Success Story

BoostEdge helps MPO turn the deployment of PeopleSoft Enterprise One/IBM WebSphere into an immediate

Description of the business

Established in 1957, MPO is a world-renowned French company that specializes in CD, DVD and CD-R pressing, plus other multimedia formats. Today, the company employs over 1,300 people worldwide, including 600 in France, and owns six plants around the world as well as a network of sales offices on three continents. Due to its production capacity (420 million CDs and 160 million DVDs) and sales of 208 million euros in 2003, MPO is firmly established in these markets. Results are further enhanced by the company's partnership with Disc Americ in North America.

MPO's strength rests in its proactive relationship with its customers. The company has organized its information system so as to provide data on manufacturing progress at any given moment and for any customer. For example, in 2004, the company was able to meet an urgent request from Sony for the urgent manufacturing of over 500,000 DVDs for its PlayStation 2

The problem

The PeopleSoft Enterprise One/IBM WebSphere application is central to MPO's information system, with facilities management provided by the Euriware Production Center in Quimper. Approximately 300 users, based in four of the group's plants, use this application on a daily basis. Remote use of the application rapidly caused a drop in user productivity and congestion on the company network. According to Jean du Puytison, IT Systems Director for MPO International, We needed to increase the network's bandwidth while optimizing operating costs. He added: Among the various solutions possible, we focused on dataflow acceleration appliances. After an initial experiment with another product on the market, we selected BoostEdge's acceleration appliance due to the PeopleSoft Enterprise One application's recognized level of performance.

Solving the problem

According to Stéphane Landais of MPO's IT department, ActivNetworks acceleration solutions, which were recommended to us by PeopleSoft/JD Edwards, were selected by MPO after a series of tests performed in production with two BE600 acceleration appliances and with the assistance provided by ActivNetworks‘ Technical Support department. The results observed met our expectations: we noted a fourfold to fivefold reduction in the volume of data conveyed over the network.” Jean du Puytison estimates that, “The return on investment will take 18-20 months, in terms of the network evolution costs required to obtain such results.” He adds that, “ActivNetworks met our request in a timely fashion by lending us an acceleration appliance and providing us with technical assistance during the testing period and until we were in production. Consequently, we were able to react in an efficient and particularly timely manner in order to meet our requirements. The Euriware Production Center, our facilities management system, deployed the BoostEdge appliances alongside the web servers. Our users appreciated the accelerated posting of data in the course of their daily activities."

In conclusion, Jean du Puytison states that, "What really made the difference was ActivNetworks’ ability to install the solution within 24 hours, allowing us to go live very rapidly. It was extremely important for us to avoid any breakdown in the acceleration service between the two appliances on loan and their final substitutes. Removing these appliances at a sensitive time, just as users were becoming accustomed to this new ERP, seemed risky to me."