity before to do computer assisted ordering," he says. We couldn’t have done it on the old machine.”

The firm has also bolstered its storage strategy; like most CIOs, Homa is wrestling with a data explosion. “Storage is growing at 30 percent per year,” he says.

To tackle this issue, the firm added 5 Tbytes to its IBM Enterprise Storage Server (ESS), bringing its total disk capacity to about 20 Tbytes. Hannaford has also upgraded its mainframe/storage interconnect from 1-Gbit/s FICON to 2-Gbit/s FICON Express.

Data from the mainframe is now synchronously replicated on both the ESS and a TotalStorage tape system, also from IBM. Prior to the z9, data could only be replicated to the ESS, according to Homa. Now, the company can selectively replicate data to both tape and disk, he explains.

For disaster recovery, the z9 is linked via fiber with a z990 mainframe at another Hannaford site in Portland, Maine. The firm’s storage is held in both places, according to the CIO. “If you lose the z990 in the other data center, the z9 can pick its work up with capacity on demand,” he says.— James Rogers, Senior Editor, Byte and Switch

Organizations mentioned in this article: