CUSTOMER SUCCESS

Advance Info Service Public Company Limited

Leading Thailands Mobile Services with Application Performance, Datacenter Availability, and Data Protection Gains from Symantec

To manage fast growth, Thai mobile services provider AIS needed to enhance the performance and availability of critical applications and streamline data protection. Datacenter availability and data protection solutions from Symantec softwarewith backing from Symantec Partners G-Able Company Limited and MFEC Public Company Limited helped improve system availability from 98 percent to 99.5 percent, reduce annual application maintenance downtime by 75 percent, and reduce backup staff overhead by 30 percent.
Right time, right place

Company Profile Advance Info Service Public Company Limited (AIS, www.ais.co.th), an affiliate of Shin Corporation, with 6,000 employees serving 17 million customers, is the leading mobile telephone service provider in Thailand. Industry Telecommunications Solution Storage Management, Data Management

The youth culture in Thailand is booming. Over half of Thailands workforce is under 30, and a quarter of the countrys 65 million people are under 15. This makes conditions there ideal for rapid growth in the use of mobile telephone services. One of the providers battling for that lucrative market is Bangkok-based Advance Info Service Public Company Limited (AIS), an affiliation of Shin Corporation. Over the last ten years, it has emerged as the leader, growing from a few hundred thousand subscribers to over 17 million active users. AIS now holds more than 55 percent of the market.

Veritas Storage Foundation increased critical application performance at AIS by 30 percent. We realized 100 percent payback in the first two years
Suphot Punnachaiya Assistant Vice President, Tech Systems Support AIS

Regardless of our successthe competition remains fierce, says Suphot Punnachaiya, assistant vice president at AIS for tech systems support. We need to run promotions continuously, offer steep discounts, and, above all, make sure our services are reliable and available to keep our lead.
Ensuring the dial tone

Keeping services reliable and available at AIS is a primary mission for Punnachaiya and the 145-person tech systems support team that he manages. These challenges became most acute about five years ago: AIS had grown so fast that performance was degrading for its critical billing, CRM, and enterprise application integration (EAI) software. The applications were generating vast amounts of data, and the expense of storing and managing that data was escalating too quickly. Worst of all, any downtime for the three applications would severely damage AIS operations, customer service, and profitability. It was the task of Punnachaiyas team to improve performance of these key applications, manage the vast amount of data they were generating more effectively, and find a way to ensure their availability.

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Bridging multiple platforms

Veritas Storage Foundation software improves key application performance by 30 percent and thats just the start.

Data from the three applications is stored on hardware from Hitachi Data Systems, IBM, Hewlett Packard, EMC, and Sun Microsystems, Punnachaiya explains. We were determined to find a single solution that could help us manage diverse platforms. An analysis of competitive options quickly pointed to software solutions from Symantec. AIS chose Veritas Storage Foundation, Storage Foundation for Oracle, and Storage Foundation for Oracle RAC software. Because Veritas Storage Foundation software supports multiple platforms, it is highly cost-efficient for us, Punnachaiya says. With it, we dont have to add another subsystem or additional staff. It gives us one, unified storage management platform, streamlining our staff training. We have Storage Foundation software running on all servers for those three critical applications.
A jump in application efficiency

The AIS team is testing a third edition of Storage Foundation software, Veritas Storage Foundation for Oracle RAC, designed to optimize Oracle Real It provides Application Clusters. online administration that allows AIS administrators to reconfigure storage topology while their Oracle RAC application is up and running. Veritas Storage Foundation software, in all its editions, increased critical application performance by 30 percent, Punnachaiya quips. We have realized 100 percent payback in the first two years.
The key to availability

Veritas Cluster Server and Storage Foundation have increased reliability f ro m 98 p er ce nt to 9 9. 5 pe rc en t while decreasing annual application downtime from maintenance by 75 percent. Thats from two hours to just a half hour. Those are important gains for us.
Suphot Punnachaiya Assistant Vice President, Tech Systems Support AIS

Punnachaiyas team got the performance improvement it was looking for. Veritas Storage Foundation, with its dynamic multipathing feature, moves data between different operating systems and storage arrays, spreading I/O across multiple paths to enhance application speed. In addition, Storage Foundation automatically tunes each write to optimal settings, saving AIS administrators from having to manually tune it. We also wanted to optimize our Oracle 8i and 9i databases, Punnachaiya says, so his IT team chose another edition of Storage Foundation software Veritas Storage Foundation for Oracle. It includes special database accelerators that provide raw device database performance with the manageability of a file system, enabling storage administrators to perform, in minutes, reallocation steps that would previously take hours.

