Among its three retail businesses -- the Bay Department Stores, which is like Macy's; Zellers, more like Kmart; and Home Outfitters, a home dcor supplier -- Hudson's Bay is the fifth-largest employer in Canada with 70,000 staff, 600 of which are IT personnel. In addition, Hudson's Bay in March 1998 acquired Kmart Canada, which included 112 stores, 59 of which had to be converted to Zellers stores.
Managing this kind of IT operation with an "extremely tight budget this year has been interesting, to say the least," Whittaker says. "We had to find a way to get as much gas out of the storage resources we already have without having to buy more."
First, Whittaker required a reporting tool that would enable him to centrally administer the entire storage environment instead of logging in to every server individually to see how the storage was behaving. He also needed something that would work across mainframes, AIX, and Windows NT servers to proactively manage the storage, i.e., provide alerts for when certain processes start to go awry. "The aim was to avoid putting out fires that erupt out of nowhere by catching the problem before it becomes an expensive disaster."
Hudson's Bay already uses BMC's systems management software, so Whittaker says it was a natural extension to use its Patrol SRM (storage resource management) product. "The two are integrated, and our systems software people already know these products, so it was easy for me to go to them with Patrol SRM," he says. "Plus, we needed ease of delivery and good support, as we are a lean shop."
Whittaker didn't consider any other vendors. He says he attended a BMC user conference recently and listened to the company talk about the integration of its storage products with its systems management. "They seemed to get the whole picture, and when you are under the gun to make a decision quickly, that's what you need." He also says being sure of which direction his supplier was headed was a major factor in his decision. "A lot of the startups I talk to are thinking of this as I speak to them, which is a little disconcerting."
Bob Friday, Chief AI Officer for Juniper Networks, explains how the advanced technology is transforming operations.
Contact center leaders from 8x8, Awaken Intelligence, and 360insight discuss the importance of agent experience.
AI may force enterprises to rewire parts of their data centers so they are fully optimized to run such workloads. The question is do you use Ethernet or InfiniBand?
