HP PROVIDES SOLUTION FOR NOVISTAR INCChallenges
Solutions
Results
In the opening segment of the classic 1960's television show, The Beverly Hillbillies, one of the characters, Jed Clampett, haphazardly shoots his shotgun into the ground. Then, as if by magic, a thick stream of black gold, Texas tea - oil - bubbles to the surface. If only managing oil, gas and natural resources were that easy in the real world. Instead, the energy industry is a complex mixture of property ownership, leasing agreements and accounting practices. When Novistar Inc, one of the industry's premier providers of accounting and information technology services, needed to update its IT infrastructure, as well as lay the groundwork for e-commerce ventures, it turned to Hewlett-Packard Company for proven solutions. An Industry LeaderHouston-based Novistar Inc assists energy companies in managing intricate and highly specialized accounting tasks. These include tracking the transactions needed to locate, extract and distribute oil, natural gas and other natural resources. The company does this through applications services built using Oracle technology, including the Oracle Financials products and Novistar Energy (the product formerly known as Oracle Energy). Novistar offers full outsourcing and hosting solutions, quick start systems implementations, and database administration and support. Additionally, Novistar offers handheld field data collection systems, data warehousing and executive information systems. A Slick IT Challenge"As an outsourcing upstream processor and applications service provider (ASP), we perform a very complicated accounting function for our clients," explained Ashley Ekola, Novistar's Director of Infrastructure. "If a company owns oil fields or property, somebody has to perform an accounting of everything that comes out of the ground. Basically, it's turning product into money. Everything that is spent has to be billed to those parties that own the leases or the property. Conversely, everything that comes out has to be distributed to the appropriate entities. We then have to integrate the upstream accounting function with a company's Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable and General Ledger." Additionally, as an ASP, Novistar provides remote locations and offices access to a centralized enterprise application running in Novistar's data center "We have offices and clients throughout the United States," noted Ekola. "Currently, we have clients that are connected via private leased lines to our network. Beginning the fourth quarter of this year, our flagship Energy application, integrated with Oracle Applications Release 11i, will enable our clients to access their applications via the Web." Novistar's Scalable SolutionOne of Novistar's IT challenges was to implement large-scale, high-availability databases for multiple clients. As a long-term Novistar partner, HP was the natural choice to provide the solution. Novistar's HP solution included two HP 9000 V2250 Enterprise Servers, running the HP-UX 11.0 operating system and hosting Novistar Energy and Oracle Financials applications. "Additionally, we are using HP's Process Resource Manager software," said Ekola. "This allows us to run multiple applications on the V-Class server and guarantee adequate resources to all clients, regardless of size, during periods of high utilization." Novistar selected the HP SureStore E Disk Array XP256 storage system to house its online transaction processing (OLTP), warehousing and business-intelligence applications for transaction records. Rounding out the Novistar solution is HP Personalized System Support (PSS), which combines HP's standard support package with enhanced access to HP support experts. "Scalability is key to our company's success," said Ekola. "The benefits of both our HP 9000 V2250's and XP256 disk array are that they save on administrative fees and can expand to meet our growth. The bottom line: The HP solution reduces risk and makes us more cost-effective, a saving that we can pass on to our clients. This is a big deal for a growing application service provider." An Open System PhilosophyWhile the choice to go with the HP 9000 V2250 was relatively easy, the decision to run with the HP XP256 was a bit more complex. "We originally looked at offerings from HP, EMC, MTI and StorageTek," explained Ekola. "The HP XP256 was just a better deal all around. The biggest difference between HP and EMC was the fact that EMC insists on clinging to proprietary technology. What our company has is more of a true open systems solution. And it was HP's intent for it to continue to be an open system. With HP, we're not locked into a proprietary architecture that will add extra maintenance costs down the line." Putting HP to the TestSince Novistar planned to use the HP XP256 to house online OLTP applications and a business-intelligence warehouse, the company put the system through its paces. "When we bought the HP XP256 at the end of 1999, the first thing we wanted to do was go through another round of Year 2000 testing," explained Ekola. "We had this big machine that we were about to deploy and we wanted to re-verify everything. We configured the storage system with 600GB of storage." She continued, "We took a complete copy of all of our live production environments and had our users exercise it. We generated a large load in copying the biggest database instances. My staff was ecstatic at how easy it was to move huge databases around. We could reconfigure and rebuild file systems at will, without the labor-intensive file system management required when you use local disks. The HP XP256 works so well for us that we plan to add more than 10 terabytes to our disk capacity." HP's Flexibility a Key to SuccessIn addition to scalability, Novistar credits HP's flexibility as one of the key factors in implementing a successful solution. "We were trying to minimize our costs for a very large-scale database implementation for multiple clients," said Ekola. "With HP's XP256, we're able to do more with it ourselves. HP gives us the flexibility to configure our own file systems, and the ability to mount disk on different machines on the fly. There are tools that you can use to look inside and evaluate the performance of the disk array. HP's philosophy of design and a philosophy of doing business makes it a perfect fit for Novistar." Setting its Sights on E-CommerceWith its database solution firmly underway, Novistar is setting its sights on the e-commerce arena. In 2000, Novistar plans to add Internet-based services to its extensive portfolio. "By the end of the year, we aim to have our Oracle applications Internet-ready," noted Ekola. "As Oracle adds e-commerce functionality to its applications, we plan to implement a true three-tier environment using HP servers for our applications, database and Web servers. By implementing Oracle technology and our own application on HP, all our users will need is a browser on a desktop." "HP enabled us to implement a very large-scale, high-availability database for multiple clients, while giving us the flexibility to configure our own file systems. It is a philosophy of design, of doing business, that makes HP a perfect fit." -- Ashley Ekola, Director of Infrastructure Novistar Inc At-a-Glance:Name: Novistar Inc Headquarters: Houston, Texas Founded: 1999 Telephone: 800-652-9928 URL: www.novistar.com Main Products: Novistar Inc is one of the largest dedicated providers of accounting and information technology services to the energy industry. The company provides application hosting (ASP) services, as well as outsourced accounting transaction processing, quick start system implementations and database administration monitoring and support. Technology Highlights
|
Previous Article | Table of Contents | Next Article