Multi-Vendor Competence Center

CROC has operated its own Competence Center since 1993. It was established jointly with HP, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Oracle, and EMC and comprises three research labs: information technology, computer systems and telecommunications.

The purpose of the Competence Center is to test hardware and software systems and to help customers select a solution which best meets their needs. The Competence Center simulates different parts of the customer's IT infrastructure and integrates them with designed components, thus avoiding difficulties related to project implementation and streamlining new solutions operation.

On March 3, 2009 CROC officially opened the first EMC Velocity² Signature Solution Center in Russia and the CIS based on its Competence Center. CROC's EMC Velocity² Signature Solution Center is designed for demonstration of consolidation, virtualization, backup, archiving, information recovery, and protection solutions. It allows customers to reproduce their IT environment, test the functionality of applications optimized for the specific tasks, and offers advisory assistance on selection and implementation of high-technology software and hardware.

In the period of financial uncertainty, it is critical for customers to actually test and experience the solutions prior to the start of project investment and implementation in order to make sure that the right, proven solutions have been chosen and that they will improve business efficiency in each particular customer case.

CROC’s Competence Center has gained wide-spread recognition and is officially recognized as being: IBM Total Storage Solution Center, Oracle Platinum Partner with specializations: Oracle Database 11g, Oracle Database Performance Tuning, Oracle E-Business Suite Financial Management, Oracle E-Business Suite Supply Chain Management, Oil and Gas Industry, Oracle Solaris, Public Sector Industry, Oracle Real Application Clusters, Oracle Business Intelligence Foundation, and EMC Velocity² Signature Solution Center Partner (the Best EMC Solution Center in Central Europe in 2009).

Competence Center Activities

Development and implementation of integrated solutions
Testing, optimization, and support of solutions and business platforms
Testing of pilot solutions
Demonstration of solutions to customers
Solution porting to various platforms
Solution certification
Benchmarking of existing and designed applications
Determination of optimal server configuration (sizing)
Development of benchmarking, sizing and load testing tools
Determination of required hardware and software to meet cost and performance criteria
Configuration of software and servers in order to ensure maximum performance
Emergency system failure analysis and diagnosis; recovery of business applications
System monitoring and software usage analysis

In addition, the Competence Center organizes and hosts industry seminars. Together with global partners, CROC uses such seminars to present the most recent infrastructure and business process automation solutions and to demonstrate new industry innovations. During the seminars, both current and prospective clients are given the chance to become acquainted with CROC IT infrastructure - a highly integrated software and hardware system which provides over 100 IT services and comprises: ERP and CRM systems, electronic document management system, corporate portal, reference information synchronization system, IP telephony and videoconferencing system, wireless network, etc.

Competence Center Projects

Evaluation of application server scalability for automated banking system - a major bank

CROC’s Competence Center conducted a series of load tests in order to verify application server scalability limits and determined optimal hardware/software configuration for the application server to deliver maximum performance.

Evaluation of application server scalability for automated banking system and determination of optimal platform - a major bank

After having determined that its server scalability limits were insufficient with regard to further system enhancement, the customer decided to invest in a new application server platform. CROC’s Competence Center ported a range of server software components to a number of application servers from other vendors and conducted comparative load tests in order to determine the optimal development strategy for the customer's requirements.

Infrastructure optimization of server platform and billing system - a major bank

The alternative billing system platform was chosen to stimulate competition in tenders on hardware selection.
CROC designed a method to develop a system which would be capable of supporting an additional platform, ported the system and conducted load tests in order to measure the platform’s performance once the equipment is purchased.

Audit and load test of ERP system - a large insurance company

When mandatory vehicle insurance (OSAGO) legislation was implemented in Russia, the number of vehicle insurance contracts increased dramatically. As a result, the customer realized that it would have to upgrade its in-house ERP system. By examining the system load profile and developing tools to reproduce system load, CROC’s Competence Center was able to successfully evaluate the scalability limits of the new system.

Optimization of main business application server code - electronic commerce services provider

The customer was experiencing problems with its electronic commerce system to the extent that it was frequently unable to serve customers. Although system downtime amounted to several hours per week (during peak load times), the customer had been unable to determine why the system was failing. After auditing the system’s operation profile, CROC’s Competence Center was able to reproduce the problem and the causes of the system’s failures were detected and removed. In addition, CROC proposed measures to improve application scalability. Since the implementation of CROC’s recommendations no system failures have been reported.

Load tests of enterprise electronic document storage system based on Documentum software - Eastline

The Competence Center conducted load tests on an enterprise electronic document storage system, based on Documentum software, in order to determine system bottle-necks during its peak load (up to 2,000 simultaneous users). Upon the detection of bottle-necks in the system architecture, CROC proposed a modified software/hardware architecture solution in order to improve peak load system performance and reliability.

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