Ben Sherman
Fashion house chooses Logicalis for service solution
The Client
From modest origins above a tailor's shop in Brighton, Ben Sherman has established itself as a leading name in UK fashion and an international brand with sales of over $140 million a year. Founded in the late 50s, the company operates a worldwide design, manufacturing and marketing network with headquarters in Lurgan, Northern Ireland and offices in London, New York and Los Angeles.
Its signature line, the ‘Ben Sherman Original' shirt, is noted for its high quality fabric and tailoring and distinctive features such as button-down collars, back pleats and loops. Much loved by the Mod Generation of the 1960s, it has achieved wider success under present owners Sherman Cooper Ltd and is now sold in 3800 retail outlets worldwide, including 1300 in the UK. The company is currently expanding aggressively in the US, through branded stores and distribution deals with retail giants such as Bloomingdale's and Nordstrom.
The Challenge
Ensuring the smooth running of a global logistical operation calls for fast, robust and reliable IT systems, delivering essential business information around the clock.
To meet this requirement, Ben Sherman chose award-winning IBM reseller Logicalis to supply a pSeries Unix platform serving 200 users worldwide and provide 24x7 remote monitoring from its Croydon-based Customer Support Centre.
The server solution implemented runs a number of Progress database applications, including the STYLEman software suite for the clothing industry – encompassing order processing, procurement, warehousing and shipping.
The decision to switch to a pSeries environment was taken by Ben Sherman's IT Director Cormac McCarthy soon after he joined the company in January 2001. "My focus is on driving the business forward through the effective use of IT. That means providing stable and efficient platforms to run our business applications and ensuring that our people have the information they need to carry out their jobs with the minimum of delay.
The Solution
"One of the benefits of the pSeries solution recommended by Logicalis is that it deals with live processing extremely well. Unlike conventional systems of the same size, it gives us the speed and power to provide fast, meaningful and accurate information to the business."
Logicalis was originally approached to monitor the performance of the company's previous installation.
"The statistics they pulled together showed that, while the system was coping for much of the time, it was grinding to a halt at critical periods for the business – such as on Monday mornings when a large number of reports were being requested – which in my view was unacceptable," Cormac notes.
Taking account of the client's clear preference for IBM's version of Unix, AIX, Logicalis undertook a sizing exercise to determine the optimum hardware configuration for the company. "We wanted plenty of speed and lots of storage space. We eventually opted for the SSA storage architecture to deliver the performance and reliability required," he adds.
The decision has been clearly vindicated. "Since going live in June 2001 the system has been down for just two hours – and that was the fault of our local electricity supplier." In addition to significantly increased hardware performance, Ben
Sherman has the comfort of knowing that its solution is being monitored at all times by Logicalis' technical experts.
From a business perspective, opting for a tailored managed solution was a logical move, Cormac claims. "It's important to keep in the back of our minds that we are not an IT company – we are here to provide a service to the business. We don't have the expertise in-house to monitor the installation 24 hours a day. It made practical and financial sense to have the best people supporting our machine."
Logicalis was able to accommodate another Ben Sherman preference – for remote connection via a Virtual Private Network.
"We use the Internet to connect all of our sites. For the amount of outages we incur, it strikes us as being the most convenient and economical option. Logicalis was able to adopt this methodology to run remote diagnostics and file system monitoring through the router we provided."
This level of co-operation has extended beyond the Service Level Agreement, he adds. "When we decided to use a piece of shareware to cross-mount the Unix servers to Windows PCs, Logicalis was able to install the software and configure the servers for us. It's been a feature of our working relationship – whenever I speak to the technical team they are prepared to go the extra step."
The Bottom Line
Founded in the 1950s above a tailor's shop in Brighton, Ben Sherman now has 3800 outlets worldwide.
Ben Sherman chose Logicalis to supply a pSeries Unix platform supported by remote monitoring to provide a 24x7 business system serving users globally.
The platform offers the speed and power to provide fast, meaningful and accurate information to the business.