Shulou(Shulou.com)06/03 Report--

Customer interviews: manufacturing / server virtualization, desktop virtualization (VDI)

The concept of "super-integration" has become popular in recent years, not only are all kinds of players huddling together to launch relevant solutions, but users are also paying more attention to this "new weapon" that can simplify and increase efficiency of IT infrastructure.

However, the widespread acceptance of any new technology will be full of twists and turns and uncertainty. When the market expects new technology to solve the current difficulties and urgent needs, it can not help but have vague worries and doubts.

The concept of super fusion is so new, is it really mature and reliable?

It hasn't been tested for 5-10 years. Dare you use it now?

In what kind of business environment is it more advantageous? is it suitable for us?

……

In fact, in the field of super-integration, there are already such a group of early adopters who are successfully solving the current IT architecture problems by virtue of super-fusion technology, and keep ahead in the digital transformation of the industry.

Bi Shengyuan is such a pioneer.

As a leader in China's health tea market, Bishengyuan has a 17-year history of informationization. However, with the rapid development of Bishengyuan's business in recent years, the information system, which carries the overall business operation, also needs to be upgraded. Since the second half of 2016, Bishengyuan has launched the largest information reconstruction in history.

Zhang Jun, vice president in charge of information system construction of Bishengyuan Group, found that in the process of operating the system transformation, the most serious challenge came not only from the application level, but also the rapid increase in the expansion cost and maintenance complexity of IDC, which made Zhang Jun feel unprepared, and gradually realized the limitations of the traditional model, so he had to seek other alternatives.

At this time, the super-fusion technology entered his field of vision. From the beginning full of doubts to the final decision, what kind of decision-making process did Zhang Jun go through? What about the way to explore Bishengyuan's super-integration architecture?

The following text is a record of our in-depth interview with Vice President Zhang Jun, which objectively presents the whole process of super-integration in Bishengyuan's real landing, as well as valuable experience and practical information.

Q: please introduce the process of Bishengyuan informatization?

A: bi Shengyuan actually has a history of 17 years, and it is relatively early in the application of information technology. ERP systems, financial systems, code-scanning traceability systems on production lines, and many traditional mobile phone systems are sold around 2009.

But after 2016, the system was relatively backward, when Bishengyuan's business was seriously restricted by it. So from the second half of 2016, the company began a large-scale information reconstruction and re-implementation process.

Therefore, a series of new applications introduced by Bishengyuan also put forward higher requirements for the support of the underlying architecture. At the beginning of 2016, we foresaw that the traditional technology platform was far from adaptable to the business development in 2017. So we started to design a new IDC and server cluster system at the end of 2016.

Q: what are the problems with the original system?

A: the problem is mainly reflected in two aspects. On the one hand is the application. Because the original application design is basically based on the needs of each department, so the separation between departments is more serious.

The second aspect is that the system is more and more integrated and the amount of data is increasing. Our traditional underlying platform, whether from the network (local area network, wide area network), or our traditional leased IDC storage capacity, processing capacity, has been very weak. For example, our original computer room is distributed in two places, some in the outsourced IDC and some in our current office building, the condition is very simple. So the original business is often interrupted, when the interruption of the business department is in chaos, so when there is a problem, IT personnel can only find the cause of a system, and then solve it.

Q: why did Bi Shengyuan choose the super-fusion architecture?

A: according to the business plan for 2017 and 2018, we have identified the requirements for the expansion of the underlying system. The plan is divided into two parts. The original plan is only to expand the capacity, but after the expansion, it is found that the entire IDC space is not enough, so we must first expand the equipment in the computer room in order to complete the system expansion, which is twice the budget of our actual system expansion, and it will take nearly a year to complete the entire expansion process.

In fact, this situation forces us to have no choice. It was at this time that we repeatedly demonstrated the implementation plan of super-integration. Because we used to move forward in the traditional way, the earliest solution we have been trying to squeeze the traditional structure of the project implementation cycle, but no matter how squeezed, 6 months is obviously unable to avoid, our pressure is very great.

When we are cornered, there happens to be a super-integration solution, in fact, we did not know that there was such a technical solution, so the emergence of such a solution attracted our attention at this stage.

Q: how does Bi Shengyuan evaluate and select super-integration manufacturers?

A: we have also gone through a process. After all, super-integration is a very new concept for us. In the early stage, there are four or five service providers delivering the plan. About three of these four or five are involved in super-integration. Of the three, SmartX focuses on super-integration, while the other two provide both traditional and super-integrated architecture. However, in the comparison of schemes, some manufacturers propose that super-integration is not very mature, and we are not advised to use super-integration schemes, but more to consider the traditional architecture.

