Business Services Industry

Sequent Supplies Data Warehouse for Reuters Decision Support System; Client/server architecture delivers cost effective management reporting

Business Wire, Oct 4, 1995

BEAVERTON, Ore.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 4, 1995--Reuters in the United Kingdom and Ireland has invested in a Sequent Computer Systems high-end UNIX system to run its new decision support (DSS) system and support disaster recovery for all UNIX-based services.

The project follows a comprehensive business process re-engineering program and Reuters' decision three years ago to move from an IBM environment to an open client/server architecture.

The new Sequent Symmetry 5000 symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) system, with eight Intel Pentium processors and 52.5-GB of disk space, is based at the Reuters data center in London. It will primarily act as a data warehouse, drawing information from the Reuters online transaction processing (OLTP) systems: a Sequent Symmetry 2000/790 database server running ISIS (Reuters' order administration and billing system) and CALLS (a customer support database); and an IBM mainframe running a human resources application and accounting software. It will also provide hot-backup disaster recovery for ISIS.

The primary objective for the data warehouse and decision support system at Reuters is to support timely, cost-effective decisionmaking by enabling the company to store and manipulate historical data from the company's existing business-critical OLTP systems.

Commenting on the project, Steve Ledsham, IS manager, Reuters UK, said, "Reuters has invested in the move to open systems over the last three or four years. The creation of a client/server architecture founded on Sequent SMP has delivered the performance and reliability we require for running business-critical systems like ISIS.

"In order to maximize this investment and to make the best use of information about our business that was not previously available, we had to find an effective method of analyzing and cross referencing relevant data from our OLTP systems," he said.

The SE60 will receive nightly updates of pre-summarized data from ISIS and the customer support database as part of its data warehouse report. In a disaster recovery situation, Reuters staff would have ISIS and CALLS up and running on the Sequent Symmetry 5000 within 24 hours.

Ledsham said Reuters selected the Sequent system as the standalone repository for the new decision support system because of Sequent's highly scalable SMP technology and open systems expertise and its ability to support large-scale data warehouses.

In the past year, Reuters has been piloting the data warehouse with several senior managers and their departments to accurately understand business needs and usage levels of the new decision support system. More than 100 senior managers and decision makers are expected to use the DSS system with Business Objects' sophisticated EIS software as a front end to the DSS system for high level reporting, with an additional 300 to 500 users using simplified custom applications for operational reporting requirements.

About Reuters

Reuters supplies the global business community and news media with a wide range of products including real-time financial data, transaction systems, access to numerical and textual historical databases, news and news pictures.

About Sequent

Sequent Computer Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:SQNT), based in Beaverton, Ore., is a leading architect and provider of open client/server systems for business computing. Sequent provides professional consulting, educational and support services, and develops scalable multiprocessing computing systems. The World Wide Web address for Sequent Online is http://www.sequent.com/.

This news release and other information is available from Sequent's news-on-demand fax service at 800/356-0834.

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Sequent and Symmetry are registered trademarks of Sequent Computer Systems, Inc.

UNIX is a registered trademark in the United States and other countries, licensed exclusively through X/Open Company Limited.

Business Objects and EIS are registered trademarks of Business Objects Co.

Intel is a registered trademark and Pentium is a trademark of Intel Corp.

Reuters is a registered trademark of Reuters UK and Ireland.

Oracle and Oracle Forms are registered trademarks of Oracle Corp.

Microsoft is a registered trademark and Windows NT is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation.

IBM is a registered trademark of International Business Machines Corporation.

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CONTACT: Sequent Computer Systems, Inc.