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COMPANY FILE
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Part of John Menzies plc, Menzies
Distribution is a leading provider of distribution and
marketing services to the UK newspaper and magazine
supply chain.
Each day Menzies distributes over
2.5 million magazines, covering more than 3,000 different
titles, and 4 million newspapers (6 million on Sundays)
to over 23,000 retail customers.
The company also provides marketing
services to retailers and publishers, such as sales
promotions, range management and merchandising services
to help maximise sales revenues. Its retail customers
range from small corner shops to the large supermarket
chains.
Menzies Distribution uses 1,400 vehicles
covering 93,000 miles a day and employs over 4,000 staff.
It currently has around one-third of the UK market share
in the newspaper and magazine supply chain industry.
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Q: WHAT IT INFRASTRUCTURE DID YOU DEPLOY?
A: One of my responsibilities is to make sure that we have
the correct hardware and network infrastructure on which to
run our applications.
As our business is operated nationally, we currently have
a distributed IT environment, with powerful Sun Microsystems
servers in each of the 25 locations. These support our own
bespoke systems from order processing through to sales history,
marketing management, etc. The legacy newspaper and magazine
allocation systems were part of this.
Since we have now created a centralised allocations operation,
the applications have been built on a dedicated platform at
head office – although they are still part of the nationwide
network, so that relevant information can be transmitted to
the local systems which drive the process of packing copies
for delivery.
We have a close working relationship with Sun Microsystems
and purchased the hardware through Esteem Systems who are
a value added reseller with local support in Scotland. The
new infrastructure is based on a Sun Server environment running
Solaris 10 and using an Oracle database. A storage and backup
system was also included in the technical design using a Sun
StorEdge SAN and a Sun StorEdge tape system.
As we were not used to running a large centralised processing
environment, we sought advice from them on the correct sizing
and configuration for a high-availability environment, as
well as the training and knowledge required to maintain it.
The systems have to provide high reliability as we cannot
afford to be down for a significant length of time.
One major problem which occurred between the i-Mag and i-News
phases of the project was that the storage area network technology
being used became obsolete due to RoHS (the restriction of
the use of certain hazardous substances in electrical and
electronic equipment) regulations.
In this situation, the manufacturer is no longer able to
supply the product due to its lead content, therefore expansion
becomes difficult, if not impossible.
Esteem were particularly helpful at this point and, together
with Sun, implemented an upgrade that achieved RoHS compliance
with minimum disruption to our business. Although we could
have done without this problem, we ended up with a better
solution.
It took approximately a year to implement i-Mag, from the
initial design phase through to the final system commissioning.
A further year was spent developing and implementing i-News.
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Conspectus 2007
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Copyright © 2007
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