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HP delivers real time
Enterprises have long recognized the value of
absolutely fresh data, and they have attempted to
obtain it using enterprise application integration
(EAI) and operational data store (ODS) technologies.
On its own, neither technology has been able
to meet the challenge. But in combination—as the
technical foundation for HP’s Zero Latency
Enterprise (ZLE) architecture—these technologies
create a powerful insight and response engine and
enable the real-time enterprise.
The relevance of zero latency computing across
the broad range of industry sectors was evident
from the outset to Jim Olivero, ZLE marketing
manager for HP’s NonStop Enterprise Division.
“Our first real-time architecture implementation
was aimed at the telecommunications industry, but
we showed the proof-of-concept demonstration to
every customer that came through our briefing
center,” he recalled. “The demo system was handling
a huge volume of call detail records, but financial
services customers didn’t see those call detail
records; in their minds, they saw ATM transactions.
Similarly, retail customers envisioned point-of-sale
transactions.”
Regardless of industry affiliation—telco, retail,
travel, finance, government, supply chain, or
healthcare—all of the customers could see the
potential for solving their specific information-related
challenges and increasing their competitiveness.
To date, more than 40 enterprise and government
customers around the globe have implemented
HP’s ZLE architecture.
A prime industry example
Churn management, an ongoing challenge in the
telecommunications industry, is a good example of
how a real-time architecture can quickly deliver
competitive advantage. “Churn is when customers
aren’t happy for some reason, and go to a competitor
instead of renewing their cell phone contracts,”
explained Olivero. “With immediate access to both
up-to-the-second and historical information, call
center agents can tailor special offers that may keep
those customers from defecting.”
Real-time fraud detection—the ability to identify
stolen calling cards, spot anomalies in calling
patterns, and terminate fraudulent calls quickly—
is another area in which ZLE solutions are proving
invaluable in the telecommunications environment.
So is real-time billing across wireline, wireless, and
third-generation services; the ability to integrate
information from diverse business units into a
single data source enables the telecommunications
company to prepare a single bill for the customer.
Four things everybody wants
According to Olivero, certain challenges—and
therefore certain
IT requirements—are common to
competitive enterprises across the industry spectrum.
“People are trying to do four main things:
obtain an up-to-the-second view of their business,
get a single view of their customer from all applications,
reduce fraud, and increase customer loyalty.
The details vary by industry, of course, but everything
comes back to those four fundamentals.”
In finance, real-time solutions recognize stolen
credit cards and identify strange purchase patterns
to combat fraud. In addition, they integrate the
view of a single customer across different accounts
and delivery channels. And they facilitate personalization,
leading to greater selling opportunities and
improved customer service and satisfaction. |
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Streamlining the supply chain
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| HP’s Real Time Supply Chain (RTSC) solution, a powerful
complement to the HP Supply Chain portfolio, simplifies
real-time integration of multiple supply chain applications,
versions, and data. The result is a consolidated,
up-to-the-second view of the entire supply chain.
RTSC is based on HP’s own Adaptive Enterprise technology;
in fact, the solution was implemented internally
to successfully merge the HP and Compaq supply
chains, integrating 15 multiversion enterprise resource
planning database instances and driving significant
cost savings and productivity increases.
RTSC enables new levels of integration and end-to-end
process visibility. It offers real-time event awareness
plus historical reference, making it a powerful decision-making
tool. With RTSC, customers can leverage new
and existing supply chain investments to unleash additional
benefits, leading to reduced costs and improved
service levels. RTSC includes adapters for major EAI
solutions, such as SAP Exchange Infrastructure, a
main element of SAP NetWeaver.
Data management technology, business applications,
and consulting and integration services are also part of
the RTSC solution. With a real-time view of the supply
chain, businesses can quickly leverage and respond to
changes in the supply chain environment, make more
informed and timely decisions, increase the value of
their existing supply chain investment, reduce costs,
and link the internal and extended enterprise for
greater business agility. |
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“We clearly add value through
superior integration and a
real-time view of customer
and business data.”
Jim Olivero, ZLE marketing manager,
HP’s NonStop Enterprise Division |
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In travel, the real-time architecture integrates the
view across hotels, airlines, car rental companies,
restaurants, and loyalty programs, and enables
relevant recommendations to customers. In retail,
the architecture makes it possible to identify and
deal with fraudulent transactions in real time
(rather than waiting for a monthly report) and
enables personalization vis-à-vis anonymous
Internet shoppers.
HP has developed several industry-specific solutions
based on the ZLE framework, including Real
Time Supply Chain (see “Streamlining the supply
chain” sidebar) and Real Time Financial Services
(see “Financial services, the new way” sidebar).
Also in process are solutions aimed at the telecommunications,
healthcare, and government sectors.
We are taking the underlying ZLE architecture,
partnering with industry-leading software vendors to
solve a particular problem, and delivering powerful
solutions to the vertical markets,” noted Olivero.
