As one of the premier automakers in the world, Audi has established a track record of delivering technically sophisticated vehicles, and in realizing the operational efficiencies that fuel optimal profits. Toward that end, the company's IT team sought a new networking platform that could support integration between their HP NonStop servers and IBM mainframes. To maximize cost efficiency and reliability, the company chose uLinga for Enterprise Extender (EE) from comForte.

The Challenge
Audi has built a global reputation for delivering vehicles that feature modern design, technological innovation, and highest quality. To support its business-critical operations, the company relies on an IT infrastructure that has to operate on a massive scale. One of the company's core business applications is a time tracking system that over 40,000 people routinely interact with and rely on.
This time tracking system runs on an HP NonStop server, gathering time inputs and feeding them directly in to the company's SAP-based human resources application. The HP NonStop server routinely receives the recorded time balances back from the IBM mainframe via a home-grown File Transfer system. In order to continue to support the company's scalability demands, the IT team needed to deploy a new HP NonStop server. As part of the process, the company's IT decision makers began to research cost-effective alternatives that could support the integration between HP NonStop servers and their IBM mainframes.
In making this change, it was critical that their new communications platform provided support for the IBM systems network architecture (SNA)-and that it could be integrated with minimal time, effort, and disruption.

The Solution
After an evaluation of the options available on the market, the IT team found the optimal solution for their needs: uLinga for EE from comForte. uLinga enables communications between HP NonStop systems and IBM mainframe servers-and it offers Audi the opportunity to fully leverage the IP protocol, while working seamlessly and transparently within their existing SNA environment.

The Benefits
By deploying uLinga for EE, Audi and its IT team realized several benefits:

• Cost savings. With uLinga for EE, the company was able to get the same features and functionality of their prior solution, while reducing costs substantially.
  
• Fast, efficient deployment. Because of uLinga for EE's proven capabilities and efficient deployment model, Audi was able to quickly and efficiently integrate the solution. In a matter of days, the team had uLinga deployed and running correctly. In addition, the comForte support team created the configuration files Audi needed, which reduced the effort required of Audi's IT team. Further, once deployed, the solution requires virtually no administrative effort.
• Minimized disruption and risk. uLinga for EE could be deployed with minimal disruption, including with no modifications to the host and only minimal parameter changes to the HP NonStop system. Consequently, the solution minimized any potential risk to the availability and performance of the company's critical time-tracking application.
  

"With uLinga for EE, we were able to deploy a solution that offered all the functionality of our prior platform-but at a much more competitive price point," said Peter Segeth, Process and System Integrator, Audi. "In deploying, we didn't have to make any changes to the host, which was vital in ensuring we always met our performance and availability targets. Further, the team at comForte offered excellent expertise and great support throughout the entire process."

About Audi
The Audi Group, comprising the two brands Audi and Lamborghini, is one of the world's leading carmakers in the premium and supercar segment. The core of the Company comprises the Audi brand, whose vehicles delights customers with their outstanding modern design, technological innovations and high build quality. The ambition to fulfill customer expectations with pioneering vehicle concepts is manifested in the brand essence "Vorsprung durch Technik," which encompasses the brand values sportiness, sophistication and progressiveness.