Data and Database Management Software
Alcoa Upgrades Multi-Terabyte Global Data Warehouse to Oracle® Database 10g and Oracle Real Application Clusters
Consolidated Data Warehouse Enables Alcoa to Better Understand Business and Drive Efficiencies, Girds Company for Growth
REDWOOD SHORES, Calif. 19-NOV-2007 05:00 AM To accommodate future growth and an influx of new applications (and their users) in support of its business and resource units, Alcoa (NYSE: AA), the world's leading producer and manager of primary aluminum, fabricated aluminum and alumina facilities, upgraded its Global Data Warehouse (GDW) in February 2007 to Oracle® Database 10g and Oracle Real Application Clusters.
With its GDW, Alcoa's business and corporate executives are able to access, manage and integrate global data from a single source to targeted business analytics applications such as Oracle's Hyperion Essbase, Hyperion Financial Management and Hyperion Planning - components of Oracle Fusion Middleware. Alcoa consolidated data from four regional instances of the Oracle E-Business Suite it has deployed throughout the world into a single, global repository to support its business analytics, Enterprise Performance Management, and Master Data Management initiatives. The fast-growing multi-terabyte data warehouse supports approximately 9,000 users across Alcoa's strategic business units in the form of dashboards, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and scorecards.
Following a thorough evaluation of Oracle and a third-party database platform provider, Alcoa re-architected its GDW on Oracle infrastructure software. Specifically, Alcoa deployed Oracle Database 10g, Oracle Real Application Clusters, Oracle Clusterware, Oracle Automatic Storage Management, Oracle Partitioning, Oracle Warehouse Builder 10g Release 2, Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer, and Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g on a cluster of three HP 9000 rp8420 servers with eight PA-RISC 8700 processors running HP-UX.
Alcoa's decision to re-architect its GDW was driven by four factors:
o meet new data and transaction growth requirements;
o enhance system performance;
o allow for scaling of system as needed over time; and,
o define a common technical architecture for similar projects.
Consolidating its GDW to a clustered database environment is enabling Alcoa to achieve its goals. The upgraded GDW can support an increased number of applications and data sources. Upon migration to the new system, approximately 80 percent of existing batch jobs experienced improved performance without tuning. With Oracle Real Application Clusters, Alcoa is able to incrementally add server capacity to adapt easily to growing business demands without disruption. Finally, Alcoa has a technical architecture for supporting its GDW over time.
"The clustered database architecture that we've deployed has satisfied our business and performance requirements," said Matthew Schroeder, Manager, Business Information & Technologies, Alcoa. "It also offers us the flexibility we need for future growth. The newly re-architected Global Data Warehouse features, in addition to more powerful processors, improved performance and provide additional capacity for applications and users."
For Alcoa, managing a system the complexity and size of its GDW is considerable undertaking. The company adopted Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g to administer and monitor its clustered database and applications. As a result, Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g has improved the administration of the GDW, replaced a third-party database management tool, and feeds alerts to a third-party enterprise monitoring solution. Labor and time-savings also extend to the GDW's database storage management and provisioning. In conjunction with Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g, Alcoa uses Oracle Database 10g's Automatic Storage Management feature, a database volume manager and file system optimized for database access, to automate and streamline performance and storage management for its GDW.
For more information on Oracle Database, including Oracle Database 11g, please visit: www.oracle.com/database . For more information about Oracle Enterprise Performance Management and Business Intelligence, please visit: www.oracle.com/epm .
About Alcoa
Alcoa is the world's leading producer and manager of primary aluminum, fabricated aluminum and alumina facilities, and is active in all major aspects of the industry. Alcoa serves the aerospace, automotive, packaging, building and construction, commercial transportation and industrial markets, bringing design, engineering, production and other capabilities of Alcoa's businesses to customers. In addition to aluminum products and components, Alcoa also markets consumer brands including Reynolds Wrap® foils and plastic wraps, Alcoa® wheels, and Baco® household wraps. Among its other businesses are closures, fastening systems, precision castings, and electrical distribution systems for cars and trucks. The company has 122,000 employees in 44 countries and has been named one of the top most sustainable corporations in the world at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. More information can be found at www.alcoa.com
About Oracle
Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) is the world's largest enterprise software company. For more information about Oracle, please visit our Web site at www.oracle.com .
Contact(s):
Eloy Ontiveros
Oracle
+1.650.607.6458
eloy.ontiveros@oracle.com
Kristin Reeves
Blanc & Otus Public Relations for Oracle
+1.415.856.5145
kreeves@bando.com
