“When we add up the hard cost savings, the ability to standardize our platform, the ease of maintenance, and faster performance, we’re seeing an estimated positive annual business impact of $50,000.”

Brett Drey, PLM Systems Lead, Pentair Technical ProductsPentair Technical Products—provider of worldwide product and service solutions for enclosing, protecting, and cooling electrical and electronic systems—needed to upgrade its aging product life-cycle management system. After choosing ENOVIA V6R2009x, it evaluated the performance of Oracle Database 10g and Microsoft SQL Server data management software. The company found that SQL Server offered lower total costs and better performance, improving both productivity and customer service.

Business NeedsPentair Technical Products designs and manufactures systems that safely and reliably protect electronic controls and electrical systems in commercial, communications, energy, general electronics, industrial, infrastructure, medical, and security and defense applications. The company uses a product life-cycle management (PLM) system to manage its product-development process, engineering change orders, computer-aided design (CAD) drawings, and marketing data, such as the product schematics and photographs that it uses during the sales cycle. “Our system directly supports more than 1,500 employees worldwide,” says Brett Drey, PLM Systems Lead for Pentair Technical Products.

The company used a Matrix 10.6.2 PLM system from Dassault Systèmes running on an Oracle 9i Database. The company found it cost prohibitive to maintain in-house Oracle expertise, so it outsourced its support needs, which was expensive. “We were paying for someone else to

check backups and ensure that system performance was reasonable, and that cost about U.S.$750 per week,” says Drey.As the PLM system neared the end of its supported life, the company considered its upgrade and migration options, evaluating both the PLM and database aspects of its solution. “We knew that if we maintained the Oracle database, we’d continue to have significant consulting costs,” notes Drey.

In addition to looking for a system that was easier to support with internal resources, Pentair Technical Products also sought to increase its worldwide capabilities related to PLM. The company wanted its developers in India to be able to benefit from the CAD models and other documents produced in the United States, but to do so meant sending the relevant files through file transfer protocol, which was both awkward and time-consuming. “We didn’t have the database system performance that we needed to reasonably share drawings, bill of materials

Customer: Pentair Technical ProductsWebsite: www.pentairtechnicalproducts.comCustomer Size: 5,400 employeesCountry or Region: United StatesIndustry: Manufacturing—Automotive and industrialPartner: Dassault SystèmesPartner Website: www.3ds.com

Customer ProfileAnoka, Minnesota–based Pentair Technical Products, a Pentair global business unit, provides product and service solutions for enclosing, protecting, and cooling electrical and electronic systems.

Software and Services Microsoft Server Product Portfolio

− Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition

− Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition

Services− Microsoft Services

Hardware Dell PowerEdge 2950 servers

Microsoft customer successes, please visit: www.microsoft.com/casestudies

Microsoft Customer SolutionManufacturing Industry Case Study

Manufacturer Boosts Efficiency by 17 Percent with Product Life-Cycle Management Solution

information, and so on with employees around the world,” says Drey.

SolutionIn November 2008, Pentair Technical Products determined that it would upgrade to a PLM solution based on ENOVIA V6R2009x from Dassault Systèmes and either Microsoft SQL Server data management software or Oracle Database 10g, a decision it would make after testing their respective performance. “We were interested in seeing whether SQL Server could meet our performance expectations because we use the product elsewhere in our environment and have plenty of internal IT staff with expertise in its management,” explains Drey.

The company set up a clustered environment with two servers running SQL Server in December 2008 and conducted tests through February 2009, working in collaboration with consultants from Dassault Systèmes and Microsoft Services. “The consultants from Dassault Systèmes gave us expert guidance with the initial database testing and converted our data from Oracle to SQL Server,” says Drey. “And our Microsoft Services consultant was tremendously helpful in providing mentoring as we walked through the clustering process.”

In extensive performance tests, Pentair Technical Products saw that the SQL Server database matched or outperformed the Oracle database in nearly every scenario, so the company opted to implement SQL Server running the Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition operating system. It conducted final tests in July 2009 and put the system into production the following month.

BenefitsPentair Technical Products now has an enterprise PLM solution with the performance necessary for global PLM activities, and it has lowered its total costs and the complexity of its IT environment. “We’re reducing the IT management costs of product life-cycle management and helping our

end users boost their productivity by accelerating the performance of a mission-critical application,” says Drey. “We’re giving them faster, easier access to the information that they need—from shop packets full of drawings to print room work orders.”

Cost Savings and Added Business ValuePentair Technical Products conducted a thorough cost comparison of its two database options and found that SQL Server offers a lower total cost of ownership than Oracle Database 10g, plus a 17-percent improvement in productivity. “When we add up the hard cost savings, the ability to standardize our platform, the ease of maintenance, and faster performance, we’re seeing an estimated positive annual business impact of $50,000,” says Drey.

Faster PerformancePentair Technical Products has significantly reduced the time it takes to receive query results by migrating to SQL Server. “Our PLM system performs, on average, 20 percent faster with SQL Server than with Oracle 10g,” says Drey. The company also has noted a 20-percent improvement for remote sites, due in part to the performance capabilities of SQL Server.

Reduced IT ComplexityBy eliminating the Oracle platform and moving to SQL Server, the company has reduced complexity in its IT environment, and IT staffers can spend their valuable time on other priorities. “Because we’ve eliminated a platform, we can concentrate our efforts,” says Drey. “Plus, our wealth of in-house SQL Server expertise means that we have a lot of flexibility when it comes to who supports the system on a daily basis.”

Enhanced Ability to Serve CustomersPentair Technical Products employees can be more productive now that they have the performance capabilities to access engineering

and marketing data in real time, rather than waiting for others to send relevant files. “We’re providing better service to our global customers because faster access to companywide information leads to shorter project cycles and fewer errors,” says Drey. “For example, our CAD workers now can quickly check their drawings against those of their overseas colleagues and optimize the designs before putting them into production.”

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.Document published May 2010