Microsoft SQL Server

Customer Solution Case Study

Egypts Bavarian Auto Group Deploys SAP On

SQL Server 2005 to Support Rapid Growth

Overview We felt that our integration efforts would be more

Country or Region: Egypt
Industry: Manufacturing Automotive &
difficult if we were working with DB2 or Oracle as our
Industrial and Retail - Automotive SAP database. We already knew we could easily
integrate using SQL Server.
Customer Profile Dr. Zakaria Elnaggar, IT Director, Bavarian Auto Group
Bavarian Auto Group has exclusive rights
for import, assembly, distribution, sales Egypts Bavarian Auto Group, which is sole distributor of BMW,
and after-sales support of BMW products in
Egypt. The company also has exclusive MINI, Rolls-Royce, and other top automotive lines in Egypt, had a
rights to import and support MINI, Rolls- problem many companies would love to have: how to cope with 400
Royce, and other premier brands.
percent growth over the last five years. The company, which also
Business Situation operates an assembly line for BMWs in Egypt, chose SAP as its
Bavarian Auto Group, preparing to deploy
an SAP enterprise resource planning enterprise resource planning solution, and after considering several
solution, sought the best operating system options decided to deploy SAP on the Microsoft Application
and database software for deployment.
Platform, including Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition
Solution (64-bit) database software. Bavarian Auto Group chose the solution
After considering several options, including
using an existing DB2 database on an over an existing IBM AS400 system with an IBM DB2 database, and
AS400 system, or hosting SAP data on an over an Oracle-based solution, because it wanted the ease of
Oracle solution, the company chose
Microsoft SQL Server 2005. integration it enjoys with the Microsoft Application Platform, and
determined that it would gain enterprise-grade performance while
Benefits
Ease of integration
enjoying a lower total cost of ownership.
Reliability and high availability
Lower total cost of ownership
Efficient development environment
 Situation
In Egypt, Bavarian Auto Group is the sole
agent of BMW, MINI, Rolls-Royce, and other
great automotive brands. In addition to
selling new vehicles and providing after-sales
support, the company also operates a BMW
assembly plant.
Based in Cairo, Bavarian Auto Group has
enjoyed rapid growth, which serves as a sign
of success yet also places pressure on the
companys IT infrastructure. To better support
its growing business, which now includes
4,000 employees, Bavarian Auto Group
needed a powerful and comprehensive
enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution.
After studying its ERP options, the company
decided to move its operations onto SAP
software. But before deployment could begin,
Bavarian Auto Group needed to determine
what was the best technology stack for
BMW in Egypt - SAP running on hosting SAP. It required an operating system
Microsoft SQL Server
and database that provided exceptional
supports BMW sales and
performance, high availability, and the ability
service in Egypt.
to scale to keep up with the companys rapid
growth.
We have enjoyed tremendous growthin
excess of 400 percent over the past five
years, says Dr. Zakaria Elnaggar, IT Director
at Bavarian Auto Group. To keep up with
such rapid growth we needed a platform with
exceptional scalability and reliability.
Bavarian Auto Group considered these
deployment options:
Deploy SAP application modules on the
companys existing IBM AS400 system and
host SAP databases on the AS400s IBM
DB2 database that supported an internal
BMW dealer-support application.
Deploy SAP application modules using the
Windows Server 2003 operating system
and host SAP databases on its DB2
database.
Deploy SAP application modules using
Windows Server 2003, and host SAP
databases on Microsoft SQL Server
2005.
Deploy SAP application modules using a
UNIX operating system and host SAP
databases on an Oracle database.
The Oracle option was ruled out early. Dr.
Elnaggar notes, We saw Oracle as being
expensive to license and support, without
offering performance beyond what we could
get with SQL Server.
The company was reluctant to deploy using
its existing AS400/DB2 infrastructure
because it liked the ease of integration and
internal development it had found in other
areas of its operations working with the
Microsoft Application Platform. After speaking
with Microsoft reference companies with
similar deployments, and studying white
papers and other documents, the company
decided to deploy SAP on the Microsoft
Application Platform.
We have used SQL We had plenty of capacity on our AS400 and
DB2, says Dr. Elnaggar. But over the years
Server from version 7 we have moved more and more of our
onward, so we are eager operations onto the Microsoft Application
Platform, and been impressed with its
to move SAP to SQL enterprise-grade performance, including the
Server 2008." power of SQL Server.
Islam Farrag, IT Development Team Leader, Solution
Bavarian Auto Group Bavarian Auto Group deployed SAP ERP on
the Microsoft Application Platform, including
SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition (64-bit).
The company, which has already deployed
SQL Server 2008 in other parts of its
enterprise, plans a rapid upgrade of its SAP
database to SQL Server 2008.
We have used SQL Server from version 7
onward, so we are eager to move SAP to SQL
Server 2008, says Islam Farrag, IT
Development Team Leader at Bavarian Auto
Group. We really like SQL Server 2008
Reporting Services, and so are eager to
upgrade just to take advantage of that.
SAP modules deployed include Financial,
Controlling, Material Management, Sales and
Distribution, and Production Planning. The
SAP modules should help Bavarian Auto
Group reduce costs, monitor shop floor
activities online, easily control finished
products, and consolidate financial
statements.
