Updated: March 14,1996

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Pennzoil Company: Simplifying Day to Day Operations with a Windows Solution

Britt Mayo, Director of Information Technology, Pennzoil Company

Industry: Oil and Gas

Business Solution: Company-wide network; individual business-specific applications, including sales and marketing mapping application

Architecture: Client-server environment; marketing analysis application pulls sales data from Windows NT Server, Microsoft SQL Server database, and company mainframe through a Windows NT-based gateway via Microsoft SNA Server

Products and Services Used: Microsoft Windows NT Server , Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft SNA Server, Microsoft Windows NT Workstation, Microsoft Windows for Workgroups, Microsoft Select License Pak

Benefits: Company-wide: Facilitates integration of information from a variety of sources; enhances network performance; improves user productivity; provides a reliable platform for internal developers and end users

As the pace of business continues to accelerate, the most successful companies are those that can move quickly enough to respond to rapidly changing markets and swiftly developing opportunities. Pennzoil Company realized that "As a mid-size oil company, we can't solve problems through brute force," says Britt Mayo, Pennzoil's Director of Information Technology. "But our size also allows us to take innovative approaches to problems, to be responsive, to move faster." Pennzoil, however, did find itself slowed down by a mixture of computing technologies that complicated its day-to-day operations and affected its ability to compete effectively. "We had a lot of Novellr NetWarer in place, plus our mainframe, plus a smattering of OS/2r and UNIXr. It was bogging us down."

The Houston-based company has a network of approximately 4,000 PCs and 100 servers at about 100 domestic and international locations. All of these sites were running NetWare, and are connected by computer links to the Houston headquarters. It also supports over 1,000 Jiffy Lube retail outlets throughout the United States. "In the oil and gas industry, global competition is fierce," says Mayo. "To respond to this competition, we were looking for a way to move more quickly and, at the same time, to give our users more flexibility and choices."

With these goals in mind, Pennzoil started its search for a next-generation, company-wide computing platform. "We needed a technology that could not only take care of our various day-to-day needs," says Mayo, "but also provide a strategic platform for developing and delivering specific applications to business groups within the company."

The Search for a Single Solution

Mayo and Gary Darby, Pennzoil's Manager of Network Design and Testing, were intent on solving the biggest problem they had with the company's existing system. "Integrating all the different technologies we had in place made it hard for us to move quickly," says Mayo. Darby concurs, "One of the advantages our company has is the ability to move quickly; in order to do that throughout our business processes, we need to have systems and technology that support it."

In its search for a single solution, Pennzoil evaluated four operating systems: Novell NetWare, OS/2, UNIX, and Microsoftr Windows NTT. "We weren't sure of the long-term direction of some of the companies, or the robustness and stability of some of their products," says Darby. "Windows NTT Server had the widest range of use for us. In our operating environment, it was more stable and manageable than NetWare, it performed better than OS/2, it was more focused than the UNIX market, and it gave our customers more capability and flexibility than mainframe solutions do," explains Mayo. "Microsoft SQL ServerT and SNA Server also played key roles in our decision. We chose the Microsoft BackOffice server products to give us a flexible set of products designed to work together."

Implementing a New Technology

Pennzoil's first steps were to begin moving its NetWare- and OS/2-based servers to Windows NT Server, and to move processes from the mainframe and UNIX servers onto Windows NT Server. "Removing these components from our environment makes it simpler, more stable, and easier to manage," says Mayo. Because of its NetWare heritage, Pennzoil's network was primarily IPX-based. Now, with Windows NT Server, the company is moving to TCP/IP and is providing mainframe connectivity for both local and remote users through Microsoft SNA Server.

According to Mayo, "One of the attractions of the Microsoft strategy is the array of work that can be done on Windows NT Server. For us, that ranges from file and print serving-which we had previously been doing with NetWare-to database services, for which we're using Microsoft SQL Server." Pennzoil currently has 22 Microsoft SQL Servers in production and has plans for significant growth over the next year. These servers manage from 3 to 22 gigabytes of data each in supporting Pennzoil's business-critical operations. Pennzoil has deployed almost 40 solutions based on the Microsoft client-server architecture in the past year. These diverse solutions range from rail car tracking to personnel applications to a sales and marketing analysis system. In addition to helping Pennzoil determine the best locations for its Jiffy Lube stores, this system provides critical data overnight on the sales performance of more than 1,000 Jiffy Lube locations nationwide. "At the end of the day, each store's point-of-sale terminal sends detailed data about that day's business to Houston," explains Mayo. "Later that evening, all of the data are processed and ready for analysis when managers come in the next morning. Beginning as early as 5:30 a.m., people use WindowsT- and Windows NT-based applications to see, in a variety of ways, what happened yesterday and to determine whether we got the results we expected."

Assessing the Benefits

Microsoft's client-server architecture has already proven itself at Pennzoil. According to Darby, "It was much more stable, much more reliable, and much easier to implement than we had anticipated during our planning phases. Windows NT Server allows us to deliver back-end client-server solutions using Microsoft SQL Server, information from corporate-wide distribution points to all of our users, and our own client-server solutions using products such as PowerBuilderT and Microsoft Office."

Mayo notes, "One key benefit of Windows NT Server is the ability to integrate information from a variety of sources with good performance. For example, the application used to analyze daily sales pulls data from a Windows NT Server, a Microsoft SQL Server database, and from the company mainframe through a Windows NT-based gateway via Microsoft SNA Server. While we were able to get much of that information together before, we now have access to a wider variety of information on a more timely basis, and users can visualize the data rather than work with rows of numbers." Mayo adds, "SQL Server's power and reliability has impressed us. And I would describe SNA Server as dull-it just sits there and works!"

An Evolving Solution

Pennzoil has moved several dozen workstations to the Windows NTT Workstation operating system for specific high-performance applications, and plans to move most of its WindowsT for Workgroups-based PCs to Windows '95, the next version of the Windows operating system. As Pennzoil continues to add 35 new Windows NT version 3.1 users per day, the company has plans for Windows NT Server 3.5. "We're looking forward to features such as enhanced TCP/IP support and the ability to manage IP addresses dynamically through the server," says Darby. Pennzoil is also planning to integrate Microsoft Systems Management Server into the company's network and to replace its Microsoft Mail postoffices with Microsoft Exchange servers.

Mayo sees the operating system continuing to play a key role in the future. "What Windows NT means to Pennzoil's business is that we'll have choices. We can put in high-end solutions where it's business critical, and less sophisticated solutions where that's more appropriate for the business. So we can satisfy the widest range of needs without changing architectures or doing a lot of integration work."

Microsoft is a registered trademark and Windows and Windows NT are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. OS/2 is a registered trademark of International Business Machines Corporation. NetWare and Novell are registered trademarks of Novell, Inc. PowerBuilder is a trademark of Powersoft Corporation. UNIX is a registered trademark of UNIX Systems Laboratories.

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