Micronas

Centralization reduces data transmission, speeding up R&D

With R&D engineers in multiple locations worldwide, including Germany, China, Serbia, Austria and the United States, Micronas formerly had no other choice than to provide local data centers. Where the headcount was low, this may have been a more modest computer room. This was necessary due to the large volumes of data that the engineers needed to access and store. To save costs, simplify administration and better secure its intellectual property (IP), Micronas sought an improved, more centralized way of working.

Paul Blenderman, manager, servers and infrastructure at Micronas, said, “We knew we needed a centralized solution that would allow our applications to run server-side in the data center, not at the workstation. We initially turned to OpenText™ Exceed onDemand™, the best solution on the market, to provide that exact functionality.”

The Exceed onDemand solution was deployed at two main data centers, providing server-side application execution and front-end rendering delivered over a network connection. This enabled the designers and layout specialists to work remotely and thus avoid the need for complex server environments in the smaller offices.

“We immediately benefitted from faster execution, with far less data being transmitted over our wide area network. We were able to replace Linux workstations with Microsoft^® Windows^® PCs, which can be used for office tools as well. Our R&D engineers have been able to work quicker, not suffering from network latency in the way they used to, thanks to OpenText, as data remains on our central servers,” added Blenderman.

As well as the performance improvements Exceed provides, IP is also better protected. Data remains secured in the central location—it is never transmitted nor stored in the remote locations. This prevents it from being copied to a memory stick, DVD or other external storage device. Administration overhead has also been reduced with centrally maintained profiles that can be quickly updated and then instantly available to users.

Exceed TurboX further improves performance

Having used Exceed onDemand for a number of years, Micronas revisited its evolving requirements with OpenText and began evaluating the latest addition to the Exceed family, Exceed TurboX.

“We tested Exceed TurboX to find out for ourselves what benefit this latest offering in the continually improving Exceed family would offer Micronas,” said Blenderman, “Performance enhancements, improved, faster 3D capabilities, and better interfaces for users and administrators were among the many reasons we decided to update to Exceed TurboX.”

Micronas continues to benefit from the wide range of functionality of Exceed, including session suspend and resume, allowing users to leave their applications running on the server and resume them later, even on another computer. The new sneak peek capability allows them to check on status and progress via a browser, quickly and easily.

“Users also like the new, improved user interface of Exceed TurboX. They welcome the ability to utilize the centrally managed profiles and then customize them to suit their specific needs or way of working,” added Blenderman.

Session sharing allows users to improve collaborative design reviews, especially with colleagues in other locations. With all data held on central servers, there’s also no risk of working on an outdated copy, as no copies of data are ever held at the local desktop. Session sharing also eases internal support, with administrators able to see the user’s screen.

Administrators benefit from improved UI, better reporting and user management

End users aren’t the only ones benefitting from the improved speed and better user interface of Exceed TurboX.

“The administration UI is now much simpler and more intuitive, meaning we can set up new users or roll out updates to user profiles more quickly than ever,” said Tobias Lietz, Linux server administrator at Micronas.

Exceed TurboX is fully browser-based, with zero installation at the local desktop, so enabling new users is the quickest it’s ever been. Tracking and reporting on usage is also better than ever.

“We can instantly see usage by group, by user, the number of sessions and the number of licenses being used. This helps us ensure we’re making the most efficient use of our licenses,” said Blenderman.

Administration overhead and therefore costs have come down with the capabilities of Exceed TurboX. Administrators benefit from the new browser-based administration tool. Rather than using complex command line instructions, the new admin UI is quicker, simpler and more effective. The result is a faster response to users’ support queries.

“It used to be a significant effort synchronizing design databases across sites. We were limited in our ability to collaborate between sites, due to the need to provide local copies of our design data at all sites involved in a design. With Exceed TurboX, collaboration is now seamless. Teams can be spread across sites without having to worry about data synchronization. All this while still being able to quickly look at each other’s screens,” added Dr. Gernot Koch, CAD manager at Micronas.

Exceed TurboX: The perfect fit for future strategy

As Micronas continues to look for ways to reduce IT costs, improve efficiency and simplify administration, Exceed TurboX is set to play a major part in the organization’s strategic plans. Exceed TurboX is being used to replace other remote desktop applications, further simplify support and reduce maintenance costs. The OpenText architecture has become the de facto standard at Micronas.

“We’re finding additional benefits with Exceed TurboX, not only for our design engineers and layout specialists, but also in production. Production users are able to monitor, measure and manage their production applications, such as wafer inspection, both on-site and remotely,” said Blenderman.

Micronas is also using Exceed TurboX at locations where it is easier to recruit skilled resource, even though the data center may be located hundreds of miles away. This enables the organization to provide the high performance, remote application and data access demanded by users, without local data center infrastructure overhead.

“OpenText™ Exceed™ TurboX is proving to be a resounding success at Micronas. Our future plans will benefit too, including greater remote access for users, for example at home, and also while at other locations, such as customer sites,” said Blenderman. “Potential new overseas activities, for example in Japan, will also benefit following the recent acquisition of Micronas by TDK.”