CUSTOMER SUCCESS: BMC Software Saves Major European Retailer Significant IT Costs

Kastner & Öhler receives a complete return on BMC APPTUNE for DB2® investment within 12 months
BMC APPTUNE for DB2 defers imminent and expensive CPU upgrade, eliminates software upgrade, reduces response times, while ensuring Service Level Agreements are met

VIENNA, April 12, 2010 – Kastner & Öhler, a top European retailer, successfully deferred a costly CPU upgrade and completely eliminated the need for an expensive software upgrade thanks to BMC Software (NASDAQ: BMC).

Before Kastner & Öhler implemented the BMC APPTUNE for DB2 solution, its DB2 applications were frequently failing to meet their performance goals. Pinpointing the cause of degraded application performance was both time-consuming and difficult. A complete CPU and accompanying software upgrade appeared imminent and very expensive.

“The cost of a CPU upgrade concerned us, as did the additional software upgrade costs,” said Helmut Wolf, CIO, Kastner & Öhler. “We wanted to try and secure at least one more year of operation from the current platform. The only way to achieve this was to reduce CPU consumption and BMC APPTUNE for DB2 was the solution.”

The BMC APPTUNE for DB2 solution has successfully delivered a complete return on investment for Kastner & Öhler in the first year. The organization uses the highly-accurate information on SQL statement performance and DB2 object performance characteristics to maximize efficiency, thereby improving application performance and overall system performance, and reducing CPU consumption.

“By using BMC APPTUNE for DB2 to resolve SQL performance problems early on in the application life cycle, Kastner & Öhler is mitigating risk, as well as improving the service levels to end users,” said Nick Glover, BMC’s vice president of EMEA Sales and Services for Mainframe Service Management.

BMC’s next-generation DB2 SQL monitoring tool also reduced the average CPU time per SQL statement by 46 percent, leading to an overwhelming reduction in CPU consumption and enabling Kastner & Öhler to defer its imminent CPU and software upgrades. A recent hardware upgrade to an IBM® z10 mainframe saved the company further capacity and money, with BMC APPTUNE for DB2 adding 30 percent more capacity and helping to reduce Kastner & Öhler’s service costs to IBM by 5 percent.

“At Kastner & Öhler we recommend that any organization experiencing high CPU utilization and considering a CPU upgrade try BMC APPTUNE for DB2 first,” said Wolf. “In the initial 30-day test period, we quickly identified the most resource-intensive SQL transactions and non-optimized SQL statements. By taking action on these issues, we have reduced CPU utilization, saved a considerable amount of upgrade money and improved the quality of service we provide to the business. It really is a remarkable product.”

Kastner & Öhler has received positive feedback on the user experience as well. The organization evaluated various alternative DB2 monitoring solutions; however, none of these could match the ease of use and functionality of BMC APPTUNE for DB2.

“A great thing about BMC APPTUNE for DB2 is that it gives us a comprehensive picture of the DB2 environment, without consuming too many resources in the process,” continued Mr. Wolf. “Because BMC APPTUNE uses the same interface that our development team uses, it was quick and easy to learn. That makes it very popular with users.”

To register for a Webinar on BMC’s DB2 Performance solutions go to the following link.

For more information on the mainframe management solution used by Kastner & Öhler visit BMC APPTUNE for DB2.

To read the full Kastner & Öhler case study go to the following link.

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Business runs on IT. IT runs on BMC Software.

Business thrives when IT runs smarter, faster and stronger. That’s why the most demanding IT organizations in the world rely on BMC Software across both distributed and mainframe environments. Recognized as the leader in Business Service Management, BMC offers a comprehensive approach and unified platform that helps IT organizations cut cost, reduce risk and drive business profit. For the four fiscal quarters ended December 31, 2009, BMC revenue was approximately $1.90 billion.

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