However, at that time, the planned budget of the project itself had been approved by the company and the business had already been launched. in the course of this progress, we found that the expansion of the computer room had become a necessary condition for the expansion of the system. If the investment and implementation time of the expansion of the equipment room are to be doubled, it will be a great challenge for us.

When comparing these three schemes, we think that although there may be unknown problems in super-integration, it should be suitable for our current stage and scale. Under the premise of controllable scale, we evaluate the possible risks of all system migration and future operations, and come to the conclusion that super-integration is manageable at a certain stage.

The second is in operation and maintenance. In view of the traditional architecture, in order to maintain the entire network, server, security and database, we originally proposed to set up a 3-5-person operation team to operate our upgraded platform. However, in our actual investigation of the super-convergence solution, we found that if we used the super-integration platform, we did not need such a complex operation team.

The third is that if we introduce a new super-integration, we do not have much confidence at that time, so we also put forward a point of view, that is, not only to do technical demonstration, we hope to measure it. Therefore, among the last four schemes, one withdrew directly after hearing the actual measurement, while the other two hesitated. The measured plan probably lasted for more than a month and could not be landed in the end. But in fact, when we heard the actual measurement proposal, SmartX's response was still very positive, so although we were talking about the actual measurement plan with the three companies at the same time, the first one to land was SmartX.

So at the beginning, SmartX made it clear that he was willing to participate in the actual measurement, and it took us about a week to build the measured environment here. Therefore, no matter how much we talk about the theoretical scheme, it is far better for us to look at the final measured experience. In the actual measurement, one is our migration plan, that is, the test system that is about to be put online, and the other is the actual exercise of our operation and maintenance, which we have measured here. It took about a week to deploy the actual environment, and it took nearly three weeks to a month.

From the measured results, our actual feeling will be more down-to-earth and down-to-earth than when we made the scheme evaluation at that time. It is based on the actual measurement that let us finally decide that super-integration is a solution that we fully accept and can control. As soon as the measured results came out, we quickly entered the implementation of the project in less than a week.

In fact, the final implementation result is indeed very close to our presupposition at that time. When the actual equipment arrives for installation, the system we plan to migrate will all be migrated in one week.

Q: what are the results and benefits after adopting super-integration?

A: our updated ERP system, HR system, OA system, data backup system and data analysis system have all been migrated to the super-fusion system.

We have made several progress since the use of hyperfusion. First, our business continuity is fully guaranteed; second, our storage space still has several times the expansion capacity in the original space; third, our operation and maintenance staff, originally planned to run 3-5 people to run the entire system maintenance, now there are actually only 2 people; fourth, we no longer use more and more expensive traditional storage cabinet equipment to store our data.

Q: what experiences can you share when using a super-converged architecture?

A: because hyperfusion is a relatively new concept, the mental process from our introduction to the real launch is still very hesitant. Because the adjustment of a technology platform has a great impact on the company. However, from the perspective of our actual use, the feeling at this stage is still good.

But after all, super-integration has not experienced five to 10 years of business pressure of long-term testing. So I think there are several factors that can be considered.

First, under the premise that the scale of the business can be controlled, for the business environment that needs to go online quickly and want to simplify the operation as much as possible, super integration is a good direction and trial choice.

Second, if the scale is very large, it is not necessary to bet all the business at once, you can try it in some systems first. Because the control of the super-fusion platform and operation, including the adaptability of the super-fusion system to the application system, still needs a process.

In addition, I think it may have something to do with the partners, so why do we place special emphasis on measurement at the beginning? in fact, we are also very worried about such new things. whether the service provider's ability to digest technology and the ability of users to ultimately provide services can keep up. Therefore, choosing a more reliable service provider and controlling the primary trial scale may be a very important method to use super-integration now. Superfusion is also a very potential system solution.

Q: what is the future expansion plan of Bishengyuan Super Fusion?

A: first, we need to integrate the system. Second, all newly purchased systems will also be based on a super-integrated platform, and the company will no longer set up a second platform to use it. At least at our current scale, in the case we are currently using, our strategy is to move all to a super-integrated platform.

Q: how do you view the future development of super-integration?

A: we never understood and refused to accept it, and then we firmly turned to super-integration, and combined with the fact that we have been using it for three months now, at least for our business model and business approach, we firmly feel that super-integration is basically in the future, and in the time period we are seeing now, this is our only basic platform.

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.