Deployment in production of Colruyt / SPAR core critical applications migrated to Linux / OracleNice, February 23, 2010 TELEBIG, a leading provider of migration of legacy applications, is proud to announce the highly successful deployment of the production of the
applications of SPAR Retail, Belgium.
Since 2003, the Belgian Colruyt Group operates the SPAR brand through SPAR Retail SA. With 15,000 stores in 32 countries, SPAR is the largest worldwide organization of independent retailers. Emphasis is placed on providing variety
and quality products, especially for fresh food, in a modern and comfortable environment with personalized services to the customers. The IT of SPAR Retail has been developed over several decades around the Bull GCOS 6 platform, which became HVX in 1990s, and has handled
all critical applications of the company. It is composed essentially of 1870 COBOL programs, hundreds of JCLS (EC) and Tcl /Tk scripts, together with a sizeable number of utility programs
close to the operating system, which produced a very complex though extremely efficient application.
Given the obsolescence of HVX and the desire to streamline its development environments by deploying Linux with the Oracle database, Colruyt has
considered several scenarios, including rewriting, and has chosen TELEBIG’s Migration+ solution to achieve its migration goal. TELEBIG has provided
a huge commitment for the changeover.
The migrated applications cover the business heart of the SPAR Retail. Indeed, these applications secure all the vital stages of the logistics management
data, order delivery, supplier orders, receiving, storage, receipt of orders from stores, validation, preparation, delivery and billing.
This is all done within the time constraints associated with handling fresh produce.
The choice of Colruyt was focused from the very beginning of the project on the company,
TELEBIG. According to the Colruyt, this is the most important decision they made and a very smart move. The project was carried out following the usual process approach of TELEBIG migration projects via Migration +. It began with the production of a pilot,
which helped validate many difficult technical issues, till the contractual 24/24 7/7 support by TELEBIG after the start of production.
Collaboration between COLRYUT and TELEBIG has been exemplary and very dynamic . It has gone well beyond the contractual constraints
despite the difference in culture between the two companies. Jean-Pol Houssa Project manager Migration SPAR B-Colruyt Group Services says:
«This project was for us a technical challenge.
The application needed to be migrated without any difference for the users whatsoever in terms of functionality or performance.
The choice of the TELEBIG was the decisive point of this project. Without their expertise, the challenge would have been impossible to realize. This collaboration has also helped me personally, to better understand the internal structure of Colruy particularly through the eyes of an outside firm. The bet has been won. The production started on Saturday, January 23, 2010 at 13:00 and was a complete success. No one would suspect the amount of work and energy put in to give the user the illusion that everything looks "like before." The SPAR Retail activity has not been at all impacted by this fundamental technical change». Etienne Micheli CTO of TELEBIG says: « The technical challenges of this project were significant and required multiple developments to complement our solution Migration + for Bull GCOS,
which has already been implemented successfully in multiple projects, through an optimization to the specific context of Colruyt. Among those I can mention the optimum use of ACUCOBOL from Micro Focus, combined with our technology for transparently mapping files to the
Oracle database (EASYMAP), the conversion scripts Tcl / Tkl scripts in Perl, and the replacement of many specific utilities in the Linux environment,
all via an automated 100% Rehosting process. However, the strong commitment of Colruyt and the exemplary collaboration between our companies has been the key driver towards the success of this project. MyServices, the Brussels based partner of TELEBIG for the Belgian market, has complemented the Project Management activities,
through its local presence and knowledge of Colruyt». About Colruyt / SPAR Retail SPAR Retail provides merchandise to 264 stores with a surface area ranging from 300 to 700 M2 and the larger EUROSPAR stores which are over 700 M2.
All stores are operated by independent owners.
Some figures
Turnover: 500 Million €
Employees: 500
Customers: 264
Number of references: 45.000
Parcel / day: 100,000 parcels delivered (groceries, fresh fruits and vegetables)
Users online: 200 from 6:00 till 22:00
Continuous processes: 70
And the Colruyt Group: see www.colruyt.be |
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