Power Tools 1993 October - Disc 2/Power Tools (Disc 2)(October 1993)(HP).iso/hotlines/network/x400sol/x400sol6.txt

Text File | 1993-02-19 | 5KB | 121 lines

ELECTRONIC MESSAGING FOR OPEN SYSTEMS
BASF and HP X.400


BASF Background

BASF Group is a major international chemical company with
headquarters in Ludwigshafen, Germany.  BASF Corporation is its
North American organization and is among the leading producers
and marketers of chemical and chemical-related materials in the
world.  In 1990, BASF Group employed 140,000 people worldwide
with sales of $28 billion.  BASF Corporation had sales of $5
billion in North America with 19,000 employees.


The Electronic Mail Challenge

In 1990, BASF had over 2,000 electronic mail users in the U.S.
and over 10,000 in Germany.  In the U.S. alone, users accessed
five electronic mail systems which included CC:Mail, Network
Courier, SprintMail, All-IN-1 and VMSMail.  Because most of these
email systems were incompatible, many BASF employees were limited
in their ability to exchange electronic mail messages with each
other.  Also, since the mail systems were connected to public
email carriers, email users were limited in their ability to
communicate electronically with BASF's many worldwide business
and trading partners.

BASF believed that improving both internal and external
electronic communication was of great strategic importance.
Integration of their electronic mail environment was one tactic
used in achieving this strategy.


The Options

In looking at the problem, two potential solutions immediately
came to mind:

* One idea was to replace the five disparate email systems with a
single application.  However, not only was this idea expensive,
but the users of the existing systems had grown accustomed to
them and did not wish to change.
* A second option was to keep the existing email systems and find
a way to allow them to communicate with each other.


The Solution

Rather than completely replace their current environment,  BASF
chose to integrate their existing email networks together into a
single, heterogeneous, multivendor email network.  The challenge
that BASF faced in creating such a network was three-fold:
First, they had to interconnect all five of their email systems
in the U.S. and provide connectivity to both their corporate
headquarters and their business partners.  Second, BASF's new
network would have to be designed so it could grow as new e-mail
users and systems were added and network traffic increased.
Lastly, BASF needed to ensure the impact to their end users would
be kept to a minimum.

To reach their first goal, connectivity, BASF chose to
standardize on X.400 as the single common medium in which they
could exchange messages.  All of their electronic mail suppliers
already supported X.400 gateways, so interconnection was no
problem.  An X.400 connection to a public X.400 carrier would
enable BASF to communicate via e-mail to their business partners.

However, in order to keep the number of interconnections in the
network to a minimum, BASF decided to create an X.400 Messaging
Backbone.  BASF chose Hewlett-Packard as the supplier of this
backbone for several reasons:

* First, HP's X.400 product was considered to be the only viable
UNIX-based X.400 solution available at the time.  Other solutions
were considered to be too "vanilla" and had yet to add
capabilities such as troubleshooting tools, interoperability
tools and menu driven interfaces, all which make HP's X.400
product easy to use, implement and maintain.

* Second, BASF wanted to be able to increase the throughput of
the network without necessarily adding additional backbone
servers.  Because HP's messaging solution is scalable from low
end servers to high end mini/mainframe class systems, this was no
problem.

* Finally, HP supports value added capabilities as part of the HP
Messaging Backbone such as:
     * Billing facilities which allow BASF to charge for use of
the backbone
     * X.400 APIs for adding new applications specific to BASF's
needs


The Results for BASF

Today, BASF's X.400 Backbone consists of a single HP 9000 Series
822 running HP X.400.  This single X.400 node connects all of the
BASF X.400 gateways to one another.  It even reduces the amount
of work required to maintain each gateway node because each
gateway is only connected to the HP X.400 Server.

The X.400 Backbone design simplifies the growth of the network
since new severs and gateways can be added with little effect to
existing gateway nodes.  Eventually, BASF expects to have up to
four Backbone Severs in the U.S. with over 10,000 electronic mail
users.  As their network grows and new servers are added, BASF
will be able to manage all of their X.400 Servers from a single
site.  They also plan to use their X.400 Backbone to track
billing information and maintain user access into and out of the
network.

The BASF X.400 network shows how OSI multivendor networking can
help create a cooperative computing environment today.  By using
an X.400 Messaging Backbone from Hewlett-Packard, BASF is able to
integrate any electronic mail network from any vendor which
supports the X.400 standard.  Their employees can now communicate
more effectively with one another and with BASF business
partners, while improving the competitiveness of BASF today, and
in the years to come.