Dispenser supplier sticks with System i

Since 2003, AptarGroup Inc., a global supplier of dispensing systems for the cosmetic, pharmaceutical and beverage industries, has had two major reasons to move off the iSeries, but each time it's stuck with it.

The company's primary factors for staying were the platform's reliability, physical footprint via server conglomeration and hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing savings on R/3, SAP's Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software, according to Christopher Crofoot, global data center manager for Crystal Lake, Ill.-based AptarGroup.
Companies and products Crofoot considered switching to included: Unisys' 4-way ES7000, Hewlett-Packard Co.'s (HP) RX762 and IBM's xSeries boxes. With a budget of $2.5 million to work with, Crofoot had to make the call