The Challenge

The Ministerio de Hacienda

(Ministry of Finance) aimed

to computerize the national

tax payment system for Costa

Rica. The main goals were to

improve internal efficiency and

transparency, and to make it

possible for taxpayers to make

payments and manage their

accounts online. To successfully

deploy its new ERP solution and an

integrated Web portal, the Ministry

needed to find a reliable partner to

help it create a robust infrastructure.

The Solution

Working with GBM, a strategic

partner of IBM in Central America,

the Ministry chose to implement

SAP ERP 6.0 and SAP NetWeaver

Portal running on IBM System x and

IBM BladeCenter servers. Resilient,

high-performance data storage is

provided by IBM System Storage

disk and tape storage technologies,

split across two data centers with

data synchronization using IBM

DS5300 with Metro Mirror and IBM

Tivoli Storage Manager.

Ministerio de Hacienda de Costa Rica cuts 10 percent from tax management costs with IBM and SAP

we know

they know

Overview

The Benefits

With clear workflows and integrated

information, SAP ERP has enabled

the Ministry to cut its tax

management costs by 10 percent –

expected to rise to 20 percent in the

coming years. As one of the largest

global deployments of SAP

NetWeaver Portal, the Ministry’s

portal solution has approximately

560,000 registered users, with

around 60,000 concurrent users at

peak times. For both elements in

the solution, IBM System x

technology delivers a reliable, high-

speed service to the Ministry and to

Costa Rican taxpayers.

Key Solution Components

Industry: Government

Applications: SAP® ERP 6.0, SAP

NetWeaver Business Warehouse,

SAP NetWeaver® Portal

Hardware: IBM System x® 3950 M2,

x3850 M2, x3650, IBM

BladeCenter® with Intel® Xeon®

processor 7500 series, IBM System

Storage® DS5300 with Metro Mirror,

IBM System Storage TS3500

Software: IBM Tivoli® Storage

Manager, IBM Tivoli Storage

Productivity Center, Microsoft®

Windows® Server 2003, Microsoft

SQL Server® 2005

Services: IBM Global Technology

Services, IBM Business Partner

GBM

the first priority was to deploy an ERP

solution that would be robust, reliable

and highly scalable. On top of that, we

needed a portal that could cope with a

very large set of users without impact

on performance or reliability. And, of

course, it was critical to ensure

complete integration between the

internal systems and the client-facing

Web portal.”

Saving costs and improving service

Using the collection and disbursement

application within SAP ERP, the

Ministry has improved the efficiency of

managing taxes and state benefits for

the citizens of Costa Rica.

“In just four months since the go-live of

the SAP solutions, we have seen a 10

percent reduction in overall tax

management costs,” says Gabriela

Espinoza. “In the longer-term, as we

gain more experience using the SAP

solutions, we believe that we can push

the savings to as much as 20 percent.”

The SAP environment is integrated

with Microsoft Office SharePoint

Server, enabling Ministry employees to

easily create and share customized

views of data held in the ERP system.

SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse

(BW) is also part of the solution,

providing advanced analytical

capabilities for business analysts,

helping with planning and simulation,

balanced scorecard, and data mining.

“The SAP solutions have given us the

ability to share aggregated data faster

and to gain a clearer view across

different internal functions,” says

Gabriela Espinoza.

The deployment of a new Web portal

for taxpayers, based on SAP

NetWeaver Portal, has extended the

benefits of the SAP solution beyond

the Ministry. In one of the largest global

deployments of this solution, the portal

has approximately 560,000 registered

“In just four months since the go-live of the SAP solutions, we have seen a 10 percent reduction in overall tax management costs. In the longer-term, as we gain more experience using the SAP solutions, we believe that we can push the savings to as much as 20 percent.”

Gabriela Espinoza

IT Director

Ministerio de Hacienda de Costa Rica

The Ministerio de Hacienda (Ministry

of Finance) of the Republic of Costa

Rica is responsible for executing fiscal

policy, managing public funds,

administering the taxation system and

running customs and revenue. The

Ministry employs 3,500 people and is

headquartered in the capital city, San

José.

Aiming to improve administrative

efficiency, reduce costs and improve

customer service, the Ministry took a

strategic decision to computerize its

tax payments system. This project –

named the Digital Tributary Initiative –

would involve two principal stages.