Impressed with Storage Foundation software, AISabout two years ago decided to integrate Veritas Cluster Server software to enhance availability of key applications at AIS. The two solutions together enable the IT team to set up two-node clusters for the companys Geneva 5.0 billing, Siebel CRM, and custom Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) application servers, allowing them to failover if needed. The team also purchased Veritas Cluster Server agents for Oracle, Sybase and DB2. These agents work with Cluster Server to keep AIS databases highly available and always online, automatically restarting downed database instances and detecting any faults that occur. In addition, AIS is leveraging the Veritas Cluster Server agent for Oracle Application Server. This agent provides business continuity for the Oracle Application Server 10g at AIS, which is a comprehensive solution for developing, integrating, and deploying applications, portals, and Web services. The role of the agent is to manage each application service in the Oracle Application Server 10g and to perform deep-level monitoring, thereby ensuring that the cluster is fully aware of the state of each application service.

ADVANCE INFO SERVICE PUBLIC COMPANY LIMITED

Results protect market leadership

The result is an overall enhancement availability, which pleases in Punnachaiya. Veritas Cluster Server and Storage Foundation software increased reliability from 98 percent to 99.5 percent, he says, while decreasing annual application downtime from maintenance by 75 percent. Thats from two hours to just a half hour. Those are important gains for us. Meanwhile, the improved ability to failover has reduced the recovery point objective (RPO) at AIS from a half hour to 15 minutes and the recovery time objective (RTO) from four hours to 10 minutes. With this in mind, Punnachaiya notes: Veritas Cluster Server has delivered 100 percent payback in only three years.
Streamlining data protection

SOLUTION AT A GLANCE
Business Drivers Build lead in wireless market by enhancing customer satisfaction Meet service level agreements (SLAs) by ensuring availability of operations Reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) by enhancing application productivity while lowering IT overhead Technology Challenges Implement clustering/failover to improve availability of key business applications Improve data recoverability Increase application performance while streamlining management Solution Integrated storage management and data management software infrastructure Symantec Products Veritas Storage Foundation Veritas Storage Foundation for Oracle Veritas Storage Foundation for Oracle RAC Veritas Storage Foundation for Sybase Veritas Cluster Server with Oracle Applications, IBM DB2, Oracle, Sybase, and Veritas NetBackup agents Veritas NetBackup Enterprise Server with Advanced Client Option and Shared Storage Option and Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server, Microsoft Exchange Server, and Oracle agents Technology Environment Applications: Siebel CRM, Convergys Geneva Billing, Vitria Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) software Databases: Oracle 8i and 9i, Sybase 11 Server Platform: Sun Fire 15K, 6800, and about 80 other midrange servers running the Solaris Operating System; more than 200 HP ProLiant servers running Microsoft Windows 2000 and 2003 Storage Platform: Hitachi Data Systems Lightning V 9960 system; Sun StorEdge 9980 system; IBM TotalStorage disk array; EMC Centera disk array Symantec Services Veritas Extended Support Symantec Partners G-Able Company Limited (www.g-able.com) MFEC Public Company Limited (www.mfec.co.th)

Happy with the performance of Cluster Server and Storage Foundation software, AIS turned to Symantec to solve another problem: how to back up its growing data store from its Geneva 5.0 billing application. Data was increasing at 20 percent annually and was already at two terabytes. After a technical evaluation, the staff chose Veritas NetBackup Enterprise Server software. Thanks to Veritas NetBackup Enterprise Server, explains Punnachaiya, were able to accommodate a 20 percent annual growth in storage with no increase in backup staff, while reducing the backup window from 16 to 14 hours. AIS had special performance objectives for NetBackup software. It achieves these objectives using several NetBackup options and agents. Punnachaiyas team chose NetBackup Advanced Client Option because it uses block level incremental backup to greatly reduce the amount of data needed for Oracle database backup and recovery, thus shortening the time needed for backups. The team also

