HOMEBASE MOVES TO IBM PLATFORM FOR ITS WAREHOUSE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

Catalyst International has announced that it has successfully migrated its CatalystCommand Warehouse Management System (WMS) to Homebases new IBM AIX servers. The migration was carried out over five weekends without impacting Homebases operations and has already delivered huge performance improvements.

Founded in 1979, Homebase is the UKs second largest DIY brand and has nearly 300 stores throughout the UK and the Republic of Ireland. The company has 14 warehouses in the UK, each of which is managed by Catalysts WMS.

Previously, each warehouse was supported on-site by an HP 9000 server with technology dating back to 1997. In 2004, Homebase decided to upgrade by replacing these with five IBM P-Series servers.

Ray Hudson, Homebase Business Systems Manager for distribution commented, Migrating our version of the Catalyst WMS from an ageing HP UX environment to the new IBM AIX platform was a major infrastructure project with Catalyst undertaking a major role. We are very pleased with the performance of the application on our new platform.

Steve Barker, Catalyst Internationals VP of Sales and Marketing for EMEA, commented, As well as providing a much higher performance system, the migration of the Catalyst WMS to the IBM AIX platform provides Homebase with a better upgrade path for the future.

Catalyst International is a global provider of supply chain execution (SCE) solutions. Its products support the core technology stack of IBM and features enhanced composite applications that can be easily integrated into any Catalyst International WMS, SAP WM or other WMS solutions.

The solution suite is compatible with IBM DB2 Universal Database, IBM WebSphere Application Server, IBM WebSphere MQ, AIX operating system and other products. It offers expanded functionality for labour management which typically represents the largest portion of distribution costs as well as for transportation management and slotting.