Silverstar achieves application migration and

integration goals

“The engagement of Global Delivery helped ensure that HP Consulting & Integration (C&I) and Global Delivery-
Application Services (GDAS) play a starring role
the right resources were available onshore and offshore. combining local domain expertise with global delivery
Silverstar was able to work comfortably with the local scale and capabilities in software development.

team to discuss requirements in the local language, Customer at a glance

while leveraging a lower-cost, high-quality remote A part of the Arrow Electronics Group, Silverstar is Italy’s
development team that could be resized quickly to meet main distributor of electronic components and computer
products. Headquartered in Milan, with branch offices in
requirements for flexible capacity.” ten different locations throughout Italy, Silverstar supplies
products to more than 130 manufacturers and 6,000
—Massimo Lodigiani, Client Principal customers across southern Europe and the Middle East.
Its subsidiaries specialize in the distribution of
“The C&I client principal engaged the regional GDAS semiconductors, LCDs, subsystems, electromechanical
components, connectors and computer products. Its
pursuit team early in the sales cycle. This strong
primary distribution center, based in Milan, is the largest
collaboration between C&I and GDAS enabled us to automated distribution center in southern Europe.
design the best solution to meet the customer need.” Silverstar Italy has an annual turnover of 1000 million
and employs 250 people. The IT group provides support
—Nitin Gandhi, GDAS Pursuit Support, UK and operations services for application platforms locally
as well as for other Arrow Group European countries.
“HP designed the right global delivery solution for
Silverstar. Onsite work was done by C&I country
resources who handled customer interactions and
requirements discussions. What’s more, leveraging
GDAS resources onshore and farshore enabled low-cost
and high-quality delivery to be performed in remote
centers.”
—Subba Rao, GDAS Delivery Manager, India Center

HP INTERNAL USE ONLY

Wanted: System integrator with
flexible delivery capabilities
Silverstar had developed its own core business-critical
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) application called
SESAM. Previously, SESAM had been running on HP
MPE3000 servers. Given the proprietary nature of the
MPE operating system, Silverstar was ready to migrate to
HP-UX with Oracle in order to reap application
modernization benefits. Silverstar planned to take a
phased approach to this migration to allow for the time to
evaluate application enhancements and to leverage
integration opportunities that could improve connectivity
with other systems in the Arrow Group.
To meet these IT challenges, Silverstar was looking to
partner with a systems integrator with deep application
development, integration and migration expertise.
Additionally, Silverstar wanted to work with a provider
that could stay close to the project and provide a delivery
capacity that was flexible enough to accommodate
changing requirements.
HP delivers on all counts
HP was brought on board for the project—with the
migration effort led by a team of consultants from HP C&I
Italy and the HP Global Delivery India Center (GDIC) in
Bangalore.
In addition to the primary migration activities, a
subsequent project involved enhancements to the SESAM
application and developing interfaces to SESAM to
integrate with other applications within the Arrow Group
of companies. Consequently, certain new modules had to
be developed to satisfy evolving business needs.
Early on, the HP team encountered unexpected challenges
stemming from the fact that most of Silverstar’s SESAM
application knowledge was retained by its own staff.
Because Silverstar had maintained very limited
documentation, the HP team had to gather requirements
through direct interviews with its IT teams.
In close collaboration with the Silverstar team, HP
proposed a mixed delivery team comprised of C&I
analysts based onsite and a remote GDAS developer
team. In this way, HP could stay close to the
requirements, offer an Italian language interface to
Silverstar and deliver a high-quality development team
that could be resized quickly.
Having the GDAS team based in India allowed HP to
build the solution at a lower cost. Equally important, HP
was able to incorporate proven, industry-leading, quality
standards for Global Delivery while satisfying Silverstar’s
requirements for flexible capacity.
Global model delivers added value
With C&I and GDAS consultants located onsite at the
customer facility in Milan and a team of GDAS
developers situated offsite in Bangalore, HP’s
onshore/offshore model for Global Delivery offered real
value to Silverstar in several key ways:
• The Global Delivery onshore/offshore model provided
the right local expertise to the customer at a lower cost.
• Onsite Global Delivery resources improved
communication between the customer, C&I and GDAS,
so that the offshore team could better understand the
customer context.
• Onsite GDAS analysts facilitated the knowledge transfer
process. This, in turn, enabled the HP team to better
understand the requirements and helped the developers
quickly recognize the gaps and implicit customer
requirements.
2
 To manage changing customer requirements, the HP team based client principal led the pursuit team with close
employed rigorous GDAS change management support from the GDIC heritage technology practice.
processes. Initially, Silverstar thought that this was
The Silverstar account team and the HP project team built
somehow placing limitations on its business. However,
upon previous positive experiences to guide a successful
the Silverstar team quickly revised its views, recognizing
engagement that included GDAS participation. Later on,
that robust change control could minimize cost and risks
the successful partnership between C&I and GDAS was
over the long-term of the project.
strengthened by following the GDAS best practice of
rotating consultants from offshore locations into onshore
Working as one team onsite and assignments every three months.
offsite
Collaborative teamwork between C&I and GDAS was at
play during every phase of the customer engagement with
Silverstar—from pursuit through delivery. The local Italian-

Challenge Solution Results

•Integrate divisional business
processes with rest of the
parent group in a complex,
dynamic environment.
•Build a relationship with a
global service provider that
could stay close to the project
and provide a flexible delivery
capacity in line with the
changing requirements.
•Application modernization for • The bulk of the work was
customer-developed ERP executed at a lower cost while
application combined with delivering consistent quality and
application integration to link maintaining a local interface.
that application with others
• The flexible delivery capacity is
across the Arrow Electronics
now able to handle changing
enterprise.
requirements and workloads.
•Partnership with HP Consulting
& Integration Italy and HP
Global Delivery Center India
provided a global delivery
team that included local
domain experts and a remote
developer team.

© 2006 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change
without notice. The only warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements
accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional
warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein.

05/2006