Bridgestone Co., Ltd. Selects Unicenter TNG
29 July 1998
Bridgestone Co., Ltd. Selects Unicenter TNG for SAP/R3 Management
TOKYO--July 29, 1998--Unicenter TNG Selected Over The Competition to Manage SAP/R3
Computer Associates International, Inc. (CA) and Bridgestone Co., Ltd. (Bridgestone), the world's leading manufacturer of tires and other rubber products, announced that Bridgestone has selected Unicenter TNG for managing its human resources application and SAP/R3 after a thorough comparison of the competition.
The Bridgestone installation of SAP/R3 will share the same server with their HR application and Unicenter TNG plus the SAP/R3 Option will totally manage this environment which supports 3600 clients. Unicenter TNG was selected over enterprise management products like Tivoli TME-10 because Unicenter TNG's functionality was determined to be superior.
Bridgestone has been using the human resources application and financial and purchasing system on the MVS mainframe for managing employee information such as payroll. From 1994, Bridgestone began to lower the cost of managing their IT, starting with building the "Bridgestone Super Highway" (BSHiWAY) which finished in 1996. The next step for Bridgestone was to move mainframe applications to a client/server environment for lowering the cost. There are now 80 servers using Windows NT around Japan. Of these servers, 36 application servers will take advantage of the superior functionality of Unicenter TNG's enterprise management services.
At the moment, E-mail, Internet mail, Internet and Intranet are used to share information internally. Bridgestone is using Microsoft SQL Server for their database application and for its backup. ARCserve for Windows NT and Backup Agent for SQL Server are used on 80 servers around Japan.
"We lowered the managing costs of mainframe by moving our mission critical HR application to a client/server system," said Hidebumi Kasuga, President of Bridgestone Software, Co., Ltd. "As a direct result of deploying Unicenter TNG, we have reduced management time necessary to control this environment. During this initial stage, we are using Unicenter TNG to manage the HR application and SAP/R3 but in the near future, we plan on expanding the use of Unicenter TNG to other applications and servers."
Bridgestone has entered the sponsorship of Formula 1 from 1997 and are supplying tires to the West McLaren Mercedes team. The tire information that is being used in the F1 environment will be fed back to product development section. CA also is a sponsor and a partner with West McLaren Mercedes, using Unicenter TNG to monitor the F1 car and the information monitored is used for future racing analysis. "We are pleased to be associated with these winning teams".
"I am happy that Unicenter TNG will be used not only to manage mission critical applications but for the total management of Bridgestone's IT environment. I am honored to hear that Bridgestone chose Unicenter TNG among competitive products of vendors like IBM and NEC," said James Lansing, CA Senior Vice President, Global Accounts. "It is our mission to help our clients and offer our solution to manage the complex heterogeneous environment."
About Unicenter TNG
Unicenter TNG is an integrated enterprise management solution that enables organizations to manage all IT resources, encompassing heterogeneous networks, systems, applications, and databases. It provides comprehensive end-to-end enterprise management for TCP/IP, SNA, IPX/SPX and DECnet networks, and 40 platforms including desktops, Windows NT, UNIX, AS/400, NetWare and mainframe environments.
Unicenter TNG is the only fully integrated management solution covering network discovery, topology, performance, events and status, security, software distribution, storage, workload, help desk, change management and other functions for traditional and distributed computing environments, as well as for the Internet and intranets. Unicenter TNG's intelligent manager/agent technology delivers highly scalable management of the entire computing environment, including hardware and software.
About CA
Computer Associates International, Inc. , with headquarters in Islandia, N.Y., is the world leader in mission-critical business software. The company develops, licenses and supports more than 500 integrated products that include enterprise computing and information management, application development, manufacturing and financial applications. CA has over 11,000 people in 160 offices in 43 countries and had revenue of $4.7 billion in FY1998. CA can be reached by visiting http://www.cai.com on the World Wide Web, emailing info@cai.com, or calling 1-516-342-5224.
About Bridgestone
Bridgestone Corporation is the world's leading manufacturer of tires and other rubber products. In addition to providing a full range of Bridgestone tires for almost every type of vehicle, the company has established a major presence in the global tire market through the well-known Firestone brand. Among its overseas subsidiaries are Bridgestone/Firestone, Inc. in North America, Bridgestone/Firestone Europe S.A., and Bridgestone Australia (Pty) Ltd. Bridgestone and its Group companies also supply industrial rubber products such as automotive parts, conveyor belts, marine hoses, and seismic bearings that protect building from earthquakes; polyurethane foam and advanced construction materials; electro-mechanical office equipment components; and high-quality sports equipment for golf, tennis and cycling.
All referenced product names are trademarks of their respective companies.