This E-Guide features two articles from our editorial team on advice for implementing lean manufacturing templates, and how to prepare your current enterprise resource planning (ERP) system for a more efficient and less wasteful environment. 

ERP implementations don't have to take months or years. This white paper discusses how Colfax Corp. implemented IFS Applications in as little as nine weeks. It presents a case study of Colfax's complex but rapid rollout, and offers fast tracking tips from Colfax Business Analyst Jay Michael. 

In this white paper, Dan Moore, the senior vice president of professional services at IBM, Cast Iron reviews the current application environment in light of emerging trends, describes an ideal complete integration solution and discusses common sense best practices as well as pitfalls. 

Iren Energia is the second-largest utility company in Italy. The company built a virtualized environment that included a Dell Compellent Storage Center SAN. It chose Dell ProSupport for rapid, 24/7 response. Read this case study to learn the many benefits Iren Energia received. 

Read this paper for a comprehensive look into inventory inside the manufacturing plant - everything from inventory, to receipt of material, to finished products. Learn how to  take control of your inventory and supply chain to achieve lean manufacturing and increased efficiency and profitability. 

Lean software development and deployment should figure prominently in every organization’s IT strategy. The growing pervasiveness of virtual and cloud environments makes the need even more urgent.  Read this paper to learn why your peers are replacing JEE containers with lean, lightweight application servers - and what you can gain from the move. 

With the acquisition of Sun, Oracle now provides Oracle Optimized Solutions: a complete applications to disk solution engineered, tested, and certified to work together as a single system. Read this white paper to learn more about Oracle Optimized Solutions and how they can be used to improve Oracle E-Business Suite operations. 

New research from the International Technology Group demonstrates that the three-year operating and capital expenses for deployment and use of IBM XIV storage systems average 69 percent less than for EMC VMAX equivalents. 

Implementing Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Contact Relationship Management (CRM), and Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) is complicated. Here are six simple steps to take to manage that complexity. 

<p>This case study follows one organization's approach to addressing their space, power, and cooling constraints. Explore the virtualization architecture they decided on and the key hardware, software, and service components that comprise it.</p> 

In this case study, read about Microsoft’s Enterprise Application Services Group, and how they turned to LiteSpeed for backups that run four times faster while increasing performance. Then, see how LiteSpeed reduced the size of their SAP database backups, allowing them to leverage their current storage hardware. Read this case study today. 

Data centers are getting old – the average age of data centers in the United States is 12 years and they are struggling to keep pace with new technologies. But with data centers having an expected life of 20 years or more, there is still an opportunity to extend the life of existing data centers. Read on to learn how to help maximize cost savings. 

This case study details how North York General Hospital's implementaiton of the IBM XIV Storage Systemen helped them reduce rackspace requirements and cut data center hosting costs. They now have a fast, resilient and flexible storage architecture that will support their mission-critical IT systems for years to come.