Bavarian Auto Group used Microsoft Office
SharePoint Server 2007 to create an
intranet portal giving employees centralized,
role-based access to applications and data
stores, including SAP.
The company has a general enterprise
architecture that includes:
Presentation Tier. Bavarian Auto Group
The solution is deployed on an HP ProLiant
employees access SAP and most other
DL380 G5 server with 16 gigabytes (GB) of
applications through an intranet portal
RAM. Storage is on a storage area network
created using Microsoft Office SharePoint
(SAN) with 1 terabyte of space. The company
Server 2007. The presentation tier is
supported by Window Server 2003 Internet
Information Services (IIS) Web server
technology.
Application Tier. The company hosts all of
its SAP application modules on computers
running Windows Server 2003 Enterprise
Edition for 64-Bit Systems R2. Bavarian
Auto Group has also created internal
applications, some of which access SAP
applications. All internal development is
performed using Microsoft Visual Studio
2008 and the Microsoft .NET Framework
3.0. The company uses its AS400/DB2
infrastructure to host a BMW dealer-
support application.
Database Tier. All SAP data is stored on
servers running SQL Server 2005, soon to
be updated to SQL Server 2008 Enterprise.
SQL Server also supports a data mart for
BMW dealer-support information imported
from that applications DB2 data store on
the AS400.
ETL Tier. All extract, transform, and load
(ETL) processes are performed using SQL
Server Integration Services.
Analytics Tier. The company performs
analytics on data, including information
from the BMW dealer-support application
hosted on the AS400/DB2 stack. After
being imported into a SQL Server data
mart, using SQL Server Integration Services
to perform ETL, information is structured
into multidimensional data cubes for faster
analytics using SQL Server Analysis
Services.
Reporting Tier. Recurring and ad hoc
reporting of non-SAP data is supported
using SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services.
Microsoft ProClarity business analysis
software is used for reporting against the
data mart.
Weve enjoyed faultless also has two HP ProLiant DL380 G5 servers,
each with 8 GB of RAM, dedicated to testing
performance with and quality assurance.
Windows Server and
Benefits
SQL Server. We havent Deploying SAP on the Microsoft Application
had any unscheduled Platform has helped the company gain the
ease of integration it wanted in order to make
downtime. best use of SAP information across the
Dr. Zakaria Elnaggar, IT Director, Bavarian enterprise. The company is enjoying system
Auto Group stability, having experienced zero
unscheduled downtime for SAP. Additional
benefits include a lower total cost of
ownership than other platforms considered,
and an efficient development environment.
Ease of Integration
When Dr. Elnaggar speaks of the decision to
host SAP on SQL Server, the first reason he
gives is integration. It would have been easy
for us to have simply used our AS400 and
DB2 for SAP, but we knew that when we
deployed SAP it wouldnt be just a stand-
alone system, Dr. Elnaggar says. We knew
that we would be integrating our own internal
applications with SAP to make best use of the
information. We felt that our integration
efforts would be more difficult if we were
working with DB2 or Oracle as our SAP
database. We already knew we could easily
integrate using SQL Server.
The company appreciates the ease with
which it can integrate SAP with its SharePoint
Server portal, which also provides access to
the companys extensive reports created
using SQL Server Reporting Services and with
the data mart analytics created using SQL
Server Analysis Services and queried against
using Microsoft ProClarity.
We are using SQL Server Analysis Services
and Reporting Services to create BI [business
intelligence] and then making all of this
accessible through our SharePoint Server
site, says Dr. Elnaggar. The Microsoft
Application Platform makes it easy to create
integrated solutions that otherwise could be
quite difficult to piece together using other
databases and third-party applications.
Reliability and High Availability
Bavarian Auto Group has enjoyed flawless
stability hosting SAP on the Microsoft
Application Platform. The company wasnt
surprised by this, as it has steadily moved
nearly all of its IT infrastructure to the
Microsoft Application Platform in recent
years.
To help enhance reliability and high
availability, Bavarian Auto Group used
Windows Server clustering technology to
deploy SAP on a two-node active-active
cluster. The nodes are configured for failover,
so if one of the physical servers fails, the
other continues to provide service until the
other node is brought back online.
Weve enjoyed faultless performance with
Windows Server and SQL Server, says Dr.
Elnaggar. We havent had any unscheduled
downtime.
Lower Total Cost of Ownership
Bavarian Auto Group could have enjoyed an
initial savings on hardware by deploying SAP
on its existing AS400 system. Even though
his group had to purchase new server
computers to deploy SAP on the Microsoft
Application Platform, the company
determined that the Microsoft option
provided a lower total cost of ownership
because of lower licensing and system
administration costs.
We had to look beyond having to purchase
hardware for the deployment, because
everything else is less expensive with the
Microsoft Application Platform, says Dr.
Elnaggar. From our perspective SQL Server
has more attractive licensing than does
Oracle. We find that UNIX boxes cost about
twice what a similarly equipped Intel-based
Every way we looked at server computer does. And it is more difficult other options it explored, by deploying its
to find Oracle administrators here in Egypt, solution on the Microsoft Application
alternatives, we and once found they can be considerably Platform, including SQL Server.
determined that our more expensive.

