Emperia Holding has a complex structure, covering goods distribution, retail, real estate development and management, and IT services. The parent company operates, among others, a Logistics Center in Lublin and 64 branches with 202,000 square meters of warehouse space, offering 12,500 FMCG product items. Over 36,000 customers across Poland are served by 316 sales representatives. Deliveries are carried out by an in-house logistics network with a fleet of 654 delivery vehicles.
Managing such a complex structure sets a high bar for the IT management support system. One of the most important requirements is the uniformity of the system platform, allowing for seamless navigation between the environments of individual companies and the execution of operations concerning all members of the holding. Emperia was therefore faced with a strategic decision to choose an operating environment for the entire structure. The goal of the project was to build a uniform, scalable, and developmental environment for the Emperia Holding Group for enterprise IT systems. The project covers all companies of the Emperia Holding Group across Poland.
After a thorough analysis, based on experience from previous years and precise cost calculations for the next 5 years, the decision was made: Novell Open Enterprise Server operating system as the platform for the Oracle database and file system, and Novell Open Workgroup Suite as the groupware platform.
– As a result of the project, we will obtain a homogeneous, stable environment for business support systems, while significantly reducing costs associated with technical system maintenance – says Jacek Podsiadły, IT Technical Department Director at Emperia. – The purchase of Novell licenses is primarily the result of a detailed ROI and TCO analysis. Another important decision factor was our previous very good experience with Novell systems.
As part of the implementation, 2,800 Novell Open Workgroup Suite licenses were purchased. The unification of network operating systems and the email environment has already begun.