The Asahi Breweries Group has standardized its entire information infrastructure using Windows 2000 to promote more effective information transactions within the Group. In the recently constructed in-house corporate portal, the Express5800 Series provides non-stop services 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Making the shift from WinNT3.51 to Windows 2000

Masashi Kamijo No. 1 Team Leader, No. 5 Division Solution Headquarters

The Asahi Breweries Group, led by Asahi Breweries Ltd., is a comprehensive business group in the food and health industry, comprising some 70 companies including Asahi Soft Drinks Co., Ltd., The Nikka Whisky Distilling Co., Ltd., and Asahi Food & Healthcare Co., Ltd. For this Group, which conducts business related to food and health based on its collective capabilities, information sharing among Group companies as an important theme. In 1999, a project was initiated to shift the information infrastructure to a Windows 2000 base from the previous WinNT3.51 and Windows 95 base, in order to strengthen these information-sharing activities.

The responsibility for this major information system reconstruction fell to Asahi Business Solutions Co., which handles IT-related operations ranging from IT solution proposals for the Asahi Breweries Group to system construction, maintenance, and operation.

"The platform up to that time had been WinNT3.51 and Windows 95, so we presented a proposal to Asahi Breweries Ltd. recommending that to prepare for future developments in Web computing, it would be best to standardize this Group-wide platform on Windows 2000, and strengthen the information infrastructure," says Masashi Kamijo, No. 1 Team Leader in the No. 5 Division of the Solution Headquarters at Asahi Business Solutions Co.

The company undertook a wide range of studies in preparation for this project, from design to appropriate system scale, between the end of 1999 and April 2001, and then spent weekends over a period of eight months, from May to December 2001, replacing over 100 servers and around 5,000 client PCs at operation bases throughout Japan.

"In our selection of server models," says Kamijo, "we heard presentations from five or six vendors, and then spent about three months narrowing the field down to three companies. We placed the greatest emphasis on operation and maintenance in our selection of system devices. We narrowed the field down even further by posing questions to each vendor, for example regarding the types of products and services available for monitoring and operation, and whether or not maintenance could be carried out in a remote environment."

The result of all these studies was the adoption of NEC's Express5800 Series, based on a comprehensive evaluation that included past performance, reliability, and cost.

Implementing a corporate portal that operates 24 hours a day, 365 days a year

Asahi Breweries Group's relationship with NEC products began with the introduction of ACOS mainframes around 1985. Later, at the end of 1994, it introduced the Staroffice mail system, and at the same time began in-house use of the PC-9800 Series, which is equipped with WinNT 3.51. The first Express5800 Series was implemented at just around this time.

"When we were thinking about operations," says Kamijo, "we began working with the Express series based on the judgment that it would be difficult to operate a multi-vendor system. Since then, we have used the Express5800 Series for all of our servers, from the first file/printer server to cluster systems that were implemented later."

One focus of the current project was to strengthen the in-house corporate portal for the mail system. Microsoft's Exchange 2000 Enterprise Server was selected for the mail system to ensure affinity with Windows 2000. The system was implemented over a period of four months, from November 2001 to February 2002.
This system is comprised of a mail server (made up of four Express5800/ 140Ra-4 units), a public folder (two Express5800/180Ra-7 units), two iStorage S2130 storage units, an Express5800/140Ra-4 backup server, and an Express5800/120Rc-2 bridgehead server.

"Our requirement was for a system that provided a message infrastructure and interactive communications among all group companies, including those overseas, with a constant flow of information that could be accessed anytime, from anywhere," says Kamijo. "We needed a system platform that could operate 24 hours a day, 365 days a year."

To accomplish this, the system required a number of special features with attention to redundancy. For example, an 8-way Express5800/180Ra-7 is used for the public folder, which executes management operations on a single server. Moreover, it uses an active-passive cluster configuration based on two separate units.

The mail server, which can accommodate up to about 10,000 employees, uses four Express5800/140Ra-4 units in an active-passive cluster configuration that is divided into two groups. Hideki Koyama, one of the members of Kamijo's No. 1 Team, explains: "An active-active configuration using four units seems to be very rare, but we decided to go with this rather than the active-passive arrangement because our priority was to ensure that the system never went off line."

Similarly, the storage system, using two iStorage S2130 units, is a rather unique application. In the event that one of the hard disks is damaged, the standby storage takes over, and in the event of a group failure, it switches over to a mirror recovery system. Furthermore, because the recovery system also has a standby function, in reality four-level redundancy has been achieved. An additional failsafe function is that even the controller segment is equipped with redundant characteristics.

"It seems that the Express5800 Series is even more stable now than it was when it was first implemented," Kamijo commented.

Establishing links between existing systems and portal environments

Hideki Koyama No. 1 Team, No. 5 Division Solution Headquarters

User education was being conducted even while the infrastructure reconstruction operations were underway. Instructors visited business offices throughout Japan for one week at a time, explaining the functions of Windows 2000 and how to use them. The company established a help desk to respond to inquiries regarding the mail system, and dispatched about 70 instructors nationwide to explain how to use this system as well.

This project is still ongoing, but installations at all Group companies are expected to be completed by around September of this year. In keeping with this schedule, the company is creating a network environment for the testing of Windows 2000 and the Exchange 2000 Enterprise Server, with plans to complete construction in August. Meanwhile, it will continue its investigations into methods of responding quickly to future maintenance and operation issues.

Regarding the future of the portal environment, Koyama commented as follows. "Asahi Breweries is branching out into every conceivable area of the alcoholic beverage market, and is working at strengthening the comprehensive capabilities of the Group as a whole, so we need to integrate this infrastructure and expand the system as quickly as possible. To do this, we will first have to strengthen the links between existing systems and the portal environments. Eventually, we will create an environment in which any employee can quickly access required information using a centralized ID and password."

About the mail system, Kamijo says, "We are focusing our efforts on establishing a suitable mail environment by building a system that can respond rapidly to the changes in the corporate world. This means we will have to rebuild not only our information systems, but our backbone systems as well. We are thus examining applications for the Exchange 2000 Server not only as part of our mail service, but as part of business process reengineering for the entire Asahi Breweries Group."

In the alcoholic beverage industry, liquor retail licenses are expected to undergo liberalization in September of 2003, and as a result large-scale reforms are forecasted in the structures and styles of product distribution.