Futurenet Helps WABAG Prepare For The Future

VA Tech WABAG is an Indian MNC, which offers complete solution for water
treatment across the globe. WABAG had different legacy systems in place and was
finding it difficult to get its employees talk to each other without spending a
lot of time in getting everyone on the same page. The need of the hour was to
get a unified view of the business and to provide a single platform for WABAG's
employees to interact with one another, based on that unified view. In that
regard, the company wanted to implement a single instance of an ERP solution,
which would help address their business needs. "WABAG wanted us to provide
infrastructure for ERP users who would be accessing the system both domestically
as well as globally through multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) from places in
Europe, North Africa and other Indian and global locations," said M Baskar, R&D
Manager, Futurenet Technologies, a Chennai-based SP.

Starting off as a product supplier to WABAG, Futurenet gained the customer's
confidence and branched off into providing other value-added services. "Futurenet
has been with us for a long time and in the initial stages of our relationship
they supplied us with some hardware after which they introduced us to open
source technology with an e-mail solution being deployed. They also established
servers for the initial ERP roll-out in India. In our relationship with them, we
have found that their service is good, they are responsive to our requirements
and are strong in consulting. Although we did look at four-five other partners,
we froze on Futurenet because we wanted someone who could design and provide a
good solution and not just provide the hardware infrastructure," said V
Venkatasamy, Additional General Manager-Corporate Development Head, IT and ERP,
VA Tech WABAG.

Coming to the actual deployment details, while WABAG initially had a
homegrown ERP system, they later moved to an IFS ERP, with an Oracle database on
the back-end. "Since we already had the ERP running, it was decided to logically
extend this across the globe via MPLS VPN. Futurenet helped meet this add-on
requirement by providing us with a Citrix-based application server solution,
which would help support existing global operations," said Venkatasamy.
Futurenet studied WABAG's ERP requirement by having discussions with the IFS
team and with their Oracle team for the backend. "We worked in detail on IFS'
standard Citrix-based solution as it is a proven technology for application
delivery in lesser bandwidth. Post our discussions, we came up with an optimized
IT solution consisting of hardware, CAN and SAN solutions, which would help
support around 300 concurrent users who would access the ERP system from
different locations round the globe," said Baskar. Futurenet also recommended a
Fatpipe solution at India, which would be ideal for 20 to 50 users. "Given the
fact that bandwidth was a limitation and plus when we took stock of the number
of users, we realized that the number of simultaneous users off-site at India
would range between 20 and 50 users. Hence Fatpipe made more sense to deploy,"
shared Baskar. The time it took for the entire project in terms of actual man
hours put in came to around one month. "We had around six people in our
Futurenet team and around five people from WABAG involved in the project and in
total it took us around one month in terms of man hours," said Baskar.

Done in two phases, the first phase involved connecting the Indian locations
with Fatpipe (20-50 users) and MPLS (>50 users). "In their office in Pune for
instance, we required MPLS to support more than 50 users while in other
locations like Delhi and Kolkata we deployed Fatpipe as the users were less than
50 there," shared Baskar. The rest of the project was done in a single phase
where the CAN and SAN solution was implemented.

According to Baskar, there were a few challenges in deploying the solution at
remote sites in Delhi and Kolkata. "We do not have a physical presence in these
locations and hence, communicating with the team became a challenge for us while
implementing the solution. We managed to overcome this by collaborating with
another SP partner called Sysnet Global who had a physical presence there,"
highlighted Baskar.

Talking about the cost, Venkatasamy said, "The overall infrastructure
(servers) cost of the solution came to more than Rs 50 lakh with the hardware
costing more than Rs 25 lakh and the software (DB and OS) costing around Rs 30
lakh." Given such a costing, what have been the benefits for VA Tech as a
result? "VA Tech is now on ERP and users around the globe can use a single
application for their day-to-day operations other than just e-mail," quipped
Baskar. From the customer's perspective, Venkatasamy said, "Last March we went
live at India and we will complete one annual cycle in this March. The solution
has shown the required stability and we have not faced any infrastructure
problems with it. Since the infrastructure supporting the ERP solution is
stable, we will be able to reap the benefits of ERP including gaining business
intelligence from our dashboards."

Finally while the maintenance and support of the system is now being done by
WABAG's IT staff, the relationship with Futurenet remains strong and is one
which will continue to see a fruitful future.

John Jacob

johnj@cybermedia.co.in