Thanks to Veritas NetBackup Enterprise Server, were able to accommodate a 20 percent annual growth in storage with no increase in backup staff, while reducing the backup window from 16 to 14 hours
Suphot Punnachaiya Assistant Vice President, Tech Systems Support AIS

chose NetBackup Shared Storage Option because it enables dynamic sharing of individual tape drives, maximizing utilization and reducing tape cost. To enhance availability, AIS chose NetBackup agents for Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server, Microsoft Exchange Server, and Oracle. These agents ensure hot backups, meaning that services and data from these applications continue to be available during backup. Thats critical to us, says Punnachaiya. Leveraging the integrated software infrastructure, AIS relies on a Veritas Cluster Server agent for NetBackup to ensure that the NetBackup server is always online and available, automatically detecting server errors and bringing the application online on another node if necessary.

The overall result, says Punnachaiya, is that NetBackup has automated, streamlined, and centralized the backup process effectively. It has reduced backup staff overhead by 30 percent, and enabled us to recover our investment in two years.
Support makes the difference

supplement these two companies, we can call on Veritas Technical Support 24x7 if we need to do so, and thats a comfort. So far we havent had to call. AIS is successfully improving its financial results. In the first three quarters of 2005, it posted double-digit gains in revenue from value-added services. Recently, to support the testing and introduction of a new value-added service, it purchased another Symantec solution, Veritas Storage Foundation for Sybase, to optimize performance and availability. Have Symantec solutions performed? reflects Punnachaiya. Id put it this wayour expectations are very high, and Symantec solutions have met them. They are critical to the reliability and availability of our services, and that is critical to our success.

Because AIS is growing fast, Punnachaiya counts closely on the support of two Bangkok-based Symantec Partners for technical support and education on Symantec solutions, as well as other solutions. One partner is G-Able Company Limited and the other is MFEC Public Company Limited. They are enormously valuable to us and basically on site all the time, Punnachaiya says. Twice a year, I have them tune NetBackup to compensate for environment changes, and that has proven to be a very productive step. To

AIS Datacenter Architecture

Geneva 5.0 Billing

Siebel CRM

Vitria Enterprise Application Integration Software

Veritas Storage Foundation and Storage Foundation for Oracle have boosted application performance by 30 percent

Veritas Cluster Server enables two-node clusters for each application, and has improved availability from 98 to 99.5 percent

Brocade SilkWorm 12K SAN Switch

Brocade SilkWorm 12K SAN Switch

Sun StorEdge 9960

Sun StorEdge 9980

HDS Lightning V 9960 system

Sun StorEdge 9980

Production

Secondary

Veritas NetBackup accommodates 20 percent annual storage growth reducing backup window 13 percent and administrator overhead 30 percent

CUSTOMER SUCCESS

ADVANCE INFO SERVICE PUBLIC COMPANY LIMITED

BUSINESS VALUE AND TECHNICAL BENEFITS

Return on Investment 100% payback in two years for Storage Foundation 100% payback in three years for Cluster Server 100% payback in two years for NetBackup System Performance 30% improvement in billing, CRM and EAI application performance Availability 99.5% key application availability, improved from 98% 75% reduction in annual application maintenance downtime Disaster Recovery 50% reduction in recovery point objective (RPO) from 30 minutes to 15 minutes 96% reduction in recovery time objective (RTO) from four hours to 10 minutes Productivity 30% reduction in backup staff overhead due to NetBackup software efficiencies

Our expectations are very high. And Symantec solutions have met them. They are critical to the reliability and availability of our services, and thats critical to our success.
Suphot Punnachaiya Assistant Vice President, Tech Systems Support AIS

Copyright 2006 Symantec Corporation. All rights reserved. Cluster Server, NetBackup, Storage Foundation, Symantec, Veritas, and the Symantec logo, are trademarks or registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.