As one of the nation's leading technology retailers of computers and home electronics, CompUSA* knows the value of technology. The retailer runs its business largely on Intel® technologies that support businesscritical functions including a one terabyte data warehouse. Built on Microsoft SQL Server* 2000 (64-bit edition) and powered by the Intel® Itanium® 2 processor, this dynamic database provides near real-time information on everything from point-of-sale (POS) activity and inventory numbers to corporate financial data.

Challenge
• CompUSA’s original challenge was familiar to any large enterprise without a data warehouse: information silos made it difficult if not impossible to get a comprehensive and timely view of the business.
• CompUSA initiated a 32-bit data warehouse solution using Microsoft SQL Server 2000 on the Intel® Xeon® processor and populated it with POS information. As the company added data from multiple sources and extended reporting services to broader groups of users, the dramatically increased workload began to drain performance.

Solutions
• In 2003, CompUSA migrated to the 64-bit power of the Intel Itanium 2 processor and SQL Server 2000 (64-bit edition), experiencing a sevenfold increase in cube processing speed and ensuring a path to further scalability.
• Now, the company is working with Microsoft, Intel® Solution Services, Intel’s worldwide professional services organization, and Business Intelligence software leader ProClarity* on a proof of concept (POC) to pave the way for a full migration in 2006. Migrating to SQL Server 2005 has been faster and easier than anticipated, and full-text searches are orders of magnitude faster than on SQL Server 2000 running on earlier generation Itanium 2-based servers.


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