Staples buys SP for data warehouseArmonk 14 February 2001 Staples Inc., will deploy an IBM SP supercomputer in a new enterprise data warehouse. The heart of the solution is 64-processor SP providing the scalability necessary for large data warehouses
The $9 billion company, active in the office supply industry, decided to extend its data warehouse to merge information from several databases and make it available from a single repository. The system will contain all the information generated by the company's various online and offline businesses. With the information consolidated, Staples will be able to run sophisticated data analyses, giving the company unprecedented insight into its enterprise data.
Staples' SP supercomputer runs proprietary decision support applications that sit atop IBM's DB2 Universal Database Enterprise Extended Edition. Data is stored on four terabytes of IBM SSA disk and is backed up daily by Tivoli Storage Manager onto IBM 3590 tape drives.
The data warehouse will be initially rolled out to Staples' merchandising department. Ultimately, the system will become a vital decision-support tool used throughout the company to assist supply chain, inventory management and marketing initiatives.
The new data warehouse is the latest addition of IBM technology into Staples' IT infrastructure. The company also relies on IBM RS/6000, AS/400 and Netfinity servers for a variety of key business operations.
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