Start small and grow
One very important feature of the ZLE architecture
is the ability to start small and grow incrementally,
as business needs dictate. “Customers can begin
with a very small implementation, moving data into
the ODS and connecting just a few applications,”
said Olivero. “Typically, they target their biggest
‘pain points’ first—the challenges they’re most
anxious to solve quickly—as well as opportunities
for fast return on IT investment. Then, over time,
they can easily add more applications and tie
additional databases together.”
Also important is the fact that real-time solutions
enhance rather than replace existing infrastructures,
leveraging customer investment in legacy
systems and applications. “We clearly add value
through superior integration and a real-time view
of customer and business data,” stated Olivero.
The ZLE architecture is built on the foundation
of the HP NonStop server—an absolute requirement
for the central ODS—but flexibility is
the watchword when it comes to other parts of
the solution. If a company already runs Siebel’s
customer relationship management software on a
Windows NT® or UNIX® system–based server, for
example, connecting it to the real-time architecture
hub will give the application visibility into the ODS
and an integrated view of the enterprise. For high-volume
data mining that supports the creation of
business rules, an HP Integrity Superdome server
would be a logical choice. Choosing the platform
that is best suited for each task results in an
optimal and cost-effective solution.
Accurate, up-to-the-second data leads to superior
business decisions, and this is precisely what the
real-time architecture delivers. “When we started,
the ZLE framework was basically a way to connect
the enterprise, and every implementation was
unique,” concluded Olivero. “Now we are building on
that underlying technology—and enhancing it with
industry-specific solutions to solve real problems.”
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Financial services, the new way
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| Real Time Financial Services (RTFS) is an HP Adaptive
Enterprise solution that gives financial institutions
immediate visibility into critical business processes
and customer interactions, no matter how complex
their business environment might be. It provides an
up-to-the-second, unified view of all customer-related
activities. It lowers operational costs and grows service
and fee-related revenue. In short, RTFS increases the
agility of the enterprise in responding to business
requirements, while augmenting and enhancing—not
replacing—existing IT infrastructures.
RTFS for Retail Banking provides real-time integration
across the institution. The solution addresses the
long-standing problem of integrating data from disparate
delivery channels, point-to-point interfaces,
and applications and associated databases across
the enterprise. With RTFS, each channel can access
a current, consolidated view of customer and business
data, enhancing the power of existing applications and
protecting IT infrastructure investment.
RTFS for Wholesale Banking provides a real-time,
consolidated view of the bank’s relationship with its
corporate customers and their activities across the
globe. Access to real-time information is the key to
competitive advantage across the financial services
industry. RTFS solutions from HP make it possible.
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A company’s business rules, policies, and procedures
may vary from department to department,
but with the common ZLE technology foundation,
HP can implement vertical solutions quickly, easily, and
safely. Data integration is a major challenge in every
industry. Powerful, cost-effective solutions built on HP“s
real-time architecture meet this challenge head-on.
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The agile healthcare enterprise
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Healthcare is an industry in flux. Rapid developments
in medical technology, advances in pharmaceutical
research, earlier detection and more effective treatment
of disease, an aging population, escalating salaries
for scarce medical professionals, a growing body of
legislative requirements, burgeoning costs—all these
factors and more make agile and cost-effective operations
imperative for today’s healthcare enterprise.
As providers seek new ways to reduce expenses while
simultaneously maintaining and improving the quality
of patient care, two areas show special promise: the
electronic health record (EHR) and clinical decision
support (CDS). Within the EHR system, the operating
room is an area of particular interest for the deployment
of ZLE technology; work is under way to develop
a clinical process monitor to ensure—in real time—that
proper payer rules are followed, including an accurate
inventory of all procedures, devices, equipment, and
supplies used. This will ensure procedure completeness—streamlining and improving the quality of the billing
process, allowing the institution to obtain the highest
pay-for-performance rates, and reducing payment
intervals for lower costs and greater profitability.
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Connecting the dots in government
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| The ability to integrate disparate legacy databases
and make decisions based on absolutely current information
is as critical in government as in the commercial
sector—if not more so. Databases that have evolved
over time in different agencies do not communicate
well with one another. The challenge is to bring the
data into a central repository, integrate it in real time,
and make it meaningful to the users of that data.
Government and public sector customers around the
world face this challenge, and many are looking to HP’s
real-time architecture for the solution. ZLE technology
has already been used to create a national homeland
security system. And law enforcement agencies
throughout the world use NonStop technology to
operate call centers, dispatch centers, and emergency
service centers, as the need to integrate data from
multiple sources becomes more and more important.
HP’s real-time architecture integrates quickly and noninvasively
with existing government databases and
applications, enhancing their value through unrivaled
scalability and availability. With discrete solutions for
law enforcement, intelligence, and homeland security,
the ZLE architecture brings the power of real-time
information to governments and public agencies
around the world. It is a perfect match for the
challenge of making sure the “dots are connected”
to yield a true picture of the threat situation that
agencies are confronting. |
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