First, the Ministry would deploy an

integrated ERP solution to provide fast,

efficient workflows and integrated

information. Second, an online portal

would be created to enable taxpayers

to report their taxable income, make

payments, review the status of their

accounts and access new regulatory

information.

Gabriela Espinoza, IT Director,

comments: “We wanted to digitize the

entire tax contribution system,

covering more than 500,000 taxpayers

and an enormous volume of data. So

users, with around 60,000 concurrent

users at peak times. Taxpayers can

log in online to view their private tax

account, check their balance, report

changes in income, make payments

and find out the latest tax legislation. In

addition to empowering the citizens of

Costa Rica to manage their own tax

affairs at their own convenience, the

portal solution significantly reduces

administrative work and external

communication costs for the Ministry

of Finance.

“It was important to get people

enthusiastic about using the new

online service, and that meant

ensuring a good user experience.

Running SAP NetWeaver Portal on the

IBM infrastructure gives us the

performance and availability we need

to offer a high level of service to

taxpayers,” says Gabriela Espinoza.

Solution selection

The Ministry selected the SAP ERP

application as the closest fit to its

requirements, based on an analysis of

functionality, total cost of ownership,

support structures and flexibility. The

ability to seamlessly integrate SAP

NetWeaver Portal into the back-end

ERP system was also a factor in the

decision.

As an existing user of HP server

technology, the Ministry included this

vendor in a broad analysis of possible

infrastructure solutions for the ERP

system and tax payments portal.

Following this initial evaluation stage, a

shortlist was drawn up to compare the

relative merits of solution proposals

from HP and from IBM. The key criteria

for hardware selection were:

acquisition cost, total cost of

ownership, quality of system

management tools and overall energy

efficiency.

The IBM option was presented by

GBM – the exclusive distributor of IBM

technology in Central American and

the Caribbean. The Ministry

recognized the value of the IBM

Dynamic Infrastructure proposal,

which include energy efficiency,

business resiliency, security and

flexibility of information infrastructure.

In purely practical terms, the Ministry

was running out of space and energy

in the data center, a critical factor, and

the IBM proposal offered the ability to

achieve more within a more cost-

effective and smaller, greener IT

footprint.

“The IBM and SAP solution was the

best option for us, both in terms of the

quality of the technology and the level

of professional services and support

on offer,” says Gabriela Espinoza. “The

quality of the local partner was a

significant factor: GBM made a much

more convincing presentation, with

clear technical information that was

lacking in the offering from the HP

partner.”

In the previous decade, Ministerio de

Hacienda has used HP servers. For

the new SAP ERP project, Ministerio

de Hacienda felt that GBM and IBM

presented a complete package:

consulting services, training and

maintenance, as well as proving that

IBM BladeCenter was the best, most

robust infrastructure for SAP. Top-level

IBM and SAP specialists were brought

in for on-on-one meetings with

Ministerio de Hacienda IT team, and

since moving to SAP applications was

in itself a new adventure, the quality

and reliability of the IBM proposal

proved very attractive.

Flexible, efficient servers

The Ministry worked with IBM Techline

to determine the performance and

capacity requirements of its future SAP

landscape and to define the required

server and storage infrastructure.

Aided by GBM and IBM Global

Technology Services, the Ministry then

“The IBM infrastructure gave us everything we needed in terms of reliability, scalability, performance and flexibility – and both IBM and GBM did a fantastic job on the implementation and subsequent support.”

Gabriela Espinoza

IT Director

Ministerio de Hacienda de Costa Rica

TECHNICAL LANDSCAPE

Servers: IBM System x3950 M2, IBM

System x3850 M2, IBM System

x3650, IBM BladeCenter with Intel

Xeon processor 7500 series, IBM

System Storage DS5300 with Metro

Mirror

Software: IBM Tivoli Storage

Productivity Center, Metro Mirror, IBM

Tivoli Storage Manager, SAP ERP,

SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse,

SAP NetWeaver Portal

Users: 60,000 concurrent users and

560,000 total users of SAP NetWeaver

Portal

SPC03175-CREN-00 (March 2010)

© Copyright 2010 SAP AG SAP AG Dietmar-Hopp-Allee 16 D-69190 Walldorf

SAP, the SAP logo, SAP and all other SAP products and services mentioned herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and several other countries.

