Lapeyre

Leading French Retailer Chooses Red Hat for Critical Sales and Customer Service System

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Lapeyre, a leading manufacturer and distributor of home improvement products in Europe, relies on Enterprise Linux to run Caméléon, the graphic application package used to design living spaces for their customers.

Every day thousands of Lapeyre salespeople use Caméléon in the final stage of a sale. When the latest versions of Caméléon were being developed, Lapeyre needed to migrate to the Oracle9i environment. To support Caméléon on the Oracle platform, Lapeyre chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux because of its stability, availability, effective support, and full compatibility with their existing environment.

With 2,600 employees and more than a hundred shops throughout France, the Lapeyre Group is Europe's leading manufacturer and distrubutor specializing in home improvement. Customers can purchase pre-made and custom-designed fixtures and fittings for inside and outside the home. Lapeyre credits its commercial success to the close relationship with customers, responsiveness, and understanding of individual customer needs. In order to continually deliver made-to-order products and unsurpassed customer service within their multi-channel environment, Lapeyre depends on highly reliable and flexible sales management tools, the most significant being the Caméléon software solution.

Caméléon is a critical tool for Lapeyre's sales force, allowing them to check the catalogue, develop made-to-order scenarios for customers, see mock-ups on screen, and study the practicalities of each option. Caméléon then sends all required factors for the final product to the entire production chain, reflecting the final changes in cost. This powerful tool is the final link in Lapeyre's sales chain, valuable for concluding sales. It allows products to be fully tailored to the individual; customers can visualize items they wish to purchase.

Additionally, Caméléon is a strong management tool. It automatically generates all the manufacturing data including names and ranges for a customer order in the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system for the group's 13 factories. As a result, Lapeyre requires the highest levels of availability and performance from Caméléon and the underlying platforms.

Lapeyre had to migrate to Oracle9i to benefit from the advantages of the new version of the automatic Caméléon Configurator and effectively manage the increase of catalogue data. It was at this point that the company decided to install Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES in all their stores in mainland France and its overseas territories.

Red Hat, the Choice for Stability, Performance and Security

The decision to adopt Red Hat's Open Source Architecture is the result of long deliberation at Lapeyre. Due in part to their historically Unix culture, the groups' technicians already experimented with Red Hat Enterprise Linux in testing stages and internal layouts. Because they required an extremely reliable system, capable of high performance and with long-term support, they tested a variety of likely solutions. Lapeyre ultimately chose Red Hat as its solutions provider.

"Roll out began in the last quarter of 2003. The Red Hat technicians packaged a solution specifically for Lapeyre, including automatic installation. Connecting to a server, rolling out a master, and networking the machines took a Lapeyre technician only a quarter of an hour." explained Philippe Rennes, Head of Systems and Database Management System.

Red Hat Network Satellite, a System for On-Going Solutions

Lapeyre also chose to install Red Hat Network Satellite in its head offices, which operate on a private France Télécom MPLS (Multi Protocol Label Switching) network. The Satellite allows them to download operating system updates nightly, according to individual configurations of each system. Updates are catalogued so that the entire Lapeyre network always has precise data.

Equipping all the stores required less than six months. Almost a year after the installation took place, the Group can only congratulate themselves on their choice. "When it was installed, we really appreciated being able to work with real professionals. Red Hat has really supported us in everything relating to the Service-Integration domain. Thanks to the Red Hat team's availability, response time, and relevance, the situation went according to plan," Rennes said. One of the biggest wins in this deployment is the fact that these changes were carried out with no impact on the Lapeyre sales force.

Fully-Controlled Autonomy Thanks to the Reliability of the Red Hat Ecosystem

Now every Lapeyre store is equipped with a Dell® PowerEdge® 2650 with an Oracle9i database. "Several arguments made us lean in favor of Red Hat," Rennes explained, "Firstly, the desire to be independent with regard to the builder, to avoid a proprietary model, but also to use guaranteed material for the installation. Finally, we wanted the assurance of using a single collaborator with long-term support options that would not disappear overnight." Lapeyre's internal experience with Unix systems also tipped the balance in favor of Red Hat. "Our technicians had the opportunity to develop their skills quickly with Red Hat's support, an important factor for the future," he added.

The guarantees and support coverage extend over a three-year period and within Lapeyre the Red Hat Enterprise Linux roll out continues. Every store opened has the same computing system as all other stores in the Group, making systems management more efficient and cost effective. Lapeyre also envisions the development of an ERP system using PeopleSoft® for its accounting operations. Given the performance of the Red Hat Enteprise Linux solution, the Group is strongly considering it for that project as well.

