WebSphere Revolution

Pep Boys and WebSphere In 1921, four young neighborhood entrepreneurs in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, pooled together two hundred dollars each to start what has become the nation’s largest automotive aftermarket retail and service chain, with over 560 locations in the U.S. and Puerto Rico. Pep Boys differentiates itself from the competition by being the only chain that serves all four segments of the automotive aftermarket: do-it-yourself, do-it-for-me, buy-for-resale, and replacement tires. Pep Boys also prides itself on being the value alternative to the car dealer and providing exceptional customer service. ence in Orlando in about 2002. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was speaking on stage. They asked Steve, ‘What are the top three things that keep you up at night?’ His answers were security, Linux, and WebSphere. A CIO sitting next to me asked me, ‘What is WebSphere?’ I explained it to him and he said, ‘Wow that sounds pretty cool I’ll have to go investigate that.’” Back in 2004, Pep Boys wanted to expand its business and bring its customer service to the next level in order to maintain market leadership. “Pep Boys needed to change its store systems, which were outdated and beginning to break down,” explained Bob Berckman, Assistant VP, Applications Development, Pep Boys. “Sometimes, store checkout systems would fail, which was a major disruption to our business.” Based on aging technology, Pep Boys’ previous infrastructure was a homegrown, checkout-only point-of-sale (POS) solution comprising various independent systems that were no longer supported, required time-consuming and costly integration efforts, and were unable to scale to support the company’s growth plans. Working with IBM, Pep Boys started its IT transformation by replacing its outdated POS environment with an IBM open POS solution—a next-generation POS configuration built on Java technology-based Oracle retail software running on IBM Store Integration Framework and comprising hardware, an operating system, and services from IBM. The underlying SOA infrastructure for the solution leveraged IBM WebSphere Business Integration Server Foundation, IBM WebSphere MQ, and IBM DB2. “By connecting all of the solution components, Store Integration Framework enabled Pep Boys to become a true On Demand Business,” says Jan Jackman, then general manager, IBM Retail Store Solutions. “The solution facilitates the seamless integration of information and data, allowing Pep Boys to speed its operations and improve the customer experience by providing the right information at the right time, in real time.” Pep Boys realized immediate benefits, including faster checkout, ease of use, and low cost of training—all combining to improve the customer shopping experience and employee productivity. 39

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of WebSphere Revolution

WebSphere Revolution Table of Contents The Rise of Internet Business WebSphere Takes the Stage WebSphere Application Server Evolves Beyond the Application Server WebSphere and On Demand Business New Flexibility through SOA An Eye Toward the Future

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