IBM Deutschland GmbH D-70548 Stuttgart ibm.com/solutions/sap

IBM, the IBM logo, and ibm.com are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation, registered in many jurisdictions worldwide. A current list of other IBM trademarks is available on the Web at “Copyright and trademark information” at http://www.ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml

Intel, the Intel logo, Intel Xeon and the Intel Xeon logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group in the United States and other countries. Linux is a trademark of Linus Torvalds in the United States, other countries, or both. Microsoft, Windows, Windows NT, and the Windows logo are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both.

Other company, product or service names may be trademarks, or service marks of others.

This case study illustrates how one IBM customer uses IBM and/or IBM Business Partner technologies/services. Many factors have contributed to the results and benefits described. IBM does not guarantee comparable results. All information contained herein was provided by the featured customer and/or IBM Business Partner. IBM does not attest to its accuracy. All customer examples cited represent how some customers have used IBM products and the results they may have achieved. Actual environmental costs and performance characteristics will vary depending on individual customer configurations and conditions.

This publication is for general guidance only. Photographs may show design models.

© Copyright IBM Corp. 2010. All rights reserved.

deployed IBM System x3950 M2,

x3850 M2 and x3650 servers running

Microsoft Windows Server 2003 to

support the SAP central instance.

The huge advantage of this choice is

that x3850 M2 servers can be

upgraded to become x3950 M2

servers, which themselves can scale

up to 16 sockets for quad-core Intel

Xeon processors per server, totaling a

massive 96 cores. The x3850 M2 and

x3950 M2 combination offers

enormous scope for expansion,

capable of meeting almost any

foreseeable workload for the Ministry.

IBM BladeCenter servers run the

individual SAP application servers,

providing a rapid and easy growth

path through the ability to slot in new

blades as demands rise. The Ministry

uses Microsoft SQL Server 2005 as

the database for its SAP environment.

“The x3950 and x3850 servers

provide significant computing power

in a very compact physical package,”

says Gabriela Espinoza. “This was

really important as we were running

out of space, power and cooling in our

data center. The System x architecture

with IBM X-Architecture enabled us to

get the best possible performance out

of the hardware, creating a highly

efficient infrastructure that is also

easily scalable. With BladeCenter, we

have similar efficiency and an

extremely rapid scale-out capability.”

Resilient storage

Data for the SAP environment is stored

on a SAN built around an IBM System

Storage DS5300 and an IBM System

Storage TS3500 Tape Library for

backup and archiving. The Ministry

uses IBM Tivoli Storage Manager to

handle backup and recovery, and IBM

Tivoli Storage Productivity Center

(TPC) for Data to monitor storage

usage and automate the policy-based

management of the available storage

capacity. The TPC solution enables

the Ministry to intelligently manage

data protection and retention and to

provide alerts on capacity and

availability issues. IBM System

Storage DS5300 Metro Mirror

replicates all data to a duplicate SAN

in a second location, ensuring a high

level of business continuity in the event

of a disaster.

“One of the key benefits of SAP ERP is

that it brings all of the organization’s

business-critical data into a single,

consistent store,” says Gabriela

Espinoza. “For the organization to

make the most of the solution, you

therefore need to have resilient, high-

performance storage. The IBM System

Storage infrastructure combines ease

of management with sophisticated

automation, enabling us to deliver an

excellent service to the business users

at low operational costs.”

IBM provides resilient platform for SAP

software

The IBM and SAP solution provides

significant benefits in terms of both

business and technology. On the

business side, the integrated

information and fully managed

workflows provided by the SAP

software simplify internal

administration, reduce costs and

enable better planning for the future.

For external users, SAP NetWeaver

Portal saves time and effort, and gives

taxpayers full control over their

dealings with the Ministry.

On the technology side, the IBM

infrastructure provides a resilient,

high-performance, easy-to-manage

platform for the SAP software.

“We had never before embarked on an

IT project of this scale, so we needed

technology and support that we could

really rely on. The IBM infrastructure

gave us everything we needed in

terms of reliability, scalability,

performance and flexibility – and both

IBM and GBM did a fantastic job on

the implementation and subsequent

support,” concludes Gabriela

Espinoza.