Industry Conglomerate Deploys Dynamic Server Platform

Cisco UCS enables real-time access to data and analytics.

Business Challenge

The ESSAR Group is a multinational conglomerate and a leading player in the sectors of steel, oil & gas, power, communications, shipping ports & logistics, construction and minerals. With operations in more than 20 countries across five continents, the Group employs 70,000 people and has revenues of about USD 15 billion. Headquartered in Mumbai, the ESSAR Group has more than 26 offices across India.

Given its presence across multiple sectors, the ESSAR group generates a huge amount of business data on a daily basis. With different systems for different lines of businesses, the amount of data that the group analyzes for reporting amounts to a tune of 3TB.The key challenge in analyzing such huge amount of data is the capability to crunch data within a defined
time frame.

While it was possible to get the operational reports, real-time analytics was a challenge and ESSAR needed access to realtime operational information much more quickly. There was also a need to react faster to events impacting operations, uncover trends and patterns in an ad-hoc, empowered manner and improve planning and forecasting.

ESSAR also felt that there was a need to strengthen existing investments in SAP software so as to be able to gain real-time visibility into businesses across all verticals. The group also needed to augment existing investment in SAP software to allow users to analyze data by customer, region or product whether in the office or while traveling.

Access to consistent real-time data was critical to improve forecasting abilities as well as provide intelligence on how to redirect the business as needed based on events, customer relationships, product plans and market variations. There was a business need for quick decision because existing applications could not provide the same and the solution that enabled this had to be user-friendly, accelerate business performance all while reducing TCO. (Read more about the Cisco’s Solution here)