Gulf Industrial Investment Company powers up IT infrastructure

Headquartered in the Kingdom of Bahrain, it has an annual capacity of approximately four million tons, exporting mainly to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iran, India, Indonesia and Malaysia, including some past exportation to China, Korea and Japan.

To meet a rise in demand due to the implementation of Oracle e-business suite and an increased client range, GIIC contracted Gulf Business Machines (GBM), IBM's representative in the GCC excluding Saudi Arabia, to upgrade its IT infrastructure with a solution which can handle any critical requirement of the present and the near future.

GBM's solution is based on IBM's POWER5 processors based p5 servers running Oracle's e-business suite of applications.

"The decision to go with the GBM's solution, incorporating their industry-leading processor technology with exceptional scalability and expandability was an easy one to make once we looked at the broad range of options offered by them. It allowed us to mix and match the best possible combination while at the same time keeping us within our budget,"

said Mohamed Anwar, Senior IT Officer of GIIC.

The system is built using IBM's Power Architecture, providing substantially better performance and allowing more growth and flexibility per model than any other system. The solution provides simultaneous multithreading, which enables greater processing efficiencies helping to increase system utilisation and reduce computing costs.

Implementation of the solution began with the installation of the Oracle ERP suite and was successfully completed in September 2005. The old system was phased during an introductory period of the new system, during which time the two systems worked in parallel. With the new system in place and fully functional, GIIC now has vastly improved control over the full range of its operations.

"With this system in place, GIIC should be able to streamline all operations, enhancing employee productivity and giving management the ability to make informed decisions quickly. This will allow them to better serve their customers, suppliers and employees," said Abdulla Ishaq, General Manager of Bahrain Business Machines (BBM), the Bahrain operation of GBM.