Freelance
News Service
The Ultimate Business Solution
By William Cracraft
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Three months ago company executives could only dream of having enough data immediately available to sell an upgrade when a customer called in to check their account status.
Today, Compaq's Zero Latency Enterprise has made that type of marketing a reality. Silicon Valley has been the cradle of electronic innovation and Compaq has continued that trailblazing with the ultimate business solution, the ZLE initiative built in Cupertino.
Zero latency is a term coined and defined by the Gartner Group, an independent technology analysis organization. As defined by Gartner, a zero latency strategy, "exploits the immediate exchange of information across geographical, technical and organizational boundaries to achieve business benefits."
A true zero latency system enhances the online client relationship by eliminating the "information float" occurring when data is captured one place and though needed immediately elsewhere within the enterprise, is unavailable until hours or days later. Compaq's Zero Latency Enterprise is a complex computer with specialized software integrating business operations, including sales and marketing, with up-to-the-minute customer information allowing users to act on the data in seconds.
The version of the ZLE system operating in Cupertino, running on components from across the Compaq family, is set up as a massive telephone company computer, big enough to handle all computing needs of the top five telephone companies in the world at once, over 1 billion calls per day.
The Debut Demonstration
On October 11, The benchmark 111-terabyte engine, featuring
a 128-processor NonStop Himalaya server, an eight-processor AlphaServer GS140
and five ProLiant servers made its debut to a critical audience. Compaq CEO
Michael Capellas hosted the ZLE's first public demonstration in Geneva at
Telecom '99, which attracts the top executives of the world's telecommunication
companies.
The demonstration began with 40,000 telephone calls per second passing through the system. As technology experts attending Telecom '99 watched via satellite video hookup, Greg Battas, Principal Member, Compaq Technical Staff, running the ZLE in Cupertino, upped the ante by adding 1,000 customer service transactions per second. The two workloads used about two-thirds of the ZLE's capabilities, but the transaction time--how long it takes the computer to respond to a customer service inquiry--was still only a fraction of a second.
Finally, in a dramatic effort to tap the full resources of the engine, Battas put a question to the computer requiring it to search the entire 111-terabyte database for a set of specific factors. In technical terms, the query compared 48 million rows of customer data to a 1 billion-row usage table.
The system returned an answer in just two minutes and, more importantly, customer service transaction response time was essentially unchanged. Spontaneous applause erupted throughout the conference center as the demonstration ended.
ZLE Helps Business Work Smarter
The ability to maintain full-speed, on-going business functions
even under a very high transaction/inquiry load is the essence of zero latency.
In a real-life situation, a head of household may call to check how minutes
remain on a calling plan.
The customer service representative helping the caller will be able to find that answer and at the same time the computer might show that the household telephone is consistently busy between five and ten p.m. and that there are teenagers in the home. This becomes an opportunity to offer the caller a second phone line based on the apparent needs of the household--without a telemarketer interrupting the evening meal.
Only in Silicon Valley
Above and beyond the hardware, a large
range of products and talents was required to assemble the customer demonstration
portion of the project. "This project was an interesting mixture of technology
and art," Battas said. "Whether we needed hardware engineers, Tru64 talent,
Oracle parallel Server or Tuxedo specialists, Java coders, spare hardware,
work rooms, camera operators, video editors, or trade show specialists, all
of this is readily available in Silicon Valley."
On the off-chance the satellite feed failed at a crucial moment, the team had a video of the demonstration prepared. "We stood in front of $28 million in hardware and software, videotaped a demonstration, digitally encoded and sent it via broadcast-quality fiber to our CEO in Houston," Battas added.
"Then, we walked across the street to our editing room where an award winning editor assembled the tape into a professional media piece and sent it overnight to Geneva. "I did a project like this a few years ago and tried to do it at a customer site," said Battas. "It was all the little things that killed us. Here in Silicon Valley, when we needed a digital circuit, it was there. When we needed a person to build a custom, earthquake-proof bracket to hang a $15,000 flat panel display from the ceiling, we had it."
"No matter how you look at it, this is a major breakthrough," said CEO Capellas, who added he had never before seen this level of integration of applications and data. The International General Manager of GTE Data Systems, Kathy Boeschesnstein said, "with its zero latency engine, Compaq has demonstrated that it is a leader at the highest levels."