About Lapeyre

Lapeyre manufactures and sells fixtures and fittings for throughout the house:

For the interior:

doors, stairs, flooring, cupboards and shelving, complete kitchens, bathrooms and tiling

For the exterior:

windows and shutters, outside doors and garage doors, gates, garden furniture and equipment

Through its network of 100 stores, Lapeyre is a real force to be heard. Their facilities and services are offered to individual customers and to craftsmen--, organizing their home improvement projects--from the simplest to the most elaborate. The Lapeyre Group is a part of the Saint-Gobain Group of companies (Construction Distribution branch).

Red Hat, Dell, and Oracle Exceed Expectations

Four Dell 2-processor systems work with Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS, accessing a Storage Area Network (SAN) from EMC. Oracle9i Real Application Clusters (9i RAC) handles the clustering. Red Hat and Dell worked closely together to develop the 9i RAC solution . Under heavy loads the complete system performs extremely well and has achieved performance records. It demonstrated capability in the test phase at PLUS, when compared with new Sun hardware.

Diagram of the PLUS solution

The new cluster system is highly fail-safe. The production environment is mirrored at an external computer centre on the same architecture and synchronized online with the production system. The cluster software handles the failover automatically in the production system. The switch to the mirror system would be made manually if ever necessary.

In addition to the clusters used for critical card applications, PLUS deploys Red Hat Enterprise Linux on two test machines. There is also a back-up server based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux that controls the tape library.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux even works in a virtual infrastructure. A production database for communication with a partner works productively in a virtual machine on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. PLUS uses a virtual infrastructure based on the VMware ESX Server for server consolidation. At present about 27 virtual machines are running on eight physical servers.

Continued Value Through RHN

One element of this Linux deployment is the Red Hat Network (RHN) Proxy Server. The Proxy Server connects PLUS to RHN delivering updates, patches, and errata to customers. With the RHN Proxy Server, PLUS can centrally update and maintain its entire Linux infrastructure. This simplifies administration and ensures that the system is always up-todate and secure. Access to Red Hat Network is included with all Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscriptions. Updates are pushed through RHN as they become available, so PLUS can take immediate advantage of new technologies without waiting for a major release to be able to use them.

Why Migrate?

PLUS Finanzservice was pursuing a number of objectives with their Linux migration. The immediate cause was that contract renewal with Sun was imminent. In view of the high ongoing expenses for a Solaris infracture Stein needed to research cost-effective alternatives, particularly because he wished to build a mirrored cluster to replace the old backup solution. "We didn't just want to replace the old systems, we wanted to build a completely new infrastructure with high performance and scalability. Our goal was to implement an already highly reliable system with an additional disaster recovery option we needed to create an external standby computer centre as a back-up. Production and back-up systems had to have a unified but flexible architecture."

Why Linux?

Stein wanted both cost reduction and independence from manufacturers. They did, not wanting to be tied to a single hardware supplier, and favored Intel-compatible machines. In addition to Linux, Stein also considered Microsoft in the operating layer. However, he felt that a Microsoft environment represented too high a security risk for such a centralized system that could invite hacker attacks.

Why Red Hat Enterprise Linux?

First of all, PLUS already had positive experiences in other fields with Red Hat; a server that ran so reliably and problem-free that its existence had almost been forgotten. Secondly, Dell recommended the widest possible use of Red Hat software, including certification already obtained by Red Hat for use in a SAN.

Tests showed that a Linux system would offer improved performance at a significantly lower cost than a comparable system on an updated Sun platform. In all, PLUS Finanzservice was able to reduce costs by nearly 30% over three years for a much more efficient IT infrastructure. Stein put forward another argument for switching from Solaris to Linux: "It is easier to find good administrators for Linux than for Solaris."

The Red Hat Professional Services team was responsible for installing the production environment. They also installed the operating system platform, installed Oracle RAC, and handled the system tuning. The test system was complete within three weeks. Once testing was complete, Stein's team and Red Hat only needed four weeks to optimize the entire system.

The system has been in operation since August 2004 and has more than fulfilled expectations: "During installation and the first phase of the production system, the support from Red Hat was everything that could be hoped for in collaboration with a technology supplier: fast, extremely competent, and uncomplicated," explains Stein. "We now have a system that is not only very reliable and inexpensive but also offers the high scalability that we need to continue growing. The switch to Red Hat Enterprise Linux on Intel-compatible hardware was a major turning point for us and I am happy that we were able to complete the project with great success. Now we can start thinking about how we are going to expand our use of Red Hat products and services in our business."

In conclusion Stein said, "Because the new systems have a high level of availability, we can give our customers better service. That is the only difference they would have noticed. You can't pay a new system a greater compliment than that."