Innovative and successful PBS Info Days 2010
PBS Software GmbH held their 10th Information Days on June 8 and 9, 2010 on the topic of Information Lifecycle Management in SAP applications. In addition to the PBS staff more than one hundred external visitors attended this year's event at the Dorint Hotel in Mannheim. Customers, prospects, and a large number of PBS partners were impressed by the volume and wide variety of both new and further developments and customer projects.
Column-based technology in the SAP ERP environment
This topic, which in the meantime is also causing a lot of excitement at SAP, was a central theme during the two-day event. Right at the start during his welcome speech, the managing director Günther Reichling asked who knew how a column-based database works. As only a few hands raised upon this question he explained it using a comprehensible example from which everybody quickly learned that fast response times is one of the decisive advantages of column-based technology.
In contrast to SAP, whose vision is to reduce response times by applying column-based technology in the main memory, PBS Software already developed a product some time ago that together with the column-based Sybase IQ database also enables the usage of nearline storage in SAP ERP applications in addition to the SAP Business Warehouse. This revolutionizes indexing, response times, and data compression. Prof. Dr. Steinbinder, head of development at PBS, already presented the product last year and gave a lecture, among others, about its remarkable further developments.
Hornbach's experiences with PBS Nearline Analytic Infrastructure
In addition to Dr. Klaus Zimmer's lecture, which was very structured and informative regarding the basic advantages of PBS NAI, attendees were particularly interested in how it fared in practice. Bernd Reichel, expert for SAP data archiving, ILM, and ECM in IT Retail Development at Hornbach presented these advantages. The attendees were amazed about the key figures and results that this PBS pilot customer presented, such as a degree of data compression of up to 90 percent and huge administrative improvements which we report upon in detail later on.
Archiving as a basis of Information Lifecycle Management
This was the presentation topic of Tanja Kaufmann from SAP, in which she presented the functions, advantages, and further developments of the corresponding SAP ILM component. Anh-Tuan Pham and Frank Stöckel of ComSol AG, a PBS partner company, also explained the setting of retention times with PBS ContentLink using the example of a customer project. Ulf Krüger, responsible developer and product manager for this product, introduced their lecture presenting a large number of further developments.
GDPdU and system decommissioning
Both topics determine the everyday life of many PBS customers. Consequently, the audience followed the presentation of expert Walter Steffen with great interest as he explained the new developments that PBS also provides in this area.
The final lecture of the first Info Day was held by Dr. Werner Hopf, CEO of Dolphin, a PBS partner company resident in Florida. He presented the ILM strategy for the migration and archiving of old systems in the SAP environment.
Good mixture
The majority of attendees praised the wide variety of topics and the high quality of lectures that had them fixed to their seats until the last one was over. Finally, participants were able to enjoy a cold refreshment at the hotel bar after a hot summer’s day and had the opportunity to reflect with others on the wealth of information and impressions they had gathered during the event.
