Maruzen Co., Ltd

“Fujitsu has the know-how and products to construct a highly reliable and usable mission critical system on Linux. The result is a responsive and user-friendly shopping site based on PRIMERGY industry standard servers and Linux infrastructure.”

In general, online book stores operate in a highly competitive market. Pioneer global corporations, major domestic bookstores, and new entrants from parallel industries are all fighting for customer recognition and acceptance. Maruzen Co., Ltd., a long-established bookstore, is undergoing a large scale renewal of its Maruzen Internet Shopping (MIS) business to strengthen its “click & mortar” position (Note 1).
Maruzen sees opportunities for sales expansion by delivering excellent usability and responsiveness; through Point of Sale (POS) synchronization with its common headquarters, and via full and rich client technology (Note 2).
Linux on PRIMERGY was adopted for the infrastructure of this system. The 24/365 year-round high availability is achieved through system redundancy. Simple scale-out addition of servers also allows the service to grow inline with the business.

(Note 1) Click & mortar: Stores that exist online and in the physical world

(Note 2) Rich client：Enhanced user experience by use of Flash and other non-static technologies.

System introduction background

Flash based rich clients can achieve the convenience and user-friendliness required

Maruzen, established in Yokohama in 1869, started as a retailer of books stationery, haberdashery and other miscellaneous goods. It has always been a leader and business pioneer. It started MIS - Japan’s first online book store - in 1995. While in 2004 it opened its new Marunouchi headquarters’ store, where the Japanese book section alone contains around 1.2 million books and floor area is the largest in Japan.
Maruzen began work on renewal of its MIS in advance of the Marunouchi headquarters opening, in the spring of 2004. “Above all, it is our purpose to offer an environment in which the customer can shop seamlessly and easily. To enable Maruzen to gain dominance in the competitive book sales market, rich client technology based on Flash was adopted. This was aimed at the construction of a one-stop shopping site that could be completely operated on one screen. Moreover, in order to speed the distribution of the books to customers, Maruzen required cooperation with the Marunouchi headquarters POS system, to confirm stock inventory in real time, ” said Mr. Mikio Suzuki, Senior Vice President, Information Systems Department, Maruzen Co. Ltd., emphasizing improvements in customer convenience as the purpose of the MIS system’s renewal.

As part of the MIS system reconstruction, Maruzen also required lower-costs, fast construction, plus high reliability and high availability.
“Secure operation, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, to allow customers to always enjoy shopping was the essential requirement.
In addition, Maruzen wanted to make use of the latest technology to provide customers with a comfortable, responsive and smooth online shopping experience. “I thought that in order to speed up the implementation, out-sourcing of the development and adoption of an open platform was necessary.” said Mr. Kazutoshi Baba, Assistant General Manager, Information Systems Department.

Introduction

Linux & PRIMERGY industry standard servers form the base of the new system

The restructuring of the MIS system began in August, 2004. Construction of a large-scale system based on future predictions of maximum access numbers would have increased costs significantly. Therefore, initially, a small-scale system, which could grow to match increases in access numbers, at lower cost, but with the required high-scalability and high reliability, was requested. “From comparison results, Linux was adopted as the platform of the new system, in consideration of its future potential. Moreover, scalability was assured by the system configuration.” Mr. Baba said.

Fujitsu was chosen as the system infrastructure construction partner.

Mr. Katsushi Takahashi, Group Leader, Systems Development Group said, “Trust was placed in Fujitsu’s know-how and products to construct a highly reliable and usable mission critical system on Linux.”
Fujitsu’s PRIMERGY series of industry standard servers were adopted for the system hardware. “Having selected Linux and PRIMERGY servers, the reliability and cost has been well-balanced.” Mr. Takahashi quotes as the reason for use.

System Outline

Construction of a highly reliable and highly scalable infrastructure

The new MIS system uses 2 Linux PRIMERGY systems as Web application servers. Customer access is load-balanced by IPCOM and even if one server is down, service is not disrupted.
The Database (DB) server is also based on Linux and PRIMERGY and is clustered using PRIMECLUSTER high availability cluster software. Overall high availability and reliability is assured by the use of an ETERNUS shared storage sub-system

Scale-out growth of the Web application server can be enhanced by the load-balancing functions of IPCOM. The DB server also supports scale-out upgrading under PRIMECLUSTER control. Finally the ETERNUS storage supports system scalability with hot disk expansion and online RAID reconfiguration.
This architecture enabled initial costs to be kept down, but provided the infrastructure flexibility to change and enhance the service swiftly. New services can be added and expansions to the business can be easily accommodated just by adding additional hardware.
The ability to construct the highly reliable system infrastructure in a short time comes from the use of TRIOLE templates. By adopting a solution based on Fujitsu TRIOLE IT Infrastructure templates, trail and error during the installation was avoided. TRIOLE templates are based on pre-verified products. This prevents wasted effort and minimizes installation hassles. For example, construction of the DB cluster was possible in half the usual time, because the parameters, test items, and other variables were already fully documented. As a result Maruzen’s system infrastructure with all the required scalability and availability was installed and available that much sooner.

The resulting new MIS system infrastructure succeeded in rapidly improving customer convenience. “Information necessary for ease of shopping, like the shopping cart, can be displayed at any time and the screens are stable. We have therefore received good reviews,” said Mr. Suzuki.
In addition the ability to cooperate with shop information at Marunouchi headquarters, plus customer services like feedback on book reservations, stock, and synchronization with in-store events has further improved the customer experience.

Future Expectations

Completion of infrastructure that will enable new challenges such as mobile phone based sales

Mr. Baba’s evaluation of Fujitsu through the restructuring of the MIS system is as follows. “As the infrastructure is based on a multi-vendor environment, isolation and handling of problems is a big challenge. Fujitsu works actively from the standpoint of Maruzen to solve these problems while balancing and maintaining equilibrium in the multi-vendor environment.”
Maruzen regards completion of the site as its future challenge. “Maruzen’s online business has mainly been from corporate and public bodies like schools, libraries, and commercial organizations. Now with the MIS reforms, Maruzen can also meet individuals’ needs very well. The completion of MIS is an important milestone in Maruzen’s sales expansion.”（Mr. Suzuki）
The balance of click & mortar functions is further strengthened by the cooperation with POS. Now Maruzen has plans to offer the same service in the mobile environment. Maruzen’s challenge is fully supported by Fujitsu services and Linux on PRIMERGY.

User Profile
Company Name: Maruzen Co., Ltd
Location: Tokyo Chuo-ku Nihonbashi 2-3-10
Established: 1869 January 1st
Capital: 12.8 billion yen
Employees: 1,164 employees (2004 March 31st)
Sales: 107.7 billion yen (2003)
Business Profile: Import of books, journals, electronic content, online products etc. and sales of imported and Japanese products for university and educational markets and libraries in Japan; international sales of Japanese books and journals; in-store sales of books, journals, stationery and apparel; publishing; education-related business consulting services; library operations outsourcing services; sales of computer hardware and systems; consulting on installation of university facilities and libraries, design and engineering work; store facilities; property leasing
URL: Maruzen Co., Ltd

Note: This content is a translation of a case study in Japan dated November 1, 2005.