Service station chain is always up-to-date with WS_FTP

Popular pumping station chain Agip (an acronym for the musical-sounding Azienda Generale Italiana Petroli), traces its roots back to the time when automobiles first became a more common sight in Southern Europe. The bright yellow Agip service stations with their trademark logo showing a six-legged dog have become a familiar sight—not only in the Italian homeland, but also in other countries, especially in Austria. 

Agip Austria plays an important role within the Agip group. One of Europe’s most heavily traveled transit routes, the magnificent Brenner Pass mountain turnpike, crosses the southern parts of Austria. Tourists and winter sports aficionados swell the ranks of motorists keeping fuel demand at service stations at peak levels. It goes without saying that no shortages can ever be tolerated, whether of fuel or of other products. This is why Agip Austria decided in 2000 to integrate its ordering and inventory management system with the central SAP application at company headquarters. The keystone of this integration effort: Ipswitch’s WS_FTP Server.

“Up until now, all our ordering and requisitioning processes were fax-based,” reports Heinrich Haltmeyer, engineer and project manager for Agip Austria’s Information and Communication Technology Group, in charge of the pilot project. “However, with our broadening range of products and rising demand, this system simply became too cumbersome in the long run, requiring us to come up with a new and more manageable concept. Moreover, the service stations themselves were already using electronic inventory control and planning systems – having to update data manually seemed entirely out of synch with the times.”

SAP-Based Administration

Agip was one of the first oil companies to implement the Service Station Retailing System (SSR) based on SAP R/3 4.6 for pricing and bookkeeping management at service stations. “Our project was based on the idea of exchanging sales and inventory data directly with this SAP system,” says Agip’s Heinrich Haltmeyer. “We also wanted to implement a solution that fits in perfectly with the existing proven system,” Haltmeyer continued, describing the task he was facing. “Right from the start we were concentrating all our attention on standardized products in order to keep our own programming and customization efforts to a minimum.”

The challenges Haltmeyer and his team were facing were formidable: Agip Austria’s headquarters and its data processing center for Austria are both located in Austria’s capital, Vienna. However, the inventory control and planning system for all of Europe is controlled from and hosted in Munich, Germany. Approximately 180 service stations need to be able to exchange data with the central processing site. They are connected with frame relay links with bandwidths of 64 kbps.

The servers at the service station run standard software with industry-specific adaptations under Windows NT 4.0. The various service station checkout counters are individually connected to these servers. Sales data are transmitted to the server from the pumps, while an inventory control system keeps track of the merchandise in stock.

The new solution is based on Ipswitch’s WS_FTP Servers as a supplementary task to be run on the Windows NT Server. Communication is bidirectional: both the inventory control software and the checkout counter software create a number of files, either automatically or on manual request by the user. These data are stored in a special folder on the server for collection via FTP. At regular intervals, the central computer at headquarters will start FTP client processes collecting all the pertinent files from all the service stations (pull). These data have already been processed to meet the definitions of the target R/3 format, so that they can be fed directly into the R/3 SSR system. There are normally two to four of these files to be collected, with a typical size of approximately ten kilobytes.

“With this minor amount of data, the 64-kbps connections are easily fast enough,” explains Haltmeyer. “This keeps the costs lower than if we had to create a full-fledged WAN for this purpose.” The data are collected each time a new shift begins and each time the daily balance process is run on the checkout-counter system.

Data transmission in the opposite direction works in pretty much the same way. Employees at headquarters work directly in SAP SSR. Price changes – for example for a liter of regular – result in a command file being generated. This command file is then uploaded to a directory on the service station’s server (push). The checkout counter process regularly checks the content of this directory. If it finds a command file, it reads this file and enters the data found directly in its local database. For service stations already equipped with this feature, any price updates are automatically reflected by the service station’s roadside and pump price displays. Older systems use a message window on the checkout counter display screen to inform employees of any price changes mandated by headquarters.

“This solution is completely transparent to our users at the various service stations,” said Haltmeyer. “And people were more than happy to get away from having to copy down figures from faxes. Our decision in favor of Ipswitch’s products was ultimately motivated by their excellent cost-benefit ratio.” But there was also another incentive to choose Ipswitch as a supplier. “With us, Ipswitch’s products had a good reputation anyway. We have been using Ipswitch’s WhatsUp Gold management tool for monitoring servers and services within our network – with excellent results.”

Fast integration and secure operation

One of the main reasons to search for a quick response to the challenge of handling sales data was the changing nature of the customer-supplier relationship with the individual service stations. Haltmeyer explains: “Our service stations used to be independent tenants with sole responsibility for their inventory, whether on the shelves or in the fuel tanks. Today, however, fuel is sold under agency system, and Agip has taken on a lot of added responsibilities for logistics. This is why the data obtained must be as ‘fresh’ as possible.”

Time, therefore, was an important consideration when Heinrich Haltmeyer’s team started implementing the project. He remembers: “Once we had decided to work with Ipswitch’s WS_FTP Pro, we re-created the installation we visualized in a test environment and went through all kinds of possible and impossible scenarios. Once the testing phase was completed, we enlisted the services of a software service provider to roll out and configure the software. The installation phase was completed very quickly.”

This solution has been working to the complete satisfaction both of Agip and of the service station staff. Although the software used is a standard software product, the result is tailor-made for Agip’s requirements. Haltmeyer adds: “WS_FTP Server was the ideal product for our needs, and it does exactly what we need it to do. This is why we continue to work with version 1.0, whose functionality is perfect for our requirements.”

Agip Austria is very demanding when it comes to system availability, both with regard to the individual components and with regard to the overall solution. However, the contingency plans drawn up against possible system failures are entirely theoretical in nature. Experience talks clearly when it comes to availability: “The FTP server has never been down so far,” Haltmeyer happily reports.

To keep things that way, Agip’s network operator AT&T has taken all the necessary precautions. All server tasks at all the service stations, including WS_FTP, are monitored 24/7. In the event that any problems with the frame relay connection arise, AT&T can make redundant lines available immediately to ensure continued operation. “For Agip Austria, the WS_FTP Server solution is a mission-critical solution, hence the extensive security measures,” Haltmeyer concludes. “WS_FTP Server contributes its part by being a reliable and most flexible product."