Customer Testimonial
KOçTAS run SAP applications faster with Oracle Exadata Database
Leader of home improvement retail sector in Turkey, Koçtas boosted query performance and
gained significant savings by using Database Machine from Oracle.
Historically Koçtas was one of the first companies of the Turkish Koç Holding, founded in the 1950s as
a wholesaler of construction materials. The company entered the retail sector in 1995, opening its
first store in 1996 in Izmir Bornova for home improvement equipements. Over the years store
openings continued, until today with 37 stores in 19 Turkish cities. In 2011 the revenue reached
US$43 billion.
Koçtas stores display more than 40,000 products from decorative products to furniture, home textile
products, kitchen items, bathroom fixtures, ceramics, garden furniture, lighting products…
Since 2002, Koçtas has used central infrastructure components from Oracle and Sun for its retail
software: on the SAP market leading Oracle Database and Sun’s high-performance database and
application servers.
The firm makes intensive use of SAP’s core corporate application systems. Koçtas currently has
around 2,000 SAP users, around 800 of whom are intensive users.
Over time the IT infrastructure had to be adapted to requirements, not least because of the
increased number of users. In mid-2012, the company needed to radically change its infrastructure.
«We wanted long-term optimizations ranging from improved performance in our use of SAP
applications, better cost effectiveness or simpler system handling to even better system availability of
corporate applications,» explains Orkun Sueer, IT Director at Koçtas.
The solution was quickly found: the Oracle Exadata Database Machine for SAP. Combining hardware,
networking and software in one optimized system, it could deliver maximum performance for little
cost, «an ideal platform for customized company-wide database use». «In some reports, we had 10
times better performance results after the Exadata migration», Orkun Sueer says.
The new platform is running Oracle Exadata Database Machine X2-2 for SAP ECC/ BW/QA and DEV
Instances, as well as SAP IS Retail ECC 6.0, Netweaver BW 7.3 / BO / POSDM
HCM, Netweaver PI 7.1. The OS systems are Oracle Linux –Suse Linux Enterprise.
Performance boost and cost savings
The solution dramatically simplified the complexity of heterogeneous infrastructures:
«We opted for Exadata for SAP because of its modern scale-out infrastructure. Oracle Exadata is
clearly bringing benefits for us. We gained important performance boosts and we can also save costs
through the consolidation of multiple workloads in a single infrastructure.
«Exadata is ideal for consolidating SAP database landscapes – with the corresponding cost savings»,
Orkun Sueer says.
The implementation was achieved thanks to IT service provider KoçSistem, a sister company by Koç
Holding. The decision was to use a quarter rack version of the Oracle Exadata Database Machine X2-2
with 24 Database Grid Cores and 192 Database Grid Memory. The application servers were also
replaced, a process involving migration from Sun to Sun. One of the last steps was to transfer data
from the previous SAP ERP database to the ExadataDatabase Machine by using SAP tools. This step in
the migration process involved the export/import of a data volume of around 2.7 TB (total database
volume of all Oracle SAP database). It was successfull. The new Oracle Exadata platform went live in
March 16th 2013 as scheduled.
«The performance improvements gained by using Exadata for SAP ECC queries alone represent a
huge, huge benefit. There is a huge difference between whether a report takes minutes or seconds to
produce», the IT Director Sueer says.
Tests show 400% improvement!
The tests show that Oracle Exadata has enabled the query performance to be improved by around
400 percent (In some reports 10 times). The main reason is the much faster data throughput. The IT
department is also expecting «average overall performance to also be improved to above-average
levels through fine tuning.»
“Now we can easily realize the power of Exadata by experiencing the improvement of our own SAP
applications running on Exadata without any changes at the application level.»
«We won in many ways from the numerous benefits we gained from the Oracle Exadata Database
Machine. Throughout the company, not just in the IT department», Orkun Sueer says.