lowest total cost of The company also felt that its internal
ownership would come application development and systems
integration would be more expensive if it had
from deploying SAP on brought in a new type of operating system
the Windows Server and database. We are very comfortable
creating solutions with the Microsoft
operating system and Application Platform, says Farrag. And in
the SQL Server regards to ongoing systems administration,
SQL Server 2005 is very easy to manage.
database.
Dr. Zakaria Elnaggar, IT Director, Bavarian Dr. Elnaggar notes, Every way we looked at
Auto Group alternatives, we determined that our lowest
total cost of ownership would come from
deploying SAP on the Windows Server
operating system and the SQL Server
database.

Efficient Development Environment

The companys internal developers enjoy
working with Visual Studio 2008, the
Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0, SQL Server
2005, and SharePoint Server 2007 in
creating better solutions for their users at
Bavarian Auto Group.

We have excellent internal developers who

are adept at using Microsoft development
tools and SQL Server to give our internal
users the information they need, says
Farrag. We use SQL Server Integration
Services extensively to move data to
wherever it is needed, and then use Analysis
Services and ProClarity to perform analytics
and Reporting Services, and SharePoint
Server to provide access to the results. We
feel we have the tools to give our users
whatever IT solution they may need.

Summary
In summary, Bavarian Auto Group gained an
optimal infrastructure for hosting SAP, and a
lower total cost of ownership compared to
For More Information
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using the World Wide Web, go to:
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For more information about HP products
and services, visit the Web site at:
www.hp.com
For more information about Bavarian Auto
Group products and services, visit the Web
site at: www.bag-eg.com
This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT
MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS
SUMMARY.
Document published December 2008
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Edition for 64-Bit Systems Services
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Microsoft Office Partner
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2007
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Technologies HP ProLiant DL380 G5 servers
Microsoft Internet Information Server
6.0
Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0