| About Selway Moore
For more than ten years, Selway
Moore has been instrumental in helping
organisations to align their business and IT
to deliver maximum return on investment
(ROI) and significantly improve (TOC) total
cost of ownership. The company is an
authorised HP Business Solutions Partner,
an expert in design, implementation and
support for all HP datacentre technology,
and has HP specialist accreditations in
computing systems, datacentre solutions,
storage works solutions and service sales.
All of which goes to show the depth and
breadth of their technical expertise and
illustrates their delivery capabilities in HP
server, storage and software technologies.
______________________________
“I was quite surprised by the level of
expertise of the technical guys from
Selway Moore, on both the storage and
the server sides. They really are leading
people in their field, and really know
what they are talking about. They can
advise us on the best way forward too.”
Steve Arnell, Technical Services Manager, New Look |
The problem
New Look has a large distribution centre in
Newcastle-Under-Lyme, consisting of two
interconnected warehouses, from which
products are sent to stores throughout
the UK and beyond. The processes in
the distribution centre are controlled by
a specialised database application called
Selektron, which runs on New Look’s
Mission Critical computing platform.
Selektron coordinates various inputs to
drive the automated picking technology in
the two distribution centres at Lymedale.
All the processes in the warehouses are
dependent on Selektron, including the
movement of several giant robotic arms
that select clothing from different bins and
load them onto lorries for transportation.
New Look always understood the risks
associated with the lack of a satisfactory
DR capability in the original system.
After running the system for two years in a
rapidly expanding business, the company
realised that that performance and
capacity were also becoming an issue.
|
| The solution
The fulfilment of the requirement for a
DR environment provided the opportunity
to solve both of these issues and to
provide significant additional flexibility.
To help deliver, this New Look needed
a partner who could design a radically
new architecture.
HP recommended Selway Moore to help
with the design of the new environment.
As New Look had been involved with
Selway Moore in the past, it was more than
happy to take up this recommendation.
The project
Steve Arnell, New Look’s Technical
Services Manager, describes what
happened. “Selway Moore took the
documentation. They specified the
equipment, drew up the plans for the
new design. Then they procured and
delivered the equipment, and built it for
us – fitting it and putting it on our existing
system.” Since then, Selway Moore has
helped New Look to deliver the operational
environment, and has continued to
provide design and product advice.
The design has been tested, and works
very successfully, as does the disaster
recovery. “We have moved from two
nodes to four nodes, all working together,”
says Steve. “Selektron can now switch
seamlessly between all four nodes, so
if one fails, it does not stop any of the
warehouse processes.”
______________________________
“It is great that Selway Moore is so close
to HP. In every case, the recommendations
from Selway Moore have had HP
endorsement. The fact that Selway Moore
and HP are so closely aligned means
that we always get the right advice.”
Steve Arnell, Technical Services Manager, New Look |
Inside the Lymedale warehouse
The benefits
New Look is not only benefiting from an
efficiently run distribution centre, with the
safeguard of a disaster recovery system
in place for Selektron, but it also now has
a DR system that will cope with other
platforms in the future.
By taking Selekton off the previous
environment, Selway Moore has freed up
a large amount of space that can be put
to better use. For instance, New Look
has introduced an application that creates
better stock rotation, with input that
includes selling trends as well as seasonal
influences, and even takes account of
weather predictions.
The company is also working on a project
called Darwin, which uses service-oriented
architecture to take best-of-breed systems,
and enables multiple applications to be put
together. There will room for this too, thanks
to the new architecture.
“We are always trying to design for the
end point – it’s at the core of what we
do,” says the New Business
Account Manager for Selway Moore. “We
are not looking for short-term solutions.
Which means that we have to get under a
business and really understand it.”
______________________________
|
