Kamal Osman Jamjoom Est. consolidates operations with Sun Microsystems

Sun will build the entire solution with a range of servers, and storage and back up solutions in addition to Solaris Operating System.

Kamal Osman Jamjoom Est. was established in 1987 in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and is currently the leading retailer in the Middle East, managing four branded retail concepts - Nayomi and Mikyajy being its own brands, while they are franchisees for The Body Shop and early learning centre. KOJ currently operates more than 420 stores in the key GCC markets and recently opened its first store in Greece, with plans to expand into other emerging markets.

KOJ's decision to deploy Sun solutions was driven by its desire to run and manage its retail applications from one single location, thereby improving its decision making capabilities and reducing administration related costs, while boosting efficiency.

"Growing from one store and one brand to four brands across 420 plus locations in 7 countries in around two decades, KOJ is continuously expanding across the region and into newer markets in other geographies. Over the next few years, we plan to expand aggressively in the Gulf region and also look at Emerging markets and newer territories," said Thameem Rizvon, Group IT Manager - Kamal Osman Jamjoom Est. "It gets complex to manage different systems for each department and brand across different locations, and it therefore became necessary to have one consolidated system to manage data from various sources, and handle online purchases and sales, in addition to keeping an up-to-date inventory."

"Sun has provided us with best of breed solutions and technology across our entire retail footprint within an integrated framework that best suited our business requirements. Besides Sun has a proven track record in providing enterprise solutions and designs to ensure high availability. The system is highly scalable and will scale to meet our growth."

Though they went live in Sun only few months ago, Rizvon feels the stability of the OS and the system is good. Support from Sun has been proactive, which is very vital for KOJ as they have a major software roll out in days ahead.

Sun brought in a consultant from its headquarters to evaluate KOJ's requirements, and referenced KOJ with one of the leading retailers in the USA. Sun also conducted an energy-cost on its systems, to provide KOJ with energy efficient and eco-friendly solution.

"Having the right technology can have a profound impact on leading retail businesses like Kamal Osman Jamjoom," said Hani Esber, territory sales manager for the Gulf, Sun Microsystems. "Retail organisations in the region face many challenges to differentiate against competition and maintain a profitable growth. Sun has helped develop and deploy a robust solution to help build winning strategies with integrated solutions for KOJ to evolve as an innovative, consumer-driven organization."

Sun's local partner Accel Frontline provided KOJ with the required expertise, skills and project management for deploying the infrastructure for its SMART implementation. Accel accomplished the servers and storage infrastructure for phase I & II by following the SUN Enterprise guidelines and it was supervised by experts on-shore and off-shore.