SUNPOWER LIGHTS THE WAY WITH INGRES OPEN SOURCE

SUCCESS STORY HIGHLIGHTS

The sun is shining brighter than ever at SunPower now that Ingres open source technology is supporting the manufacturing of solar power energy. SunPower Corporation, known for its high efficiency solar power systems, which include solar cells, panels, roof tiles, and multi-megawatt solar power systems, relies on Ingres as the backbone of three mission critical applications, including its manufacturing execution system (MES). The MES manages all of SunPower's production lines within its factories in the United State and Europe. All total, Ingres will support company revenue at SunPower projected to exceed $1 billion in 2008.

CHALLENGE

When Macy's kicked off its Earth Day celebration in April 2008, SunPower was there, calling on its Ingres-based solar power systems to support the retailer's commitment to environmental sustainability and eco-friendly practices for Macy's 28 California stores. SunPower knows it can depend on Ingres Database, the enterprise-strength open source database, to scale to match its customers' needs and to keep its solar power manufacturing applications running 24x7.

A $775 million company based in San Jose, California, SunPower designs, builds, and delivers solar power solutions to residential and commercial customers, and power plants in the United States and Europe. SunPower's silicon solar cells are found in racecar's, airplanes, and space applications.

When SunPower selected the Ingres Database as the backbone of its manufacturing execution system, the company's selection criteria revolved around scalability, reliability, and performance. Greg Reichow, vice president of operations at SunPower, says, "Our priority was to implement a solution in which we had high confidence of success. Ingres had a reputation in our organization as being reliable and proven." Today, SunPower's overall database requirements haven't changed. Reichow says, "We need rock-solid stable performance that is scalable and cost-effective."

SOLUTION

In deploying open source solutions, SunPower sees benefits in value, compliance to open standards, rapid development of new features, and fast resolution of bugs. Already running an open source development tool, SunPower anticipates adopting more open source solutions, assuming they meet SunPower's stability and reliability needs. Reichow notes, "We need a very stable and locked down platform for our mission-critical applications."

Currently a user of the Ingres II Enterprise Edition, SunPower is transitioning to the open source database Ingres 2006 to take advantage of new features, including enhancements in scalability and performance. Reichow explains, "We have been running an older version that has been meeting our operational needs. Yet, as we are scaling, it is clear that the improvements in Ingres 2006 justify an upgrade."

Additionally, SunPower has recently purchased and plans to implement the Ingres Icebreaker Business Intelligence (BI) Appliance to enhance operational reporting, provide staff with critical data analysis capabilities, and implement dashboards and other real-time indicators for executive management. Ingres Icebreaker BI Appliance integrates smoothly into SunPower's existing environment, connects with a variety of existing applications, and - crucially - offloads reporting workloads from existing operational systems.

Today, about 2,500 of SunPower's 4,000 employees use Ingres. Reichow says, "We will also use Ingres Consulting and Education Services to help increase the depth of skill with the Ingres database and BI Appliance."

RESULTS

Combined, SunPower's two factories encompass 700,000 square feet, 2,800 people, and 12 CPUs. Reichow notes that in 2008 Ingres will support company revenue projected to exceed $1 billion. As such, SunPower depends on the smooth operation of three major applications powered by Ingres. "Ingres is used exclusively to support manufacturing in our factories," says Reichow.

The Cell Fab MES application manages SunPower's production lines. The company's Cell Test application manages test data from finished products, and the Statistical Process Control (SPC) application provides SPC capability and analysis to the factories. Each of these applications depends on the Ingres Database as a backbone. Reichow says, "Since we use the applications to manage the factories and the engineering data analysis, they are critical to assuring timely customer delivery, low cost, and high performance." In production since 1993, these Ingres-based, mission-critical applications require only one person to manage them.

Reichow notes that Ingres has met his expectations in supporting SunPower's business goals of being able to manage all elements of factory operations. "Our factories have exceeded our expectations. The ability to easily generate applications on top of the Ingres Database has allowed us great flexibility and speed. The stability provided by Ingres has allowed our factories to run with minimal interruption."

SUCCESS STORY

It is important to SunPower that Ingres continues to maintain leadership in offering value and support. "It would not have been possible for SunPower to grow without a strong IT infrastructure," says Reichow. "Ingres clearly is a critical element of this."

For Macy's, Ingres-powered SunPower's energy efficient upgrades support high-efficiency lighting, climate control, and energy management systems, projected to reduce energy consumption at Macy's California stores by more than 24 million kilowatt hours annually - a 40% reduction that equates to removing more than 34,000 cars from California highways over the lifetime of the systems.