Japan Molex Co., Ltd. was established in 1970 as the Japanese affiliate of the Molex Group, a worldwide general manufacturer of connectors for industrial, consumer, data communications and automotive equipment. Japan Molex has four plants and nine offices in Japan.  Its headquarters and technology center in Yamato City, Kanagawa Prefecture functions as the business, manufacturing and research and development hub.

The Challenge: Improving Access to Applications from Remote Sites

Japan Molex faced increasing user dissatisfaction with the speed and performance of applications delivered to remote factories and offices using Lotus Notes Groupware. Mr. Saburo Morimoto, the Operations Management Headquarters Information Technology Systems leader, explained the company’s dilemma: “To increase access speed at remote locations, we considered methods such as upgrading the communication lines or providing a replica server at each location and synchronizing data, but they would have required a large investment.”

Meanwhile, the parent organization, Molex Group, planned to adopt SAP R/3 Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software on a worldwide scale. However, building a system to give approximately 5,000 worldwide users acceptable access would have required network improvement expenditures and administrative overhead. Mr. Morimoto was looking for the most cost-effective solution to this access problem.

Implementing a Citrix Solution for Application Deployment

Japan Molex implemented Citrix® MetaFrame® Presentation Server software to deploy the Lotus Notes Groupware application to plants and offices nationwide. According to Mr. Morimoto, “I found out about MetaFrame Presentation Server by looking at a catalog, but what surprised me was a demonstration of mobile access using a notebook PC. Application performance using the Citrix solution was completely unbelievable, considering that it was running over a cell phone line.”

Currently, 800 users in various locations are accessing applications running on three MetaFrame Presentation Servers installed at the Yamato headquarters. Applications including Lotus Notes, Microsoft® Exchange and Microsoft Office 2000 are published to the Web for browser-based access using the web interface feature.

Mr. Morimoto also introduced Citrix software to the Molex Group IT Information Strategy Officer. As a result, SAP R/3 is now being deployed worldwide using MetaFrame Presentation Server and thin-client terminals.

High-performance Access at a Savings of Two Million Yen per Month

“With the bandwidth efficiency of Citrix software, application performance is greatly increased,” said Mr. Morimoto. “For example, even when accessing applications from Kagoshima, approximately 600 miles away, users enjoy the same experience as if they were located at the Yamato headquarters. This same high speed is maintained when accessing SAP servers located in America. And all this without upgrading the network or having to install new client machines to run the SAP software. Furthermore, the web interface feature of MetaFrame Presentation Server allows us to deploy applications over the Web without rewriting them.”

Improved ease of system administration is another benefit of the Citrix solution. “The system is being administered by two non-dedicated administrators without much burden,” commented Mr. Morimoto. “Upgrading applications is much easier and faster than before.” As a result, Japan Molex succeeded in greatly reducing its TCO. “We were able to reduce costs by about two million yen (U.S. $17,000) per month. We clearly gained benefits over and above what we invested.”

Moreover, the Molex Group, including overseas divisions, was able to rapidly implement its SAP ERP system worldwide at low cost by using MetaFrame Presentation Server.

Future Plans

Japan Molex is considering expanding the deployment of applications over the Internet to outside suppliers using the secure gateway feature of MetaFrame Presentation Server. “We believe the excellent security provided by secure gateway will allow us to solve the problems of firewalls and data protection,” said Mr. Morimoto.

Citrix software is also expected to play a key role in the company’s business continuity plan. By consolidating approximately 70 servers scattered across Japan in two locations and managing them using MetaFrame Presentation Server, Japan Molex  will be able to provide a redundant server farm in case of an outage. Server consolidation will also increase the efficiency of IT administration and enable remote support for small offices that do not have a specialized administrator.

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