Calculations and analysis on large tables are performed within a 2 GB in-memory database. Alpha systems accommodate much more memory than we've ever been able to use on any of our preceding platforms. We can put as much as 12 GB of memory on the 8400, which frees us to do a lot of in-memory work that we couldn't do otherwise with applications running and users logged on. This process once took four hours on the mainframe. In addition to realizing significant cost savings by migrating manufacturing applications from the mainframe, the Alpha solution delivers data faster to the user community.
Users have a more real-time view of the data for decision making.
They see multiple views of the data during the day instead of a single view of a batch process that runs at night. Lucent will also take advantage of UNIX-based web technology to make production data available on its Intranet. And, users will access the new Alpha-based data warehouse to generate their own customized production reports. As the final step to migrating all manufacturing operations off the mainframes and managing the anticipated parts volume of 350,000, Lucent recently installed an additional AlphaServer 8400 system. Added to the Tru64 UNIX cluster, the system will be a backup server, as well as a development server for the manufacturing environment.