Customer Solution Case Study
/ KirinMakes Collaboration Easier with Messaging and Collaboration Solution
Overview
Country or Region:Japan
Industry:Manufacturing
Customer Profile
Kirin Brewery Company is a leading beverage manufacturer based in Tokyo. Kirin runs 15 breweries in Japan and has expanded its business into many other areas.
Business Situation
Support for the company’s heavily customized IBM Lotus Notes environment was due to expire. Upgrading Notes would be costly and time-consuming, so Kirin searched for an alternative.
Solution
Kirin switched to a messaging and collaboration solution based on Microsoft® Exchange 2000 Server and SharePoint® Portal Server 2001.
Benefits
Reduced IT costs
Simplified management
Higher system availability / “We had to modify the Global Address Book in Outlook 2002 to display the organization in a hierarchical fashion. Beyond that, the amount of customization we needed was minimal.”
Yuki Kobayashi, Systems Management Department 3, Kirin
Kirin Brewery Company of Tokyobrews one of the most popular lager brands in the world and holds a market share of nearly 40 percent in Japan. When IBM announced that it was ending support for Lotus Notes R4.6 in January 2003, the company had to choose between upgrading its highly customized Notes-based messaging and collaboration environment or migrate to new technology. Kirin found that it would be faster and less expensive to switch to a new collaboration solution based on Microsoft® Windows Server System™software. By replacing Lotus Notes with Microsoft Exchange Server, SharePoint® Portal Server, and Outlook®, Kirin created a collaboration environment that is easy to use and to manage, and was able to reduce its messaging server hardware by half.
Situation
Kirin Brewery Company currently ranks eighth among top beer marketers worldwide. The company's German-style Kirin Lager has been brewed since 1888 and now ranks as the fourth largest beer brand in the world. In Japan, Kirin holds a market share of nearly 40 percent and has 15 breweries, 2 hop centers, 1 pharmaceutical plant, 4 research laboratories, and 17 regional sales offices. Kirin manufactures and sells beers, whiskies, liquors, and soft drinks. The company has also diversified into other areas, including pharmaceuticals, transportation logistics, engineering, real estate, and restaurants.
For many years, Kirin relied on IBM Lotus Notes R4.6 for e-mail and collaboration, and also as a platform for many software applications. Because computer users in the various departments at Kirin have a great deal of input in IT decision making, the system had become very complex since it was first deployed. Katsuo Sekiguchi, Deputy Director of the Information Planning Department at Kirin, says, “Our systems were working fairly well and our technicians were getting their work done. However, our overall IT infrastructure wasn’t as integrated or optimized for performance as we wanted. We felt that we could improve our operations by aligning our IT strategy more closely with our business strategy.”
As Kirin began to reevaluate its IT strategy, IBM announced that it would end support for Lotus Notes R4.6 in January 2003. Kirin had to decide whether to upgrade Notes or migrate to another messaging and collabo-ration product. This important decision would help determine the technology platform the company would use in the future.
Solution
Kirin first considered upgrading Lotus Notes but concluded that the upgrade would be too costly. According to Nobuaki Takagi, Chief of the Information Planning Department at Kirin, “Our Notes environment was so highly customized that upgrading to the next version would be too time-consuming. It wasn’t realistic for us to freeze our information systems for that long while we performed the upgrade.”
Kirin decided to switch from Lotus Notes to Microsoft® Exchange 2000 Server and Microsoft SharePoint® Portal Server 2001, part of Microsoft Windows Server System™ integrated server software. The company would replace the Lotus Notes e-mail client on users’ workstations with the Microsoft Outlook® 2002 messaging and collaboration client. Kirin moved to Exchange 2000 Server because it offered:
Single sign on through the Active Directory® service.
High security and manageability.
Lower deployment cost than a Notes upgrade.
In March 2002, the company started the migration project. Yuki Kobayashi and others working in System Management Department Number 3 were put in charge of the project. They found that the new solution needed very little customization compared with Notes. Kobayashi says, “We had to modify the Global Address Book in Outlook 2002 to display the organization in a hierarchical fashion. Beyond that, the amount of customization we needed was minimal.”
Yasuharu Nishimura of the Customer Support Department at Kirin says, “Some of our employees had been using Notes for more than five years. They worried about having to learn a new interface that didn’t have the customized buttons they were familiar with. On the day Outlook 2002 was deployed, almost no e-mail arrived in the morning. By the afternoon, e-mail was arriving in large volumes. People could adapt very quickly to Outlook 2002 because it’s so easy to use.”
Kirin installed Exchange 2000 Server and SharePoint Portal Server 2001 on HP ProLiant server computers with Intel Xeon Processor MP. The company believed that this configuration could handle high volumes of network traffic for a relatively low cost.
Some departments at Kirin still use a pre-Notes Post Office Protocol e-mail program configured with specialized scripts to process certain types of highly confidential customer inquiries. Kirin plans to observe how Outlook 2002 performs for about a year and, after verifying its stability, will use Outlook 2002 to handle these messaging tasks.
Benefits
Kirin reports that switching to Windows Server System software has resulted in a less complex messaging and collaboration environment. The new systems are easy for users to understand and easy for administrators to manage. Kirin expects that these benefits, along with the server consolidation made possible through Exchange 2000 Server, will lead to reduced IT costs.
Reduced IT Costs
Deploying Exchange 2000 Server enabled Kirin to streamline its IT operations, thus reducing costs. One way it is able to do so is through the new solution’s greater scalability. The Lotus Notes environment was limited to 1,000 user accounts per server. Because Exchange 2000 Server accommodates more users, Kirin has been able to reduce by half the amount of messaging server hardware it maintains.
Simplified Management
Exchange 2000 Server also requires less customization, reducing the complexity of the system. One of the company’s goals in deploying a new messaging solution was to eliminate customizations that didn’t directly make Kirin more competitive. The out-of-the-box functionality provided by Exchange 2000 Server lets Kirin developers concentrate on creating software that genuinely serves a business need, and it frees administrators from managing overly complicated systems.
Higher System Availability
With the migration to Exchange 2000 Server, the stability of the system improved tremendously. Near the end of its life, the Notes-based messaging system Kirin used began crashing almost once a week. The company reports that users appreciate the new, more reliable messaging environment. The increase in uptime helps them work more productively and efficiently.
Microsoft Windows Server System
Microsoft Windows Server System is a line of integrated and manageable server software designed to reduce the complexity and cost of IT. Windows Server System enables you to spend less time and budget on managing your systems so that you can focus your resources on other priorities for you and your business.
For more information about Windows Server System, go to: