Red Hat provides the University of Southern Mississippi with time-saving solution

FAST FACTS

Customer: University of Southern Mississippi

Industry: Education

Geography: North America

Business Challenge: Reconfiguring servers that were not based on the same hardware platform lead to an increase in errors and demanded much of the IT team’s time and financial resources

Software: Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat Satellite

Benefits: Streamlined the university’s IT environment and standardized the systems management process, reduced overhead, minimized errors, and saved time and financial resources

“We transitioned to Red Hat solutions very easily. It was just flipping a switch. It was easy.”
– James Daniel, system administrator at the University of Southern Mississippi

Download the case study [PDF]

BACKGROUND
The University of Mississippi, located in Hattiesburg, serves more than 14,000 students and 700 faculty members. The university, which was established in 1910, offers over 90 academic programs and approximately 250 clubs and organizations.

BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Managing close to 80 physical servers with limited technical resources can quickly become a challenge for any organization. Purchasing and maintaining subscriptions for each of these systems requires diligence and excellent management skills, as the IT team at the University of Southern Mississippi discovered in 2008.

None of the servers that System Administrator James Daniel worked with in the data center were based on the same hardware platforms, which meant that he had to consistently manually reconfigure the servers.

“When you have a farm of 80 plus servers, it’s very time consuming to manage,” Daniel said, “and our former process was prone to error.” Between taking care of the heterogeneous servers and keeping up individual subscriptions, the department technicians were stretched thin.

SOLUTION
Looking for a solution to help ease its systems management challenges, the University of Southern Mississippi IT team turned to Red Hat for a reliable solution. Red Hat provided Red Hat Satellite, a reliable, advanced systems management solution that is based on open standards, and a campus-wide Site Subscription to the high-performance Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating platform.

“We transitioned to Red Hat solutions very easily. It was just flipping a switch,” Daniel said. “It was easy.”

BENEFITS
The new Red Hat Satellite solution streamlined the university’s IT environment, reduced overhead, and minimized errors, according to Terri Lowery, systems administration manager at the University of Southern Mississippi. Instead of individually updating each server in the data center, the university’s technicians can now update all of the servers at the same time with one click of a button.

With Red Hat Satellite, the IT team has saved at least the annual salary of one full-time employee. In addition, the team can now reallocate the resources previously spent manually updating the heterogeneous servers. Red Hat Satellite also helps the team manage their Sun Solaris systems and virtual environments.

The Red Hat Satellite systems management solution has worked so well for the University of Southern Mississippi tech team that Lowery wants to expand its use throughout the campus. “We would like to have a long-term, university-wide systems management solution,” Lowery said, “not just a technology department solution.”

The university today utilizes the Red Hat Site Subscription for the entire campus. Since Lowery initiated the subscription more than a year ago, she hasn’t had to worry about running out of entitlements or money. Previously, when faced with the need for additional entitlements, the team had to pull entitlements from other groups because the budget didn’t allow for additional purchases. “We had to keep licenses individually and be really stingy with them,” Lowery said.

They also had some entitlements that they didn’t use, but that situation changed when they switched to Red Hat, Systems Engineer Charles Wright said. “We didn’t have 20 or 30 extra entitlements sitting out there that were collecting dust every year,” Wright said. Now they have the flexibility to do what they need to do, when they need to do it, without worrying about anything, according to Lowery.

“We also didn’t have to tie a particular entitlement to a particular server to a selected budget. It was more of a blanket, so it cut down on the logistics,” said Daniel. “We’ve pretty much been able to set up development boxes on the fly, which has streamlined our research and development as well.”

The Red Hat Site Subscription to Red Hat Enterprise Linux and the use of Red Hat Satellite have allowed the university’s tech department to standardize its systems management process, cut back on errors, and use less manpower. Today, the university’s technicians have better control over their IT environment, and are able to focus their resources on other critical university projects.

Spanish Employment Portal Relies on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and JBoss Enterprise Application Platform for key architecture deployment

Raleigh, NC– June 30, 2009 – Red Hat (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that InfoJobs.net, one of the leading employment websites in Spain, has migrated its critical web business platform to Red Hat Enterprise Linux and JBoss Enterprise Application Platform with the help of Essi Projects, a Red Hat Premier Business Partner.

Infojobs.net now fully leverages JBoss Application Platform 4.2.0 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux for its application servers, indexing subsystem and database servers. Established ten years ago, InfoJobs.net runs a high-traffic web portal and has experienced significant growth. More than 5,500 users register their curriculum vitae through the InfoJobs.net web portal each day. With over 100,000 employment vacancies listed, Infojobs.net must meet the high-volume demand required by its users. Because of Red Hat’s significant value and fast run-times the IT department at InfoJobs.net migrated to Red Hat Enterprise Linux for all its environments and JBoss Enterprise Application Platform for its web and satellite servers.

“Red Hat and their partner, Essi Projects, provide the greatest value for our business model. They provide superior on-demand support which is exactly what we need,” said Gabriel Prat, IT manager, InfoJobs.net.

Essi Projects, a Red Hat Premier Business Partner, designed and implemented an automated procurement environment for the various development, production and pre-production, QA and testing environments. In addition, Essi Project engineers performed analysis for each of the InfoJobs.net systems creating personalized profiles for the installation and configuration, automated and unattended environments. One of the most significant improvements has been a reduction of the time necessary to prepare a server for operations, a task that now requires only a few minutes.

“The challenge of operating a website with completely dynamic content is enormous. Through open source technology we can offer our users smooth browsing with constant response time,” said Prat.

By leveraging Red Hat Enterprise Linux and JBoss Enterprise Application Platform, InfoJobs.net now has a scalable platform with full integration between application servers and the infrastructure level. Additionally, the deployment and maintenance tasks for new nodes have been simplified by adding a standard hardware wrapping, based on blade servers; the operations department can operate the application server infrastructure at full speed.

“We have a highly-skilled group of technicians and developers that enjoy working with Red Hat and the open source community,” added Gabriel Prat. “With the open source development model and Red Hat’s world class support we will be able to quickly resolve any issues that might arise.”

For more information about Red Hat, visit www.redhat.com. For more news, more often, visit www.press.redhat.com.

About InfoJobs.net
InfoJobs.net is the leading private employment website in Spain and Europe. Created in 1998, it employs a team of 200 professionals.

The portal offers 100,000 job opportunities in 10,000 companies and serves more than 180 million page views per month, according to last year’s OJD details. According to Nielsen/Netratings, InfoJobs.net was the leading employment portal in Spain in November 2008 with a 54% visitor share.
InfoJobs.net belongs to the Anuntis group, the Spanish leader in all online classified advertising segments: Employment (InfoJobs.net), Real Estate (fotocasa.es), Motor (coches.net) and classified (segundamano.es). It owns 27 Internet portals.

Anuntis is owned by the Nordic group Schibsted (76%) and the founders of Anuntis (24%).

About Essi Projects S.A.
Essi Projects is an Information Technology and Communications Engineering company, specialized in application infrastructure and system integration projects. It primarily develops its activities in the Iberian Peninsula. The company focuses on the execution of system infrastructure projects, specifically in the areas of operating environments (servers, storage, Unix/Linux systems), application infrastructure (databases, application servers and frameworks), information and collaboration systems (communication tools, portals), software architecture (J2EE) and security.

Essi Projects has on various occasions won awards from manufacturers and wholesalers for its work in the market. Some of these awards include the one received recently from Red Hat as Best Infrastructure Partner of the Year FY08 for EMEA (Europe, Middle East & Africa), highlighting the work of Essi Projects as a Red Hat Premier Partner and JBoss Premier Partner.

About Red Hat, Inc.
Red Hat, the world’s leading open source solutions provider, is headquartered in Raleigh, NC with over 65 offices spanning the globe. CIOs ranked Red Hat as one of the top vendors delivering value in Enterprise Software for five consecutive years in the CIO Insight Magazine Vendor Value survey. Red Hat provides high-quality, affordable technology with its operating system platform, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, together with applications, management and Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) solutions, including JBoss Enterprise Middleware. Red Hat also offers support, training and consulting services to its customers worldwide. Learn more: www.redhat.com.

Forward-Looking Statements
Certain statements contained in this press release may constitute “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements provide current expectations of future events based on certain assumptions and include any statement that does not directly relate to any historical or current fact. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including: risks related to delays or reductions in information technology spending, the integration of acquisitions and the ability to market successfully acquired technologies and products; the ability of the Company to effectively compete; the inability to adequately protect Company intellectual property and the potential for infringement or breach of license claims of or relating to third party intellectual property; the ability to deliver and stimulate demand for new products and technological innovations on a timely basis; risks related to data and information security vulnerabilities; ineffective management of, and control over, the Company’s growth and international operations; fluctuations in exchange rates; adverse results in litigation; and changes in and a dependence on key personnel, as well as other factors contained in our most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K (copies of which may be accessed through the Securities and Exchange Commission’s website at www.sec.gov), including those found therein under the captions “Risk Factors” and “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations”. In addition to these factors, actual future performance, outcomes, and results may differ materially because of more general factors including (without limitation) general industry and market conditions and growth rates, economic conditions, and governmental and public policy changes. The forward-looking statements included in this press release represent the Company’s views as of the date of this press release and these views could change. However, while the Company may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, the Company specifically disclaims any obligation to do so. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing the Company’s views as of any date subsequent to the date of the press release.

LINUX is a trademark of Linus Torvalds. RED HAT and JBOSS are registered trademarks of Red Hat, Inc. and its subsidiaries in the US and other countries.

FAST FACTS

Customer: Healthplan Services (HPS)

Geography: North America

Industry: Healthcare

Migration Path: Sun Solaris 9 to Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform; Sun SPARC servers to virtualized Linux instances on HP ProLiant DL380 servers

Software: Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform with built-in Red Hat Cluster Suite and Red Hat Global File System (GFS), Red Hat Network, Apache webserver, MySQL databases, IBM DB2

Hardware: HP ProLiant DL380 servers

Benefits: Increased performance, usability and convenience; enhanced support, and reduced cost with a Solaris to Red Hat Enterprise Linux migration on HP ProLiant servers

“The speed is going to increase: we’ll see people working faster, and we’ll be able to process more claims, all by switching an operating system. I can’t believe it was that cut and dry.”
– Adam Atkinson, UNIX administrator at Healthplan Services

Download the case study [PDF]

BACKGROUND
Healthplan Services (HPS) is the nation’s largest independent provider of service and technology solutions to the insurance and managed care industries. HPS offers customized administration and distribution services to insurers in the individual, small group, and voluntary markets supporting health insurance and ancillary product lines (i.e., dental, life, disability, accident, cancer, etc.).

BUSINESS CHALLENGE
HPS faced three major business challenges with its aging Sun Solaris on SPARC hardware with RISC architecture. First, the Sun UNIX-based solution delivered limited application performance and support. In one year, HPS dealt with four service degrading incidents. Second, the escalating cost of the SPARC systems were becoming a drag on HPS’ limited IT budget. Third, employees were experiencing slow response times, and the developers complained about usability issues with the Solaris operating system.

HPS needed an operating system that could interoperate with Microsoft Windows Active Directory, and desired a reliable platform that optimized performance and was easy to upgrade. Because its customer service applications were experiencing page loading delays, HPS needed to increase computing performance to meet the needs of its customers and employees.

SOLUTION
Adam Atkinson, HPS’ UNIX administrator, manages some 200 web, database, and FTP servers, 30 of which were pure UNIX systems utilizing Solaris 9 on Sun SPARC servers. After recognizing the organization’s UNIX systems were becoming outdated and obsolete, Atkinson decided to conduct research to find a high-performing alternative solution.

Atkinson investigated three primary options for the HPS operating system migration: Novell SUSE, Solaris 10, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform. Quickly eliminating Novell SUSE because it was not a standard in his organization, the decision came to Solaris 10 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform. Atkinson decided to run benchmarks to compare the operating platforms. His testing revealed that Red Hat Enterprise Linux was superior for each benchmark. Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform ran pages at more than three times the speed (452 pages per second) of Solaris (135 pages per second) in one test. “That’s a massive difference,” said Atkinson.

In addition to performance testing, cost was also a primary consideration in identifying a solution. When comparing Solaris 10 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the optimal platform was obvious. “Upgrading Solaris is hard to do. With a migration to Solaris 10, due to high costs associated with SPARC servers, we would have needed to migrate our hardware platform from SPARC to Intel, which would have required me to recompile nearly all of my modules and applications. If we were going to make a big technology move like what Solaris 10 would have required, we decided to look at all of our opportunities, and that meant hosting Red Hat Enterprise Linux on HP ProLiant servers became a truly viable option for us,” said Atkinson.

Atkinson, who was familiar with Red Hat’s usability benefits, also evaluated support comparisons between Red Hat and Sun. “Solaris support is fine as long as you’re using new equipment and Sun’s latest operating system version, but you will pay an extreme premium as soon as your version begins to age. We did not use Sun’s Solaris support because it was too expensive. Instead, we had third-party support.” HPS recognized a cost savings in Red Hat’s subscription model and was especially impressed with Red Hat’s patch management and package management capabilities available through the reliable Red Hat Network systems management platform.

Another valuable advantage provided by Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform is the solution’s integrated Red Hat Cluster Suite and Red Hat Global File System (GFS) technologies for no added price. Red Hat Global File System is comparable in speed and performance to Veritas. But, Veritas comes with an added cost and additional vendor relationship, while with Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform, HPS would receive its file system clustering solution integrated with the operating system free of charge.

“Red Hat’s integrated file system clustering technology was important to us. I was paying Veritas for support every year, whereas with GFS through Red Hat, it’s free with my subscription and the support is there too,” said Atkinson.

The cost and time savings delivered by Red Hat Enterprise Linux, coupled with the solution’s enhanced performance and support, as well as the increased ease of use for customers and employees, convinced Atkinson, his team, and his company to select Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform to replace its unreliable Solaris systems.

HPS is currently in the process of migrating to Red Hat Enterprise Linux on HP ProLiant DL380 servers with virtualization capabilities, superior uptime and effortless management. The company expects Red Hat to be fully in production in August 2009. “We’re moving our systems technology-to-technology instead of server-to-server in more of a piecemeal fashion. It’s more consumable to us that way,” said Atkinson.

BENEFITS
HPS is most excited about the impending performance benefits that will result from its migration away from Solaris to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. “The speed is going to increase: we’ll see people working faster, and we’ll be able to process more claims, all by switching an operating system. I can’t believe it was that cut and dry,” said Atkinson. The company also recognized great benefits in the general manageability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. “To stage a Solaris server, it takes a lot of time to do even simple tasks,” said Atkinson. “Red Hat frees up my time. Tasks that took 30 minutes with Solaris take five minutes with Red Hat. Installing one package across all systems with Red Hat might take an hour, as opposed to a full day with Solaris.”

The collaboration of the vast open source community is expected to provide an additional benefit to HPS with the Red Hat migration. With the open source community, innovation happens more quickly and provides greater technology enhancements than the alternative proprietary model. “If I run a search for a quick ‘Solaris’ fix, I might get 10 results as opposed to the thousands I receive when I search ‘Red Hat,’” said Atkinson. Red Hat takes the innovation that happens in the community and certifies and tests the technology so that HPS knows it will work seamlessly in its IT infrastructure. With the backing of Red Hat support and the consistent management capabilities provided by Red Hat Network, Atkinson and his coworkers save time, which allows the reallocation of staff resources to more business-critical tasks.

HPS is expecting a three-year return on investment (ROI) once its full Red Hat Enterprise Linux migration is complete. “After three years, we’ll be generating money,” said Atkinson. “I feel that we will immediately see an increase of revenue with the speed difference. The return on investment being 3 years is purely technology, we will see it much sooner at the business level.”

FAST FACTS

Industry: Transportation

Geography: Singapore

Business Challenge: Provide an alternative channel for taxi booking to alleviate phone call booking overload during peak periods

Solution: Short Message Service (SMS) booking system developed on JBoss Enterprise Application Platform and JBoss Seam

Benefits: Allows customers to book a taxi anytime, anywhere using SMS in just 30 seconds, which means less waiting time for customers and more booking jobs for cab drivers

Download the case study [PDF]

BACKGROUND
ComfortDelGro is the world’s second largest public-listed passenger land transport company with a fleet of 45,000 vehicles. The Group has a global workforce, shareholder base and outlook. Headquartered in Singapore, it has operations in China, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, Vietnam, and Malaysia.

ComfortDelGro was formed in 2003 through the merger of two land transport giants – Comfort Group and DelGro Corporation. Both had started out in the 1970s and had, by the time of the merger, grown to become successful listed land transport companies.

Comfort and CityCab, the group’s two taxi companies, are the largest in Singapore with a combined fleet of about 15,000 taxis.

BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Catering to more than 20 million taxi bookings annually, ComfortDelGro’s Customer Contact Centre is running at full capacity, with the situation becoming more pronounced during peak hours and on rainy days.

In 2007, the Company started to explore more ways to automate the booking process so as to handle the increasing volume of calls and reduce the time it takes for calls to be handled. Part of the booking process had already been automated with the broadcasting of call bookings to taxis using General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) technology via the in-vehicle Mobile Data Terminals.

As mobile phones are widely used in Singapore, ComfortDelGro decided to implement the Short Message Service (SMS) taxi booking service.

SOLUTION
A closed tender was called with three vendors pitching for the project. “Our criteria were the vendor’s experience in the SMS platform, its track record and support level. The platform must be able to integrate seamlessly with our existing Java-based solutions,” said Ms Wong Oi Mei, Vice President, Information Technology of ComfortDelGro’s Taxi Business.

After carefully considering the options available, the Company decided to pick the JBoss Seam-based solution proposed by Maven Lab, a Red Hat Business Partner under the Infocomm Development Authority’s (IDA) Infocomm Local Industry Upgrading Programme (iLIUP).

“Maven Lab’s proposal matched our requirements. The Red Hat solution also offered lower cost of implementation,” said Oi Mei.

Maven Lab took three months to develop the system, which runs on Windows on HP Intel-based servers. JBoss Seam was used as the application server. A pilot run involving staff and selected customers started in January 2008 and following feedback gathered, the improved and more user-friendly SMS taxi booking service – the first of its kind in Singapore that enables commuters to book a taxi via SMS any time from any location without having to register – was launched.

BENEFITS
The service has proven to be a hit with many customers switching to SMS taxi booking since waiting time is now a mere 30 seconds. It has, in particular, been a boon to another group of customers – the speech- and hearing-impaired passengers. They now can book a taxi by themselves via SMS without having to rely on others for assistance.

“All that our customers, including the speech- and hearing-impaired passengers, have to do is to send a SMS and wait for a SMS response. This process bypasses the contact centre agents and IVR, saving time on waiting for the call to be answered and waiting on the line for confirmation. Our customers will also not have to experience getting an engaged tone during busy periods,” said Oi Mei.

Around 2% of all taxi bookings are now made via SMS. ComfortDelGro aims to increase this figure to 5% of all bookings by the end of 2009.

“ComfortGelGro is using the SMS taxi booking service as another channel to help improve customer experience. Using the Red Hat’s JBoss Seam-based solution has ensured that the company has a stable, reliable and cost-effective system to support this service,” said Hiew Wee Soon, Director of Maven Lab.

Oi Mei is pleased with the success of using open source solutions. “We are impressed with JBoss for its reliability and flexibility, and the support and service level from Red Hat,” she said.

Building on this good experience, ComfortDelGro will be using JBoss Seam and Hibernate for its customer and driver portals, both of which are expected to be launched later in 2009.

FAST FACTS

Industry: Local Government

Geography: The Netherlands

Opportunity: Renew part of the city’s IT infrastructure and create a future-proof platform for its heterogeneous environment

Migration Path: Windows and Unix with small amounts of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, including virtualization and clustering

Software: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 with virtualization, Red Hat Global File System, Red Hat Satellite Server, Red Hat Consulting, Basis Registratie Systeem (BRS)

Hardware: 6 Dell 1750, 1850, 1950, and 2950 servers

Benefits: Run more applications with less hardware, enable cost- and space-savings, provide scalability, offer capacity to support future growth and deliver disaster-recovery capabilities

“One of the key benefits of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 with virtualization is that we can install and roll out a new application in 60 minutes to all of our systems, compared to four hours per system previously.”
– Hennie Stam, Senior System Administrator, DS+V Division at City of Rotterdam.

Download the case study [ PDF ]

BACKGROUND
The City of Rotterdam, known for its famous harbour and large city council, is located in the Netherlands and boasts over 600,000 inhabitants. The Maas river is at the heart of the City of Rotterdam’s economical development and is responsible for the shipment and handling of over 350 million tons of goods per year.

Rotterdam’s City Council operates a number of autonomous services, including Dienst Stedenbouw en Volkshuisvesting (DS+V), an organization responsible for town planning, housing, and traffic in the city. The City Council employs nearly 16,000 civil servants, with about 1,000 of these workers making up the DS+V division. DS+V’s IT systems are managed by the Information, Policy, and Procurement department, which includes an IT management team that is responsible for handling the entire IT environment, including the proprietary, UNIX, and Linux systems.

BUSINESS CHALLENGE
The DS+V IT management team first implemented Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 in 2004 for a small number of specific Linux applications, but was primarily running its applications on a Microsoft and UNIX platform. In total, 40 Dell and HP Servers were running its Microsoft, UNIX, and Linux applications, 10 of which were Linux-based.

As the IT team began developing a new administration and registration application, called Basic Registration System (BRS), for Rotterdam’s real estate activities, the department initiated an evaluation of the existing platform that included the assessment of various alternatives, including Linux. The IT team was looking for a cost-effective solution and a future-proof platform for its heterogeneous IT environment.

SOLUTION
During its assessment of alternative IT solutions, the City Council of Rotterdam’s DS+V IT team ran a pilot during the summer of 2007 with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, specifically using the solution’s virtualization capabilities. The pilot aimed to assess the benefits of virtualization for the organization. The IT team compared Red Hat and VMware’s virtualization solutions and discovered that Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5’s virtualization capabilities best fit its requirements and was the most cost-effective choice in terms of licensing costs.

After a successful pilot, the IT team migrated its servers to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and began using the solution’s virtualization capabilities running 10 virtual machines on its 6 Dell servers. Key drivers that led the team to move to a virtual environment included the benefits of less hardware, greater independence in software, the ability to support future growth, and space and cost-savings.

The DS+V department of the City Council of Rotterdam additionally runs Red Hat Global File System (GFS) for storage virtualization. The clustering capabilities of the solution equip the IT team with the ability to eliminate the impact of the fallout of physical servers. It also allows the organisation to optimize installation and patching of applications, improve the efficiencies of SAN resources, and simplify back-up and disaster-recovery systems.

The department’s IT team also selected Red Hat Satellite Server to optimize the management and deployment of both physical and virtual machines in its network. Satellite Server enables the IT team to download and distribute patches and fixes to exiting applications, and advance the user and license-management capabilities in comparison to its previous solution.

BENEFITS
Red Hat solutions have delivered heightened performance and availability for the City Council of Rotterdam’s DS+V IT team’s IT infrastructure. “Performance levels are excellent and the availability is 100 percent because the machines are no longer dependent on the uptime of the hardware,” said Hennie Stam, Senior System Administrator, DS+V Division at City of Rotterdam.

The IT group has seen cost savings since migrating to Red Hat solutions. The new setup requires less hardware, which has decreased the size of the server farm and the space required for the servers. “With our previous solution, the high number of physical servers would soon force us to look for additional space to accommodate the new servers, putting more pressure on our budget,” said Stam. “Additionally, the DS+V has managed to save on energy costs by decreasing the number of physical servers since migrating to Red Hat solutions.”

By choosing Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 with virtualization capabilities, the DS+V, as part of the City Council of Rotterdam, has succeeded in saving on licensing costs. The Linux environment has given the IT team more flexibility in terms of testing and deploying new applications, and adding users to the network. “One of the key benefits of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and its virtualization capabilities is that we can install and roll out a new application in 60 minutes to all of our systems, compared to four hours per system previously,” said Stam.

“We were dedicated to successfully and rapidly roll out Linux and virtualization across the organization. Therefore, we chose direct support from Red Hat during the implementation phase by hiring a Red Hat consultant to guide us through the whole process to educate the IT managers that are responsible for our Linux environment,” said Stam. “We are satisfied with Red Hat’s support and responsiveness to our specific needs. The process was smooth and gave us a reliable platform to build up our Linux infrastructure to its current state.”

Oil and Gas Leader Reduced Costs and Increased Performance with Red Hat Enterprise Linux with Integrated Virtualization on Intel® Xeon® processor-based Servers

FAST FACTS

Company: YPF SA

Industry: Oil and Gas

Geography: Argentina

Business Challenge: Renovate proprietary infrastructure with the goal of reducing costs and boosting performance with open source solutions

Software: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 with integrated virtualization, Red Hat Network, SAP ERP, Oracle 10g DB, Red Hat Consulting

Hardware: Intel Xeon Processor-based IBM System x 346, 366, 3650, 3850 servers

Migration Path: From SUN Solaris, HP-UX, and IBM AIX to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 with virtualization on Intel Xeon Processor-based IBM System x servers

Benefits: Reduced capital and operational costs, boosted performance and efficiency of administrators, increased internal customer satisfaction by reducing implementation time, increased scalability and agility, and expanded flexibility

“Now, more than 80 percent of our Oracle databases and 90 percent of our SAP applications run on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 with integrated virtualization on Intel Xeon Processor-based servers and is the choice for our SAP and Oracle implementations.”
–Adriana Marisa Vázquez, responsible for the UNIX administration group at YPF.

Download the case study [PDF]

BACKGROUND
YPF S.A., the largest company in Argentina, is an energy company, operating a leading integrated oil and gas business across the domestic upstream and downstream segments. The upstream operations consist of the exploration, development and production of crude oil, natural gas and liquefied petroleum gas. The downstream operations include the refining, marketing, transportation and distribution of oil and a range of petroleum derivatives, petrochemicals, liquid petroleum gas and biofuels.

BUSINESS CHALLENGE
In 1999, YPF embarked on the task of renovating its proprietary infrastructure for the solution of its YPF Gas business unit with the goal of reducing its costs and to boost the performance of its critical business applications.

YPF determined that migrating its infrastructure off legacy RISC/UNIX and proprietary software and deploying open source solutions, such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux, would allow it to manage operations more efficiently and drastically reduce the cost of IT operations.

At the time of the decision, YPF had to overcome internal hesitation about open source platforms, as Linux was just beginning to emerge as a viable enterprise operating platform, and had not yet gained the widespread adoption prevalent in today’s industry.

“At YPF, decisions are made only after thorough testing and research, and the IT team had proven that migrating from the RISC/UNIX and proprietary servers to open and flexible platforms would pose no risk to the reliability, availability, and performance of the systems,” said Adriana Marisa Vázquez, responsible for the UNIX administration group at YPF. “We also had to ensure that our SAP and Oracle solutions were fully supported and certified on the selected platform.”

SOLUTION
After research and testing, YPF selected Red Hat Enterprise Linux on Intel Xeon Processor-based hardware and started incorporating the solution on small Informix systems to renew the database servers distributed among the company’s 29 gas plants around Argentina.

The company saw an immediate positive impact on cost and performance. The significant reduction in costs, especially when compared with the license cost of RISC-based platforms, and the increased performance and availability, drove the decision to scale with Red Hat Enterprise Linux on Intel Xeon Processor-based IBM System x servers.

“We chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux for a number of reasons, the most basic being the lower costs, simplified management with Red Hat Network, and the compatibility and performance with our SAP and Oracle solutions,” said Vázquez. “After the initial success, we began to include other platforms. Now, more than 80 percent of our Oracle databases and 90 percent of our SAP applications run on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 with integrated virtualization on Intel Xeon Processor-based servers and is the choice for our SAP and Oracle implementations.”

There are 117 Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Intel Xeon Processor-based servers, 83 percent of which are allocated to SAP and Oracle applications supporting different company processes such as:
- Serviclub
- YPF Boxes
- Internal Service Stations network
- Service Station Stores
- Well information for extraction and maintenance
- Retail
- 90 percent of the dialog steps processed at YPF run on the Red Hat and Intel

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 with integrated virtualization enables YPF to quickly virtualize servers for testing and development, and arranging configurations to try new features in-house before offering them to the public. YPF can rapidly push servers live into productions, effectively increasing the utilization of servers without server sprawl in data centers.

“The virtual machines we built were very expansive, and we’ve achieved truly outstanding performance with Red Hat. Without the help of Red Hat Consulting, we would not have been able to have the virtual servers providing the SAP and Oracle application services as we have today,” said Vázquez. “With Red Hat’s virtualization technology, we can maintain the hardware without affecting the performance by moving virtual machines on the fly,” she added.

YPF relied on Red Hat Consulting to contribute expertise during the deployment and ongoing improvement, and the Red Hat Consultants still provides expert product knowledge to increase internal capabilities. With demanding day-to-day activities at YPF, deploying new technology solutions generally takes significant time and resources, Red Hat Consulting has been able to speed up implementation projects, helping to free up internal YPF resources to work on strategic projects.

“Over the years, Red Hat Consultants have gained considerable knowledge of our business and we consider them technological partners rather than a consultant or a vendor,” said Vázquez.

The implementation of Red Hat Network, a centralized systems management platform, heavily involved Red Hat Consulting. “Red Hat Network has allowed us to administer the platform in a centralized manner, which has helped us save considerable time and enabled our administrators to become far more efficient,” said Vázquez.

BENEFITS
The success of YPF’s Red Hat Enterprise Linux virtualization deployment has allowed the company to roll out Red Hat as the standard solution of choice across its organization. Through the combination of Red Hat’s virtualization capabilities and Intel processor-based servers, YPF achieved cost savings, heightened performance, simplification and ease of management, and expanded scalability.

Through Red Hat’s advanced virtualization capabilities, the organization was able to free up internal hardware and technical expert resources for reallocation in alignment with business goals. With its virtualization technology integrated with the operating platform, and at no extra cost, Red Hat Enterprise Linux provided YPF with added flexibility and reduced costs and complexity for its critical systems.

“Our systems have become more agile and flexible with the combination of Red Hat’s virtualization technology on Intel’s reliable platforms,” said Vázquez. “Our systems are now more operationally efficient, and we still have the high performance our business demands, coupled with decreased costs” she added.

“With Red Hat Network, our work has been simplified by means of set-up and configuration standards. With Red Hat virtualization technology, deployment times are drastically reduced, and a Linux server only takes a few minutes, compared to hours, to configure,” said Vázquez.

The reduced delivery times of an installed server have increased YPF’s internal customer’s satisfaction too.

Currently, YPF is analyzing the addition of the Red Hat Network Satellite option, in order to leverage high-end management, provisioning, and monitoring. It is also evaluating the implementation of Red Hat Cluster Suite for high-availability solutions.

“Red Hat is based on the subscription model, which has provided us freedom from vendor lock-in,” said Vázquez. “We trust Red Hat as a technology partner for the solid expertise of its IT professionals, its knowledge of our business-critical concerns, and its commitment to high-quality support and services. We look forward to growing together with Red Hat in the future,” she concluded.

Fast Facts

Industry: Education

Geography: United Kingdom

Business Challenge: To launch an extranet service that would be available to its external users of more than 35,000 examiners and moderators

Migration path: Proprietary, closed solution to a more cost-effective and flexible platform based on JBoss Enterprise Application platform

Solution:

Hardware – HP x86 based commodity servers

Software – JBoss Enterprise Application Platform, JBoss Enterprise Portal Platform, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Alfresco ECM, Enterprise DB

Benefits: Reduced total cost of ownership (TCO), including cost and efficiency savings of £250,000 per year, and freedom from vendor lock-in

Download the case study [PDF]

BACKGROUND
The Assessment and Qualifications Alliance (AQA) is the largest of the three English exam boards. It is the leading provider of qualifications for UK schools and colleges, awarding 49% of full course GCSEs and 42% of A-levels nationally. In total, over 3.5 million students take exams with AQA each year.

AQA is an independent registered charity, with no shareholders, therefore all of its income is used to run examinations and carry out research and development to improve its qualifications and services.

AQA employs 1050 permanent staff across its offices, headed up by its Executive Board. The organization also works with about 35,000 teachers, lecturers, advisers and consultants who assist in setting and marking exams.

AQA is committed to using modern technology to enhance the quality and accuracy of the examination process for the benefit of candidates and is always striving to modernize its assessment process.

OPPORTUNITY
AQA needed a secure extranet service that would be available to its external users of over 35,000 examiners and moderators. This extranet would contain valuable and important documentation allowing users to mark exam papers more effectively, eliminating the previous paper based process of printing and posting.

Security was a big consideration as all examination papers and marking schemes were held on the system along with overall guidelines on marking the papers. AQA needed a secure platform that would not be openly accessible. It was also important that the new system allowed users to access a variety of documentation twenty-four hours a day seven days a week.

AQA had a system built around a more traditional, proprietary architecture that was too restrictive and costly to maintain. In order to reduce the costs associated with licenses, support and maintenance, AQA decided to replace all the proprietary software with open source solutions. This migration allowed AQA to benefit from an end-to-end open source solution deployed on open standards and at a value point that would allow AQA to continue to innovate into the future.

“We were spending six-figure sums every year on printing and posting documentation to examiners alone. We wanted to develop an extranet that could replace our paper-based manual processes with electronic documentation that could be easily updated,” explained Peter Morris, Programme Manager, AQA. “Prior to the implementation, we considered all the major vendors, but chose an open source strategy as it offered similar and even superior levels of functionality, security and quality, but at a tenth of the cost.”

Because of the high demand for AQA’s services the entire solution needed to be deployed, tested and put into production in just six weeks.

SOLUTION
AQA evaluated a number of open source solutions that could offer an alternative software delivery model to its existing closed proprietary solution.

AQA had an existing relationship with Red Hat and had been using the Red Hat Enterprise Linux platform for its servers for some time. Knowing that the same high quality support structure, value and superior technology development extended to JBoss Enterprise Middleware, AQA decided to migrate to the JBoss Enterprise Application Platform as well. The overall stack proved to be far more cost effective than its competitors and significantly less expensive than keeping the existing legacy systems in place.

The solution AQA has chosen is based on an open source stack comprising Red Hat Enterprise Linux, JBoss Enterprise Application Platform, JBoss Enterprise Portal Platform, Alfresco and Enterprise DB, and will provide a strategic platform for future collaboration.

AQA used systems integrater Optaros to aid the smooth integration of the new open source platform. Optaros enabled AQA to create a customised user experience that focused on ease-of-use and utilised Rich Internet Application technologies to improve the overall experience. Optaros supported AQA in the adoption of an Agile Development strategy which reduced the timescale for development to around four weeks.

The extranet was initially rolled out to a pilot group of 200 examiners whose feedback has been resoundingly positive.

BENEFITS
Key requirements for the migration to open source technology were cost and efficiency savings. AQA calculated that it was 10 times less expensive to implement a solution from Red Hat than to extend the previous proprietary solution to this external audience.

Red Hat’s subscription model now provides AQA with increased value as it can consolidate onto a single subscription. Total cost of ownership (TCO) is reduced, and printing, posting, licensing and other ongoing operational costs are significantly reduced. By automating its manual process online and enabling users to update details themselves, they have improved accuracy and administration staff are now free to carry out other tasks.

As a result, AQA expects to save £250,000 or more than $340,000 annually.

The other important consideration was that migrating to an open source platform facilitated the rapid and agile development of the system, enabling two or more developers to work on different aspects of the project at the same time. This had not been practical with the proprietary technologies previously used and was another area where Red Hat’s solution helped the developers to meet the challenging completion deadline of six weeks.

AQA also utilised Red Hat’s expertise through its training and consultancy services to enable them to take the application stack and server to build a version that is ready to use and web facing. This had a significant impact in enabling the system to go-live within a very short timeframe.

AQA is no longer dependent on individual technology suppliers and now has the flexibility to decouple, plug and unplug solutions as and when required without impacting the whole stack. This has given AQA a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

The migration to open source solutions has helped AQA meet the commercial challenge of staying ahead of its competitors while improving the level of service for its customers, examiners and candidates.

Peter Morris from AQA commented: “The first phase of our project with Red Hat has been a great success. We will continue to innovate and grow the technology stack. The new system has changed the way we work and has had a massive impact in terms of cost and efficiency savings. Red Hat pulled out all the stops to deliver over and above our expectations. We are now looking to migrate further services to open source as it will give us the competitive advantage to maintain our position as market leader and stay ahead of our competitors.”

FUTURE
The first phase of the project has moved exam materials online for operational cost savings. The next phase will involve messaging capabilities that will help communication across the organisation. This includes adding more exam papers, marking schemes and even training material such as online demos and screen captures to further enhance the user experience. AQA would also like to implement a forum so users can participate in conversations and discussions, creating an online community to share thoughts and learn from each other.

Eventually, AQA’s plan is to open up its information to candidates and a broader range of teachers. This will require a system capable of scaling to hundreds of thousands or even millions of users; AQA believes its open source system will be able to scale to meet this demand.

FAST FACTS

Customer: Aviza Technology

Industry: Electronics

Deployment Country: United States

Solution: Enterprise Resource Planning

Business Partner: IBM

Migration Path: Sun Solaris to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Sun SPARC to IBM System x

Business Need: When end-of-life issues on the company’s existing Sun hardware began impacting the availability of Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS), Aviza sought a cost-effective systems solution from IBM.

Solution: Aviza implemented a two-tier Oracle configuration, with Oracle EBS v11.5.10 on one IBM System x3850 4-socket server and Oracle Database 10g on one IBM System x3950 16-socket server—both running Red Hat Enterprise Linux. IBM System Storage N5200 provides 2.4 TB of data storage. The development environment has six test instances running on five x3850 servers, with a second N5200 providing 7.2 TB of data storage.

Benefits: Aviza Technology achieved a multifold increase in solution performance, enabled new levels of systems scalability and flexibility across the company’s global IT infrastructure, and better positioned the company to meet unforeseen IT system challenges.

Download the IBM Case Study: IBM Case Study PDF

Overview
Aviza Technology designs, manufactures, sells and supports advanced semiconductor equipment and technologies for the global semiconductor industry. The headquarters office in Scotts Valley, CA, provides IT services to approximately 700 employees in the U.S. and in 9 counties across Europe and Asia.

Running a global business is no small feat in today’s competitive environment. But Aviza Technology has been rising to the challenge since its founding in 2003. With approximately 700 employees worldwide, Aviza designs, manufactures, sells and supports advanced semiconductor equipment and technologies for the global semiconductor industry.

“Our biggest challenge is serving the world 24×7 with reliable hardware and software,” says Dale Spencer, vice president of information technology and corporate services at Aviza. From the company’s headquarters in Scotts Valley, CA, Aviza provides IT services to offices in 9 countries across Europe and Asia.

Aviza had been running Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) on Sun Solaris-based systems, but end-of-life issues began affecting the company’s ability to meet its service and availability goals. “We started having some errors and unexpected failures that resulted in downtime,” Spencer explains. “When you have a worldwide business, you have to resolve these issues around the clock.”

A cost-effective solution
Aviza was looking for a cost-effective solution that would resolve the reliability issues, provide better performance and enable new levels of flexibility across the company’s global IT infrastructure. To meet those goals, the company chose an IBM solution that includes IBM System x3850 and System x3950 servers with the high-end IBM X3 chipset, and IBM System Storage N5200.

“We evaluated a number of other vendors, but we were concerned about uptime, maintenance and the need for specialized skills,” Spencer says. “We were comfortable working with IBM. They were very informed, and they did a good job of laying out the options for us.”

Aviza has a two-tier Oracle configuration, with the production application running on one x3850 4-socket server and the database running on one x3950 with 16-sockets—both driven by Intel® Xeon® dual-core processors. An N5200 provides 2.4 TB of data storage. The development environment has six test instances running on five x3850 servers, with a second N5200 providing 7.2 TB of data storage. IBM Premier Business Partner Sycomp provided installation and support services.

Exceeding expectations
Aviza saw immediate benefits from the solution; in fact, Spencer reports, “IBM System x has exceeded our expectations around reliability and performance.” Spencer and his team are also pleased with the scalability that the System x technology enables. “We may end up with three or four tiers at some point,” he explains, “and this equipment lends itself to that.”

Spencer says the migration from Sun to IBM System x went extremely well. In addition to migrating from Sun to IBM and from Solaris 6 to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Aviza upgraded from Oracle EBS 11.0.3 to 11.5.10 and from Oracle Database 8i to 10g. Aviza runs a full complement of EBS components, including all financials, manufacturing, order management and service modules.

Although the reliability and performance improvements are felt across the company, Aviza’s finance group in particular appreciates the new systems. The department’s monthly cost roll-ups used to take anywhere from eight to 18 hours to run, and now they take less than four.

“We’re getting positive comments from everyone,” Spencer says. “And with the IBM solution, we’re a lot more flexible than we were before.”

For more information about Aviza Technology, visit: www.aviza.com

FAST FACTS

Company: MedQuist Inc.

Industry: Clinical Documentation Workflow Solutions

Geography: Mount Laurel, New Jersey

Business Challenge: Enabling a rapidly growing, high-volume, 24×7 business, through the creation of an agile and highly productive development environment for building and running mission-critical applications.

Software: JBoss Enterprise Application Platform, Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Hardware: x86 servers

Migration Path: From many database centric Windows platform components towards a SOA enterprise architecture providing service orchestration, platform independence and loose coupling of coarse-grained application modules. The latter allows for an evolutionary approach to re-platforming of a very large enterprise system without a large up-front cost and significant business risk.

Benefits: A highly productive, flexible and robust application development environment that enables MedQuist to proficiently produce innovative functionality for customer-facing solutions and to quickly take advantage of newly acquired applications by efficiently integrating them into its DocQment Enterprise Platform.

“Our applications are mission critical and absolutely need to be available 24×7. Red Hat’s JBoss and Red Hat Enterprise Linux products just work, enabling us to focus on building industry-leading software, which in turn helps our customers reduce their costs and improve patient care.”
– Dan Garnett, Vice President of Product Development, MedQuist.

Download the case study [PDF]

BACKGROUND
MedQuist Inc. is a leading provider of medical transcription software and related services. By delivering solutions that automate document creation and workflow to hospitals, doctors, and other healthcare providers, MedQuist helps its customers efficiently manage large volumes of complex clinical information.

The company has two separate but connected sources of revenues. First, it offers comprehensive software solutions that include digital voice capture, speech recognition, electronic signature, medical coding systems and services, and mobile dictation devices. It currently sells these solutions to more than 1,500 healthcare organizations throughout the United States. Secondly, MedQuist employs more than 4,000 skilled medical transcriptionists who process approximately 2 billion lines of text annually. The company employs more than 7,500 employees and earned $327 million in revenues in fiscal 2008.

BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Because of rapid growth since the early 2000s, MedQuist was looking for innovative ways to keep pace with ever-increasing system demands.

“We process more than 100,000 distinct dictated medical reports and notes per day,” said Kirk Elder, director of software engineering for MedQuist. “Our systems have to categorize them, classify them and route them through our workflow processes – from the time we receive the digital recordings until the final report is delivered to the customer.”

MedQuist currently has 10 clusters of speech recognition servers with each cluster containing 30+ servers, for a total of more than 300 servers to perform the all-important task of converting voice recordings to text-based documents. The voice recordings and related text files are than sent to medical transcriptionists (MTs) to correct and edit. After the MT finishes transcribing the report, the MedQuist platform sends the report to physicians to electronically sign the documents. Those documents are then routed back to the hospitals or clinics to printers, automated systems and/or their electronic health record (EHR) system, depending on whether the customer requires the information to be in paper or electronic form.

Before 2007, most of the MedQuist software used for this complex workflow routing was developed using various proprietary technologies, including C++ among others, making it more and more challenging to quickly respond to new market requirements and opportunities. Because MedQuist was quickly growing through acquisition, it also became difficult to efficiently incorporate the systems of newly acquired companies into the MedQuist DocQment Enterprise Platform.

“We are in the process of moving to an n-tiered SOA architecture based on Java middleware. With the JBoss Enterprise Application Platform, we are positioned with the tool set to evolve our product suite towards towards SOA, without the upfront costs of re-writing everything at the same,” said Brian Ellenberger, development manager at MedQuist.

SOLUTION
Due to the economics of re-platforming a system this large, MedQuist has taken an evolutionary approach to moving its application platform to a JBoss-based environment. In fact, Elder’s group chose JBoss in 2002-2003 when their division was a separate company. At the time, there were two reasons for doing this: price and performance.

“As JBoss is open source, it was much less costly than proprietary application server options,” said Elder. “JBoss was a bargain compared to proprietary application servers.”

There were technical advantages to the platform itself. “JBoss seemed to be a very good platform for our developers, as the open architecture gave us lots of options. It was high performing too, and easy to understand,” continued Elder.

When his company was acquired by MedQuist, the IT team at the parent company evaluated what Elder’s team had done using JBoss, and was so pleased with the results, that it decided to make JBoss the platform for developing new software modules.

“We have 20 to 50 software modules that run on hundreds of servers that must all work in concert with each other,” said Kirk. “Previously, because of all the acquisitions, there was not development standards for making sure everything worked together.”

Today, the JBoss Application Server is embedded in the developer platform that Elder’s team releases to all MedQuist’s software engineering teams each quarter. “So everyone is developing software in a standard way with standard third-party libraries,” said Ellenberger. “Because we do development all over the world, this keeps us in sync and helps us maintain efficiency, while simultaneously reducing our overall development costs.”

Today, in addition to the JBoss Application Server itself, MedQuist uses Hibernate. Although just starting to use JBoss Seam for reporting, it is considering basing all future thin-client development platforms on Seam.

Underpinning all this, in mid-2007, MedQuist moved from a Microsoft Windows-based infrastructure to one based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

“When we were looking to upgrade our enterprise database operating system to a more scalable, reliable, and cost-effective solution than windows, Linux was the obvious choice. We looked at which company would be a partner and help ensure our success. Red hat proved it then and every day since,” said John McKenna, Director of Software Engineering.

BENEFITS
The fact that JBoss is built using open standards has been a major boon for MedQuist. Indeed, its JBoss implementation has been so successful that MedQuist made an enterprise-wide decision to eliminate its dependence on vendor-specific solutions.

“We like the fact that JBoss is so open,” said Elder. “With the JBoss micro kernel architecture, we can even replace JBoss modules with other modules without any trouble. This allows us to avoid the vendor lock in we had experienced before.”

How critical are JBoss Enterprise Application Platform and Red Hat Enterprise Linux to MedQuist’s business?

“Our applications are mission critical and absolutely need to be available 24×7. Red Hat products like JBoss and Red Hat Enterprise Linux just work, enabling us to focus on building industry-leading software, which in turn helps our customers reduce their costs and improve patient care,” said Dan Garnett, Vice President of Product Development, MedQuist.

The open nature of the JBoss platform has delivered other benefits as well. For example, in the case of JBoss, “His team “can debug all the way through the code, and work around and fix even the most complex development issues by utilizing the source code,” said Elder. “JBoss also integrates well into our build process. We’ve been very successful at creating build scripts that get standard JBoss environments up and running for new developers or projects very quickly and painlessly.”

Finally, Red Hat as a company has proven to be solid and reliable. “Over time, we’ve developed a solid relationship with Red Hat and JBoss, and anticipate that our partnership will only get better over time,” said Elder.

FAST FACTS

Industry: Hosting and Internet services provider

Geography: Offices in Spain, France, and Portugal with customers in more than one hundred countries

Business Challenge: Unifying Linux distributions and offering customers a reliable, certified, and supported platform

Software: Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Hardware: IBM System x 3250 and 3550 servers

Benefits: Improved quality and reliability of the company’s Internet services, reduced the complexity of its IT system, and simplified its IT maintenance process

This story is available in the following languages: [ |  ]

BACKGROUND
Arsys is Spain’s leading Internet services specialist, providing domain name registration, hosting, housing, and online applications. With more than 650,000 domain names registered and more than 220,000 customers, Arsys holds the top position in the Spanish ranking of domain name registration and web hosting, and is one of the industry leaders in Europe. To reach this leading position, Arsys has won its customers’ trust by providing high-quality services while offering rapid and reliable solutions to meet its users’ needs.

BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Every day, more and more of Arsys’ customers demand Linux as the platform for implementing diverse technologies such as: databases, portals, web applications, etc. The company started offering these services in 2002 on a variety of Linux distributions, which included free distributions such as Fedora, without certification or official support.

In time, Arsys identified the need to improve its existing Linux platform offerings and integrate support and certification in order to provide its customers with a stable and high-quality service. It was important to Arsys to provide services to its customers that included a wide network of certified hardware and software solutions.

Furthermore, the frequent changes and the short life cycle of other open source solutions required large time investments by Arsys technicians, who also worked with nine different distributions, adding to the complexity of their tasks. This resulted in two main challenges. First, it increased costs and the technicians’ workload. Second, it generated greater non-predictable risks.

SOLUTION
Arsys decided to unify the different Linux versions used within the organisation under one sole certified distribution, thus facilitating the technological management of the platforms used in hosting services, corporate applications, and in certain internal company processes and services.

Additionally, by implementing a more stable and certified Linux platform, Arsys aimed to facilitate the work of its technicians and reduce the number of hours devoted to the maintenance of platforms. As a result, Arsys deployed hundreds of Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscriptions, thus enabling the unification of the Linux platform offered to its customers.

Moreover, a large part of the company’s internal processes are based on Red Hat solutions, such as its domain name registration system, its MySQL databases, and its electronic mail. Today, most web applications that enable customers’ interaction with Arsys run on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

In order to ensure its personnel’s technical efficiency on a documented and well-known standard platform, as well as be able to guarantee its customers the most qualified resources to manage their technology platforms, Arsys opted to certify its technicians with Red Hat Training certifications, and to update their knowledge on a regular basis.

BENEFITS
By using Red Hat solutions, Arsys incorporated the support and certification that guarantees its customers security and reliability for its hosting services.

At present, approximately half of the customers using Arsys hosting services operate directly through Red Hat technology. More than 220,000 of the company’s customers benefit indirectly from Red Hat platforms because a large part of Arsys’ daily operations, such as the domain name registration system or the e-mail system, run on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Through Red Hat solutions, Arsys has achieved significant improvements in the quality of its services and security, two vital requirements for the company and its customers. Stability of the IT system is crucial to Arsys’ business. Red Hat is capable of providing high availability, reliability, and expert technical support.

In addition, Red Hat Enterprise Linux is certified by the industry’s leading hardware and software providers, providing an extensive ecosystem of certified hardware platforms and applications for customers running the Red Hat platform. With this broad ecosystem, Red Hat customers are provided with flexibility and freedom from vendor lock-in.

The stability of Red Hat solutions, combined with the possibility of automating many tasks involving the operating system, along with the expert knowledge of Red Hat Enterprise Linux obtained through the company’s Red Hat Training courses, have significantly reduced the time resources dedicated to the maintenance of the Arsys’ platforms.

With Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Arsys is able to deliver reliable Internet services to its worldwide customers.

Lower costs and increased sales with a comprehensive call center solution

FAST FACTS

Customer: PRO BTP

Industry: Insurance

Deployment Country: France

Solution: Unified Communications and Collaboration

Business Partner: IBM

Business Need: PRO BTP needed to improve the quality of its call answering service to better serve its members. It also wanted to find a solution that would reduce its communication costs.

Solution: PRO BTP engaged IBM Global Business Services and IBM Global Technology Services to provide a comprehensive call center solution, unifying call answering among the company’s three call centers. The IBM team evaluated all the alternatives then selected an Avaya Internet Protocol (IP) infrastructure using Text over IP (ToIP) and Voice over IP (VoIP).

The solution runs on a reliable, scalable IBM BladeCenter HS20 platform, housed in IBM BladeCenter (Chassis) and running the Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system.

Benefits: The company has enjoyed dramatically improved call answering service with 90% of 5,500,000 annual calls answered in three rings or less, and lower telecommunications costs in a secure solution, with automatic backup if one site fails.

BACKGROUND
PRO BTP offers auto, home and life insurance, health services, leisure and social activities, and product savings for its three million members. It employs almost 4,000 people and generates annual revenue of €4.7 million in retirement services, €1.5 million in health services and €240 million in insurance and financial products. It is a nonprofit organization controlled by AGIRC/ARRCO (a French organization of employers) and employees.

BUSINESS NEED
To better serve its members, PRO BTP needed to improve the quality of its call answering service. Because member call traffic has increased from year to year and is expected to continue increasing, PRO BTP also wanted to find a solution that would reduce its communication costs.

SOLUTION
Working with IBM Global Business Services and IBM Global Technology Services, PRO BTP implemented a solution that aligned three call centers, unifying call answering among the centers. The IBM team compared the best Internet Protocol (IP) solution manufacturers, including Cisco, Avaya and Alcatel, and considered the different returns on investment (ROIs), architectures and migration plans before selecting the Avaya infrastructure.

The new call center solution infrastructure is built using Avaya Text over IP (ToIP) and Voice over IP (VoIP) products, including Avaya Convergence Solutions, Avaya Multimedia Contact Center Solutions, Avaya Self-Service Solutions, Avaya Telephony, Avaya Unified Communications and Avaya Virtual Contact Center Solutions. The solution is integrated into phones deployed at PRO BTP agencies and at the call center sites. The IBM team provided both the hardware and the software, deployed the solution and provided maintenance services. A Business Continuity and Recovery Services plan is included in the solution; if one of the three call centers fails, the other two facilitate business continuity.

Using the new solution, member information is automatically displayed at each of three call centers, meaning that service at each begins with a uniform knowledge of the customer. Additionally, the IP-based solution enables member callers to automatically connect with available call center employees skilled in the caller’s particular field of inquiry.

The solution runs on a reliable, scalable IBM BladeCenter HS20 platform, housed in IBM BladeCenter (Chassis) and running the Red Hat Linux operating system.

BENEFITS
With the new solution, 90% of the 5.5 million incoming calls per year are answered in three or fewer rings, dramatically improving the quality of PRO BTP’s call answering service.

By engaging IBM Global Business Services and IBM Global Technology Services, PRO BTP has realized a secure and highly available ToIP and VoIP infrastructure in its call centers. The new environment has resulted in reduced telecommunication expenses. And the real-time information available as a result of the new infrastructure has highlighted the impact of call center service on sales, with sales increasing by up to 20 percent.

FAST FACTS

Customer: Sentry Data Systems

Industry: Healthcare

Deployment Country: United States

Solution: Information Infrastructure, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Server Consolidation, Virtualization

Business Partner: IBM

Business Need: Sentry’s core infrastructure required substantial computing power and high-speed storage. Four difficult-to-administer racks of large servers supported the company’s day-to-day business processes, costing much energy, effort and money to run. Sentry wanted to accommodate its growing business while simplifying the design and administration of its underlying IT infrastructure.

Solution: Sentry began by consolidating on an IBM BladeCenter® H chassis that supports 14 IBM BladeCenter HS21 servers running Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The new solution greatly simplifies system administration by enabling the company to access and manage all hardware remotely from a single console. All cabling is integrated within the BladeCenter technology, reducing the amount of wires previously needed for power and remote access.

Benefits:

• Reduces operating costs and offers remote administration
• Increases storage capacity and performance
• Reduces server footprint and amount of cabling

“Besides consolidating our servers, we reduced our cabling significantly. Out of the box, the IBM BladeCenter required just a few uplinks—power, Ethernet and fiber channel—and immediately all 14 servers were connected.”
– Sentry Data Systems

Download the IBM Case Study: IBM Case Study PDF

OVERVIEW
Sentry Data Systems (Sentry), based in Florida, serves pharmacies and hospitals in over 20 states throughout the United States. From compliance and pharmacy transaction processing software to a healthcare business intelligence platform, its software focuses on easing healthcare specific processes and challenges.

CHALLENGE
Performing over 110 million operations per day, Sentry’s core infrastructure required substantial computing power and high-speed storage. Four difficult-to-administer racks of large servers supported the company’s day-to-day business processes, costing much energy, effort and money to run. As Sentry’s growth increased its data volumes, the resulting processing loads pushed the company’s storage environment to its capacity limitations. Sentry wanted to accommodate its growing business while simplifying the design and administration of its underlying IT infrastructure.

SOLUTION
Sentry began by consolidating on an IBM BladeCenter® H chassis that supports 14 IBM BladeCenter HS21 servers running the Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The new solution greatly simplifies system administration by enabling the company to access and manage all hardware remotely from a single console. All cabling is integrated within the BladeCenter technology, reducing the amount of wires previously needed for power and remote access.

To boost capacity within its storage environment, an IBM System Storage™ DS4700 Express disk system offers better performance and 33.6TB of high-speed physical storage capacity to accommodate Sentry’s growing data volumes. And to consolidate its switch fabric and increase reliability, Sentry deployed redundant IBM SAN Switches.

BENEFITS

• Reduces operating costs and offers remote administration
• Increases storage capacity and performance
• Reduces server footprint and amount of cabling

FAST FACTS

Customer: The City of Burbank

Industry: Government

Deployment Country: United States

Solution: Enterprise Resource Planning

Business Need: The City of Burbank needed to bring its multi-vendor infrastructure onto a scalable platform that supports multiple operating systems.

Solution: The City consolidated on IBM BladeCenter® and IBM System Storage™ DS4300 while migrating to a Red Hat Enterprise Linux environment.

Benefits: As a result of the implementation, the City achieved better performance, significant space savings, and reduced costs for hardware, power, cooling, maintenance, monitoring and licensing.

“We’re running the complete Oracle ERP solution–the application and the database–all on one BladeCenter with four-processor blades.” That solution includes Oracle E-Business Suite 11i.10, Oracle Application Server and Oracle Database 10g, running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. “It’s easier to maintain, from an administrative perspective, and it’s less costly because we are licensing for only one production server.”
– Mahesh Saraswat, Lead Database Administrator, City of Burbank

Download the IBM Case Study: IBM Case Study PDF

Overview
Three years ago, the City of Burbank was taxed with maintaining a complex mixed-vendor infrastructure that included Sun, HP and IBM, with applications and databases running on four different operating systems. The City began to consider a new approach for the data center—a solution that would provide the hardware scalability they needed as they began migrating to a Red Hat Enterprise Linux environment. The City chose IBM BladeCenter® as the consolidation platform and IBM System Storage™ DS4300 for SAN.

When Mahesh Saraswat joined the City of Burbank three years ago, the organization’s data center was at a critical juncture. The IT staff was already taxed with maintaining a complex mixed-vendor infrastructure that included Sun, HP and IBM, with applications and databases running on four different operating systems. Soon the organization began facing hardware limitations.

“We needed to upgrade our Oracle ERP application from 10.7 to 11i.10, as well as upgrading other Oracle-based applications,” says Saraswat, the lead database administrator who manages a team of Unix® system administrators and database administrators for the City of Burbank. “But in order to do that, we needed more disk space. And we didn’t have the flexibility to add more disk to our big Sun boxes.”

A new approach
It was at this point that the City began to consider a new approach for the data center–a solution that would provide the hardware scalability they needed as they began migrating to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. After evaluating all the options available to a multi-vendor organization, the City of Burbank chose IBM BladeCenter as the consolidation platform and IBM System Storage DS4300 for the SAN.

Saraswat says there were a number of reasons the City chose IBM over other major hardware vendors, such as previous success with IBM hardware and confidence in IBM customer service. But as Saraswat explains, “We chose BladeCenter specifically because we still had applications running on IBM AIX® and Microsoft® Windows®. We can run everything we have on the IBM blades.”

The City currently has two BladeCenter chassis, each with 10 blades. One chassis is in the primary data center, and one is located off-site as part of a disaster recovery arrangement with the City of Burbank Police Department. They also have a DS4300 in both locations, including an expansion unit in the primary data center, giving them over seven terabytes of disk space.

Making the most of BladeCenter
According to Saraswat, the City is making the most of the BladeCenter, especially when it comes to their Oracle implementation. “We’re running the complete Oracle ERP solution–the application and the database–all on one BladeCenter with four-processor blades,” Saraswat explains. That solution includes Oracle E-Business Suite 11i.10, Oracle Application Server and Oracle Database 10g, running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. “It’s easier to maintain, from an administrative perspective, and it’s less costly because we are licensing for only one production server.”

Besides enabling a sleek Oracle implementation, the IBM solution has provided the City of Burbank with a number of key benefits, including reduced requirements for cabling and space. Saraswat says they’ve already consolidated from five racks down to two, and after the migration of a few remaining AIX applications, they’ll soon be down to one. The City is also seeing significant cost savings as a result of reduced power and cooling costs, reduced maintenance and monitoring costs, and reduced hardware and licensing costs.

But cost savings isn’t everything, which is why Saraswat has also kept a close watch on the performance numbers. “Performance-wise, we’ve definitely seen an improvement,” he reports. “And the feedback I get from the users is that it’s better than before.”

FAST FACTS

Company: Sensei, Inc.

Industry: Healthcare

Geography: US

Software: JBoss Enterprise Middleware platforms and frameworks including; JBoss Enterprise Application Platforms, JBoss Enterprise Portal Platform, and JBoss ESB, jBPM, Hibernate, Cache and RichFaces; all components of the JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform and JBoss Enterprise Portal Platforms, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Pentaho Business Intelligence, MySQL, and Alfresco.

Migration Path: Open source middleware projects from JBoss.org to JBoss Enterprise Middleware Solutions and Microsoft Windows to Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Benefits: Lowered infrastructure and development costs; more flexibility when deploying applications; greater scalability; enhanced standards and support.

“With a proprietary solution, trying to grow our product line would be painful, both in terms of man-hours and integrating additional software. But with the cost-effectiveness of JBoss Enterprise Middleware, we are able to reallocate resources to scale our I.T. infrastructure.”
-Tim Dion, Chief Information Officer, Sensei Inc.

Download the case study [PDF]

BACKGROUND
A wireless lifestyle is no excuse for leading an unhealthy life – that’s what Sensei Inc. aims to address with mobile and Web-based solutions that engage and empower consumers to live healthier, happier lives. Formed in 2005 by Humana, Inc, the company’s programs promote learning and lifestyle change through automated, personalized, interactive dialog that fits seamlessly into a consumer’s daily routine.

Sensei’s initial product, Sensei for Weight Loss, is a virtual weight and nutrition coach for users, helps them to plan grocery lists, meals and exercise routines. It also keeps consumers accountable for their actions with daily reminders about meals, weight loss and fitness goals. Providing unique real time integration between the mobile world and the online world, Sensei helps each individual, with their personalized plan, achieve success their long term lifestyle goals. The company has plans to rapidly expand its offerings to more closely align with the daily lives of consumers and to encompass more lifestyle and health issues.

Currently, Sensei’s user base numbers in the thousands, but this will increase quickly as the company introduces more consumers to their products and launches additional solutions.

BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Tim Dion, Sensei’s CIO and a 20-year veteran of the technology industry, was presented with a common problem among companies seeking to rapidly innovate product offerings – their current Windows-based technology platform simply was not meeting their needs.

“The design of our existing platform was very constrictive and made our initial trials and pilots extremely difficult,” said Dion. “Making changes was hard and application deployment was fragile. These difficulties opened our eyes to the fact that our underlying infrastructure itself needed a serious overhaul. A complete redesign was necessary to provide a solid foundation for current and future endeavors.”

After determining that a new platform and infrastructure were required, Sensei went through an extensive design period to break out necessary capabilities, explained Igor Royzis, Sensei’s director of technology.

“Our solutions are based on a service infrastructure with a lot of moving parts and complexity,” said Royzis. “We needed components that were flexible, scalable, cost-effective and that would enable us to design and deploy products in a timely manner.”

After examining commercial solutions, including proprietary middleware products WebLogic and WebSphere, Sensei selected an open source stack because of the high-performance and value advantages over proprietary software. Sensei chose Red Hat’s JBoss portfolio as their primary technology platform because of the wide-range of open source solutions that Sensei could deploy from a single provider, enabling cost savings and an easy migration path.

SOLUTION
Initially, Sensei tested their wellness and healthy lifestyle applications on a variety of JBoss.org products – JBoss Application Server, JBoss ESB, JBoss Portal, jBPM, Drools, Hibernate, JBoss Cache and RichFaces. Following the successful deployment of the community projects, Sensei transitioned to JBoss’ hardened and supported enterprise class open source solutions for production: JBoss Enterprise Application Platform, Enterprise SOA Platform and Enterprise Portal Platform running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Sensei has chosen to standardize their I.T. environment on open source solutions, allowing for increased flexibility, scalability and the ability to rapidly develop and deploy products to market. In addition to JBoss and Red Hat, the company has also deployed the Pentaho Business Intelligence Suite, an open source solution for enterprise reporting, analysis and workflow capabilities, which has integrated perfectly with Sensei’s operations, thanks to the interoperability presented by the underlying JBoss middleware solutions. Other open source solutions deployed include MySQL and Alfresco.

In addition to deploying open source solutions, Sensei is also planning to contribute some of the integration code they have written in house back into the open source community.

BENEFITS
Flexibility and scalability are the most significant benefits Sensei has realized by deploying Red Hat and JBoss solutions.

“With a proprietary solution, trying to grow our product line would be painful, both in terms of man-hours and integrating additional software,” said Dion. “But with the cost-effectiveness of JBoss Enterprise Middleware, we are able to reallocate resources to scale our I.T. infrastructure.”

By migrating from costly proprietary technology to open source solutions, Sensei has been able to carve out significant cost savings . According to Dion, the savings are “almost exponential over BEA or IBM.”

Sensei has also received a competitive edge through JBoss, thanks to Red Hat’s early adoption of various technology and privacy standards.

“Red Hat moves very quickly when it comes to supporting new standards,” continued Dion. “For our business, HIPAA and other privacy standards are becoming more and more important in not only winning new customers, but keeping those we already have. Red Hat’s agility around standards adoption helps us keep our competitive edge, and it’s one of the main reasons we put our trust in JBoss.”

For the future, Sensei is continuing to transition its JBoss community projects to JBoss Enterprise Middleware, as well as examining new JBoss solutions for deployment.

“With a proprietary solution, trying to grow our product line would be painful, both in terms of man-hours and integrating additional software,” said Dion. “But with the cost-effectiveness of JBoss Enterprise Middleware, we are able to reallocate resources to scale our I.T. infrastructure.”

FAST FACTS

Company: Discount Tire Company

Industry: Consumer – Automotive Retail

Geography: Scottsdale, Arizona

Business Challenge: Support the rapidly growing e-commerce side of the business while keeping costs contained and complying with strict PCI security standards

Software: Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat Satellite, Apache, WebLogic, IBM Lotus Domino Server

Hardware: 50 Dell x86 servers

Migration Path: Microsoft Windows to Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Benefits: Provided an easily managed, secure, and utterly reliable platform for Discount Tire’s e-commerce business. Enabled compliance with PCI security standards. Increased IT staff productivity and contained costs due to the ability to easily provision, maintain, and manage servers.

“I’ve been in the IT industry for about 20 years now, and Red Hat is far and above any other company I’ve ever worked with. Not only are its products of the highest caliber, but it is incredibly responsive to all our needs. Red Hat support is top-of-the-line, and the Red Hat phone number is on my phone’s speed dial, and it is going to stay there.”
– Will Darton, senior server support administrator, Discount Tire.

Download the case study [PDF]

Read More about Discount Tire in the press:
INO.com
LinuxBIZZ.com
Manufacturing Central
SYS-CON Media
Xtreme Open Source

BACKGROUND
Discount Tire, the world’s largest independent tire and wheel retailer has displayed tenacity and a can-do attitude from the day it opened its doors. Its founder, Bruce Halle, started out in 1960 with six tires and a portable air tank that he would refill at a local gas station since he didn’t have an air compressor. Over the next nearly fifty years he built the company – literally tire by tire – into one of the industry’s leading success stories. Today, Discount Tire has more than 725 stores in 21 states, and both Tire Business and Modern Tire Dealer have ranked Discount Tire Company as the No. 1 independent tire retailer based on number of retail outlets and annual revenues. The firm is also listed by Forbes magazine as No. 171 of the top 500 privately held companies.

BUSINESS CHALLENGE
In 2000, Discount Tire Company decided to bring management of its e-commerce infrastructure in-house after having outsourced it for several years. The IT team originally tried building a new e-commerce system on a Windows platform, “but that was failing miserably,” said Will Darton, senior server support administrator for Discount Tire. The team decided to test whether Red Hat Enterprise Linux might be a suitable alternative. After various tests and load balances, The team discovered that Red Hat Enterprise Linux was more than capable– due to its rock-solid reliability and stability. “We started out small with a very simple e-commerce site with a very basic shopping cart,” he recalled. “And our online presence and business activity experienced tremendous growth.”

By 2005, Discount Tire’s e-commerce business had grown so large, Darton realized he needed help managing the proliferating number of Red Hat Enterprise Linux servers deployed. Provisioning and patching began to use more and more of the team’s limited resources given the number of servers, and Darton now had to comply with the Payment Card Industry (PCI) security standards set by the PCI Security Standards Council to ensure adequate protections against fraud, hacking, and other threats during processing of credit card payments were in place. “The ability to comply with PCI standards is absolutely critical, as failure to do so can result in stiff fines, suspension of rights to process credit card payments, or both,” said Darton.

Discount Tire had also been using IBM Lotus Domino Server running on Microsoft Windows for its business-critical internal email system. The reliability and performance of the Lotus applications was a critical aspect of the company’s ability to succeed, but consistent reliability and downtime issues on Windows was directly impacting the day-to-day operations of Discount Tire.
Discount Tire’s IT team was spending a great deal of its time dealing with tactical systems issues rather than issues that were more strategic to the business.

SOLUTION
Today, Red Hat Enterprise Linux supports what Darton describes as an “enormous e-commerce environment” of 50 Red Hat Enterprise Linux physical servers and dozens of virtual machines that include Apache servers, WebLogic servers, and several dozen quality assurance (QA) and development machines. The firm currently runs its entire e-commerce operation on Red Hat Enterprise Linux as well as numerous internal applications, including its Lotus Domino server application.

With the increasing Lotus-on-Windows performance issues, the opportunity to migrate Lotus on to Red Hat Enterprise Linux arose, and the decision was made without hesitation. Since migrating to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the reliability and performance of Lotus Domino has increased. IT resources were freed up to focus on more strategic issues, and updating the Red Hat Enterprise Linux servers with new patches now takes just one to two hours a month.

To manage its Red Hat systems, in 2005 Discount Tire deployed Red Hat Satellite, an easy-to-use systems management platform for Linux infrastructures. Built on open standards, Red Hat Satellite provides powerful systems administration capabilities such as management, provisioning, and monitoring for large Linux deployments. “My Red Hat account rep came to me and said ‘here is something you should implement once you grow a little bigger,” recalled Darton. “Our architecture was currently ten servers and I was realizing the need for a management tool, I took one look at Red Hat Satellite and said, ‘I want this now.” With the help of Red Hat Consulting, Discount Tire had it installed, configured, and performing within a month, and we have never looked back. “Satellite is my Swiss army knife – I haven’t found anything I can’t make it do,” he said.

BENEFITS
The use of Red Hat Enterprise Linux at Discount Tire started over eight years ago, and due to measurable results and reliability, it has since garnered the attention of the C-suite because of the success it has made possible in the e-commerce arena. “Our e-business has been a huge win for us since its inception, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux has been a key part of that. It’s given us a lot of visibility within the company,” he said.

In terms of reliability, Red Hat Enterprise Linux has surpassed all expectations. “Obviously, our e-commerce environment has to be available 24/7/365 at 99.99 percent availability. That was absolutely mission-critical,” said Darton. “And our internal applications running under Red Hat Enterprise Linux include inventory management and email – things that people cannot live without. We have been able to trust Red Hat explicitly that everything will just work.”

Today, whenever his team gets requests for new applications or hardware, their first question is, “will it run on Red Hat Enterprise Linux?” said Darton. “At this point, we’re trying to minimize placing anything new on Windows. It has its niche, but in terms of reliability and scalability, Red Hat Enterprise Linux has it beat.”

And Darton said that today he could not live without Red Hat Satellite. “It’s the difference between running around the data center repeatedly loading CDs and DVDs, and hitting a couple keystrokes,” he said.

“Previously, provisioning was a time burden for our team as we were adding or re-provisioning about 5 servers per month and it would take 3 hours per system to provision. Now When I use Satellite’s provisioning capability, I can provision new servers, with a specific build, at the push of a button. It saves me over 2 and a half hours per system or about 13 hours per month. Which for one person, is a considerable gain in productivity,” said Darton.

With about 5 new servers or re-provisions per month, the time savings with Satellite has resulted in important productivity gains for Darton. Previously when deploying a new server, it would take more than three hours by the time Darton positioned it in the rack, built and configured it. “Now I just press a button and away it goes,” he said. “And to me, time is money.”

Like many others in today’s challenging economy, Discount Tire is in “conservation mode,” he said. “We’re managing our expenses carefully and trying to find more efficient way of doing things.” Satellite has enabled him to do this while maintaining the quality of the service he delivers to both internal users and external customers. And if it weren’t for Red Hat Satellite, Darton would need a much larger staff. He estimates that without Satellite, he’d have to hire at least two additional system administrators.

And his ability to stay on top of PCI compliance grows more critical every day as Discount Tire’s e-commerce business continues to expand. “Because Red Hat Satellite ensures that I am up to date on my patching, it has saved us enormous amount of time and countless headaches there,” said Darton.

With Red Hat Satellite, Discount Tire has access to Red Hat Network updates and has the ability to maintain local control over the management, administration, and monitoring of our systems, which provides Discount Tire with the ability to easily comply with PCI security standards, increase staff productivity, and successfully scale our e-commerce business,” said Darton. Moving forward, Discount Tire will be taking a close look at Red Hat Directory Server integrated with Active Directory, to fully utilize the management capabilities.

“Now that we have deployed Satellite, I can enhance our e-commerce environment with it’s provisioning capability in minutes. This has the ability to allow Discount Tire the opportunity to increase revenue through our e-commerce site in a shorter timeframe. And as I mentioned before, Time is Money!” said Darton.

“I’ve been in the IT industry for about 20 years now, and Red Hat is far and above any other company I’ve ever worked with. Not only are its products of the highest caliber, but it is incredibly responsive to all our needs. Red Hat support is top-of-the-line, and. the Red Hat phone number is on my phone’s speed dial, and it is going to stay there,” said Darton.

FAST FACTS

Company: Educational Testing Service (ETS)

Industry: Education

Geography: International

Business Challenge: Roll out new, competitively priced educational products and services more swiftly while cutting costs. Build applications upon a base of infrastructure software technology that would position ETS for evolution into cloud models.

Migration Path: SUN Solaris to Red Hat Enterprise Linux and IBM WebSphere to JBoss Enterprise Application Platform

Software: Red Hat Enterprise Linux and JBoss Enterprise Middleware technologies

Hardware: Intel x86 systems

Benefits: Reduce costs and boost competitiveness by moving to a stable and secure x86-based platform for developing and delivering new assessment products to market more quickly. Easy transition of applications into cloud provider environments in the future.

“We performed extensive in-house performance testing, talked to industry analysts, and considered all other aspects of the operating system and application server, including the quality of support, market share, and the software and hardware ecosystem. Once we took all these things into consideration, Red Hat Enterprise Linux and JBoss from Red Hat with support subscription was the obvious choice.”
– Harikumar Rajappan, enterprise IT architect for applications at ETS

Download the case study [PDF]

BACKGROUND

Educational Testing Service (ETS) is the leading global provider of educational and professional testing services. As the creator of such universally administered tests The College Board’s SAT and AP programs, the GRE, the TOEFL and TOEIC tests as well as more than a dozen major field tests across a broad range of academic disciplines, ETS for decades has been a trusted source of assessments, research, and related products and services for helping parents, teachers, educational institutions, businesses, and governments evaluate students’ knowledge and skills.

ETS was founded in 1947 when the American Council on Education, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, and the College Entrance Examination Board consolidated their testing programs. The goal: To create a single nonprofit organization devoted to educational research and assessment.

In 2001, ETS expanded its vision to serve a global audience. Today, ETS is renowned for setting the gold standard for educational research and assessment on an international scale.

BUSINESS CHALLENGE

ETS is widely recognized as the preeminent authority on creating and administering academic assessments that are both rigorous and fair. But in the early 2000s, ETS management realized that limitations in its IT infrastructure were impeding its ability to compete in an increasingly crowded and price-sensitive global educational market. Its dependence on proprietary hardware and software in particular were standing in the way of its ability to maintain its position as the premiere educational assessment organization.

“A lot of new companies with new technologies have entered the market in recent years, offering solutions that were very aggressively priced against ours,” said Harikumar Rajappan, enterprise IT architect for applications at ETS. “We knew we needed to embark upon a different technology strategy to compete effectively.”

ETS had previously used Sun Solaris running on SPARC servers for its development and production systems and IBM’s WebSphere as its application server. The solutions were costly, non portable – the software enabled with vertically scalable features as well as the proprietary hardware required to run them – and also prevented ETS from bringing competitively priced products and services to market in a timely manner.

ETS wanted to move to a service-oriented architecture (SOA) that would enable it to combine reusable modules of functionality to quickly create new products and services. It also wanted to be able to easily port its applications from one hardware platform to another. “We’re particularly interested in the opportunities offered by cloud computing and virtualization as a way of bringing costs down while improving the scalability, portability, performance, flexibility, and reliability of our applications,” said Rajappan.

Additionally, having an utterly stable platform for its mission-critical applications was one of ETS’ top priorities, said Rajappan. “From the students’ perspective, there is no room for error,” he said. “Wrong test score, or missing a score reporting deadline can negatively impact someone’s entire academic career.” Likewise, ETS has developed applications that enable instructors to grade tests in a standard manner to ensure fairness. More recently, it has introduced online tests that students can take over the Web. “These applications must be up at all times, because the ramifications if they fail are severe,” said Rajappan. For example, if a student is taking an online test, and the system crashes, then the student risks losing all of his or her work. “This would be unacceptable,” he said.

SOLUTION

ETS decided to move from Solaris to Linux, primarily for reasons of cost, horizontal scalability and portability. It chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux because the open source operating platform was established as one of the most stable and reliable Linux distributions on the market. “We performed extensive in-house performance testing, talked to industry analysts, and considered all other aspects of the operating system and application server, including the quality of support, market share, and the software and hardware ecosystem,” said Rajappan. “Once we took all these things into consideration, Red Hat was the most viable choice.”

Although initially testing the open source waters using the JBoss.org community version, ETS today mandates that all developers use JBoss Enterprise Middleware to gain access to Red Hat’s stellar support resources.

Today, ETS is in process of migrating majority of its applications from SPARC stations running Solaris and WebSphere to Intel x86 boxes running Red Hat Enterprise Linux and JBoss Enterprise Middleware. Although a small number of applications will remain on the proprietary hardware “we’re keeping that to an absolute minimum because of the timing and cost considerations,” said Rajappan.

ETS is also planning to pilot JBoss Operations Network (JON) as a monitoring and administering tool for J2EE application servers to improve real-time monitoring and proactive resolution capabilities.

BENEFITS

Thanks to its new Red Hat-based strategy, ETS is positioned to compete aggressively in the rapidly evolving educational assessment marketplace. In addition to dramatically reducing its upfront investment in hardware and software, ETS is in process of using the Red Hat products to construct an SOA that will speed time to market of new products and services.

ETS has also achieved its performance goals with Red Hat products. When benchmarking Oracle databases running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and x86 machines compared to Oracle databases on SPARC stations running Solaris, “we found that Oracle running under Linux on Intel machines delivered required performance – and that the cost was substantially less,” said Rajappan.

ETS has been very happy with the stability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux due to the fault tolerance capabilities of the platform. “When you are running your application on a single 8-CPU Sun machine and it fails, you are in trouble,” said Rajappan. “But if you are running it on four Intel x86 machines, even if one crashes, your application stays up.”

And given its interest in virtualization and cloud computing, Red Hat was the optimal solution. “It would be very difficult to move Solaris-based systems into the cloud, or into virtual machines,” said Rajappan.

Migration from Microsoft Exchange to Lotus Notes

ARMONK, N.Y., May 21 — IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced Gruppo Amadori, a wholesale distributor of quality food products in Italy, is rolling out Red Hat Enterprise Linux-based desktops running IBM email, word processing, spreadsheet and presentation software to select employees.

About 1,000 of the company’s 6,000 employees access PCs to help manage the production, processing, and delivery logistics of its poultry products for customers within Italy and internationally. In 2009, some of these employees will move to a Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop client operating system and IBM Lotus Symphony, open standards-based word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations.

For its collaboration services, the company is moving from Microsoft Exchange to an IBM Lotus Notes and Domino environment hosted on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The first users have moved to Lotus Domino and will continue rolling out to the entire company through the course of the year.

The benefits that drive Gruppo Amadori’s migration to Linux and IBM collaboration software are the lower acquisition and operational costs.

“Our strategy is to focus on Linux first and foremost, taking a practical and pragmatic approach,” said Gianluca Giovannetti, CIO and Director of Organization, Gruppo Amadori. “For us, the Linux environment is the right choice for very focused applications and is more cost effective than Microsoft.”

In the first migrations, the Linux desktops will run Lotus Symphony; IBM collaboration software including Lotus Notes and Domino, IBM Lotus Sametime and IBM Lotus Quickr; and a Web browser to access an ERP application.

“Linux on the Desktop is providing great value and cost reductions to companies at a time when they need it the most,” said Bob Sutor, vp of Linux and open source, IBM Software Group.

IBM Lotus Symphony is software comprised of three core applications: documents, spreadsheets and presentations. The software is designed to handle the majority of office productivity tasks that workers typically perform. Lotus Symphony supports Linux, Macintosh and Windows desktops and multiple file formats, including Open Document Format (ODF) and Microsoft Office; and also can output content in PDF format. For more information or to download Symphony at no charge, please visit, http://symphony.lotus.com

About Gruppo Amadori
Gruppo Amadori is a leader in the Italian food sector. Founded in San Vittore di Cesena 40 years ago, the company — with revenue of over one billion euros in 2008 — has 16 production plants and 32 branches and agencies. Underlying Gruppo Amadori’s success is its ability to manage all phases of production from the selection of raw materials, farms, hatcheries, feed mills, processing plants and distribution. Tradition and innovation are two elements that distinguish Gruppo Amadori. For more information, please visit, http://www.amadori.it/

For more information on IBM, visit http://www.ibm.com/think

FAST FACTS

Industry: Financial Services

Geography: Slovenia

Business Challenge: Banka Koper chose to build its new online banking solution, Banka IN, on Red Hat’s open source platform to avoid vendor lock-in, enable in-house innovation, and because the Red Hat solution offered easy integration, greater efficiency, and better performance.

Migration Path: Proprietary Platform to Red Hat Enterprise Linux and JBoss Enterprise Middleware

Software: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2, JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 4.3, including JBoss Seam, Alfresco Content Management System, and IBM DB2.

Hardware: HP BladeSystem

Benefits: Reduced operational costs, and enabled easy integration, faster development time, and in-house innovation

“Red Hat’s open source platform is the right solution for Banka Koper. It is in line with our business strategy to become independent of any technology platform and allows us to develop our own solutions and stay at the forefront of technology innovation,”
-Mojca Plahuta, director of Information Technology Division, Banka Koper

Download the case study [PDF]

BACKGROUND
Banka Koper is the sixth largest Slovenian bank based on revenue. It is part of the Italian financial group Intesa Sanpaolo, which has a presence in more than 30 countries worldwide. Banka Koper has 52 branches in Slovenia and 830 employees across the country. It serves more than 150,000 consumer and business customers.

Banka Koper is a universal bank, offering a wide range of banking services and products for households, small entrepreneurs, small and medium-sized enterprises, large companies and institutions. It processes over 45 million transactions per year. Approximately 87 percent of all the bank’s transactions are conducted via internet banking and for corporate customers around 90 percent of transactions are undertaken via the internet.

BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Banka Koper believes that online banking will continue on its strong growth trajectory. As a result, it decided to launch Banka IN, a new internet banking solution that offers customers a personal approach, more comprehensive services, and lower charges. Banka Koper is already viewed as the technological innovator on the Slovenian market, within the Intesa Sanpaolo group, and within the banking industry in general. By increasing the range of banking services it offers via the internet, Banka Koper aims to consolidate this position.
By developing Banka IN, a complete online banking solution, Banka Koper will be able to reduce costs,expand banking services and make them more effective, increase loyalty and reduce risks. Providing a secure banking environment is a priority for Banka Koper. As a result, a further requirement was the integration of chip and pin technology and card authentication within the Banka IN platform. Banka Koper is also keen to reach new customers, particularly of a young demographic, and strengthen its market position as a whole. The new internet banking project is central to achieving this goal.

SOLUTION
Initially, the in-house IT specialists at Banka Koper selected a custom e-commerce platform as the basis for the Banka IN development. However, after 12 months the team concluded that the development was too slow. The existing platform was proving too costly and inflexible and Banka Koper was disappointed by the poor documentation, lack of skills and experience on this platform in the region. The team took the difficult decision to shelve their 12 months of work and look for an alternative solution. Determined to develop in Java to avoid vendor lock-in, and to ensure Banka IN could be integrated with Banka Koper’s existing platforms and core business applications, they chose JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 4.3 which includes JBoss Seam and the reliable Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating platform.

Developing the Banka IN service using the JBoss platform also offered Banka Koper significant cost-savings and the ability to develop its own in-house solutions much more quickly. Banka IN was launched in October 2008 after 20 months of development. The solution is based predominantly on an open source stack, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2, JBoss Enterprise Application Platform which includes the powerful JBoss Seam framework, in-house developed solutions and DB2 database. The Red Hat solutions run on virtualized HP BladeSystem servers.

BENEFITS
The speed of the platform’s development was impressive, allowing the IT team to finish the project on time despite losing 12 months of work following the switch to Red Hat and JBoss solutions. After laying the foundations, developers now have the freedom to develop customized in-house solutions at a faster pace. VoIP applications and Alfresco’s content management system runs seamlessly on Red Hat’s solutions, and new applications have integrated well with the existing architecture and enable better disaster recovery. The simplicity of the Red Hat platforms allows for easy and cost-effective maintenance. Compared to other software payment models, Red Hat’s subscription model has also proven to be significantly more cost-effective.

Red Hat’s solutions allow Banka IN personal bankers to be more efficient and thus spend more time serving customers. The feedback from the market has been positive. The Banka IN solution does not require any additional costs or applications and delivers flexiblity.

Also of great importance, Red Hat’s solutions are compatible with Banka Koper’s long-term technology strategy to avoid vendor lock-in “Red Hat’s open source platform is the right solution for Banka Koper. It is in line with our business strategy to become independent of any technology platform, allows us to develop our own solutions, and stay at the forefront of technology innovation,” said Mojca Plahuta, director of Information Technology Division, Banka Koper.

After choosing Red Hat Enterprise Linux and JBoss Enterprise Middleware, Red Hat organised a workshop for Banka Koper’s developers in co-operation with its local distributor, Housing Co. d. o. o. Since the launch of Banka IN, Banka Koper has enjoyed a smooth deployment.

Banka Koper aims to secure 25,000 new customers over the next three years through Banka IN.. It also plans to move more of its services online, which would result in additional cost savings.

“Cost savings are evident with our new joint Red Hat and JBoss solution,” said Plahuta. “This is just the beginning of a success story. We have gained a lot of knowledge in the process of deploying Red Hat solutions and this knowledge represents an important asset to our bank. It will also reduce training times in the future and allow us to do more with our technology.”

FAST FACTS

Company: Sherwin-Williams Company

Industry: Paint and Coatings

Geography: Global

Business Challenge: To develop and deploy functionally rich Web applications using a standards-based platform supported by a single vendor for both home office and field use

Software: Red Hat Enterprise Linux, JBoss Enterprise Middleware

Migration Path: HP/UX and Windows to Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Hardware: x86 servers

Benefits: Improve time to market of mission-critical applications. Increase staff productivity and efficiency using JBoss Enterprise Middleware. Higher-quality applications.

“JBoss has been a great fit for solving our primary business and technical challenges. We’ve accelerated the process of getting developers trained and up to speed. We’ve managed to get our arms around a vast set of web technologies by limiting our scope while providing our business users with the applications they need to be successful.”
-Alan Flowers, manager of the Java-Web-Integration Services team at Sherwin-Williams

Download the case study [PDF]

BACKGROUND
Founded in 1866, The Sherwin-Williams Company is a global leader in the manufacture, development, distribution, and sale of coatings and related products to professional, industrial, commercial, and retail customers around the world. The company manufactures products under well-known brands such as Sherwin-Williams®, Dutch Boy®, Krylon®, Minwax®, Thompson’s® Water Seal®, and many more.

For more than 143 years, Sherwin-Williams has been committed to making and marketing innovative products of superior quality; operating a safe, clean and friendly workplace while observing the highest ethical standards in business conduct.

With global headquarters in Cleveland, Ohio Sherwin-Williams branded products are sold exclusively through a chain of more than 3,300 company-operated stores and facilities, while the company’s other brands are sold through leading mass merchandisers, home centers, independent paint dealers, hardware stores, automotive retailers, and industrial distributors.

The Sherwin-Williams Global Group distributes a wide range of products in more than 30 countries around the world. For more information, visit www.sherwin.com

BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY
Sherwin-Williams operates in three segments: Paint Stores Group, Consumer Group, and Global Finishes Group. The Consumer Group segment engages in the development, manufacture, and distribution of paints, coatings, and related products to third party customers primarily in the United States and Canada, as well as to the Paint Stores Group.

In 2005, the Consumer Group segment of The Sherwin-Williams Company migrated its web application infrastructure from a combination of HP/UX and Windows to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, primarily for standardization and reliability reasons. Last year, the Consumer Group embarked on an ambitious plan to develop web applications that run in a standard browser in this environment. Among other goals, Sherwin-Williams wanted this standard platform to create a new portfolio of applications to promote operational excellence and green initiatives.

“We hoped to create a desktop-like user experience even though these would be Web applications,” said Alan Flowers, manager of the Java-Web-Integration Services team at Sherwin-Williams. Among other criteria, “we needed something we could support over the long term and sought a trusted relationship with our main vendor,” he said.

Sherwin-Williams was pleased with both the quality of the technology and the “excellent” level of support received from Red Hat for their infrastructure deployment. Flowers didn’t hesitate to evaluate JBoss Enterprise Middleware when it came time to consider a middleware platform.

“We were already satisfied with Red Hat and this contributed to the decision to use JBoss for our middleware needs.”

SOLUTION
After bringing JBoss in-house and putting it through a rigorous due diligence process, Flowers was satisfied he’d found a suitable solution. “Given our existing commitment to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, our business goals and our desire to be very forward-thinking in our approach to Web applications, JBoss was the logical choice,” he said. Today, Sherwin-Williams is using JBoss Enterprise Middleware, specifically JBoss Developer Studio and JBoss Enterprise Application Platform, in addition to running its Web IT infrastructure on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Especially helpful was the fact that members of the Red Hat team did more than just fulfill the sales order; they provided Sherwin-Williams with strategic planning advice. “Red Hat sent experienced professionals over who had an in-depth knowledge of the JBoss offerings,” said Flowers. “We outlined what we were trying to accomplish, talked about our future plans, and were introduced to JBoss’ integrated development environment. This gave us a great head start. You can get plagued about what to use, what not to use, and what will be around down the road.” By standardizing on the Red Hat product line, “We know our platform, we know it will be supported, and we can get our people up to speed quickly and efficiently,” he said.

Flowers also liked the access he was given to senior Red Hat and JBoss engineers. As part of his due diligence, he attended JBoss World, the JBoss annual user conference, last year, and was “ pleased to meet the actual engineers who created the products I’d be using,” he said. “That kind of direct access is rare among top-tier IT vendors.”

BENEFITS
One of the benefits of adopting JBoss has been a development cycle time savings. “One of our primary goals was to create a swift Web development environment,” said Tracey Richards, manager of Electronic Commerce Services for Sherwin-Williams. “We’ve now begun to reach that goal.”

“We attended training, defined our scope, and documented our standards in preparation for development using JBoss,” said Flowers. Sherwin-Williams has also been able to reduce its overall technology portfolio. Since AJAX is embedded in the JBoss middleware stack and developers don’t have to deal with Java scripting, there is less code to manage and maintain.

Implementing a standards-based platform from one technology provider was a critical driver of Sherwin-Williams’ decision to go with JBoss. “Since we were developing business-critical systems, we wanted a single vendor to support the entire software stack, from top to bottom,” said Richards.

“We feel confident developing Web applications having the applications stack and operating system from the same vendor,” agreed Flowers. “Whether we get our account manager on the phone, or a Linux or JBoss expert, we’re certain that we will be well served.”

“JBoss has been a great fit for solving our primary business and technical challenges,” said Flowers. “We’ve accelerated the process of getting developers trained and up to speed. We’ve managed to get our arms around a vast set of web technologies by limiting our scope while providing our business users with the applications they need to be successful.”

SUCCESS STORY HIGHLIGHTS

BBP develops financial messaging applications that are offered to financial institutions on an in-house or service bureau basis for SWIFT, SIC, and other financial networks. BBP guarantees continuous interbank connection availability and 24×7 access to its IGTplus middleware. Given the sensitivity of the application and the underlying data, BBP required an application infrastructure that could meet its stringent requirements for security and availability. BBP chose Red Hat and Ingres technologies due to comprehensive functionality provided by the individual products as well as the fact that the products were pre-integrated, fully certified, tested, and tuned for performance.

This solution was also chosen because both Ingres and Red Hat are well known for providing 24×7 support and maintenance to enterprises around the world. Cost was an important factor as well. Deployed since 2003, the application provides software and services to hundreds of banks throughout Europe as well as other countries including the United States.

Download the case study [PDF]

More about Ingres: [Ingres and Red Hat]

CHALLENGE

BBP AG is an integrated software and solution vendor specializing in integration of interbank applications. Founded in Baden, Switzerland in 1984, BBP has been a subsidiary of New Jersey based Fundtech Corporation since 1999. Known as IGTplus (Interbank Gateway), the middleware created by BBP connects financial institutions to payment transactions, securities trading, and processing systems. BBP offers this middleware on an in-house or Service Bureau basis for a range of financial networks including SWIFTNet (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications), the trading, clearing and settlement systems of the SIX Group (SWX, SIC, euroSIC, SECOM) as well as FED and CHIPS (US Dollar clearing) and connectivity to Brokers.

In 1995, BBP opened Switzerland’s first independent ServiceBureau (SB). Today, BBP and its subsidiaries directly serve more than 200 financial institutions, making it the largest SWIFT SB in the world. With more than 100 active installations at approximately 50 banks and data centers, BBP serves more than 400 banks throughout Switzerland, as well as in Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, Sweden, France, Singapore, the Caribbean, and the United States.

Product reliability, security, and control are top priorities for BBP. These priorities – combined with a company-wide commitment to long-term, successful collaboration with clients and partners – have earned BBP an excellent reputation in the banking industry. Committed to serving smaller financial institutions as well, BBP promises extremely cost-effective access to interbank services plus quick, easy installation without any significant investment in hardware or software. To uphold its rock-solid reputation, this ISV must be able to guarantee continuous interbank connection availability and 24×7 access to their business-critical application, along with unshakable security and low total cost of ownership (TCO).

SOLUTION

BBP’s IGTplus middleware is a custom Java EE application developed in-house using the JBoss Enterprise Application Platform and the Ingres Database. The integrated application development stack from Red Hat and Ingres enabled BBP to develop its application in an environment preferred by their developers, and then to deploy in production within the same environment. Developing and deploying in a common environment enabled BBP to further reduce cost and risk. “By using this stack, we were able to reduce overall project costs by approximately 30% without increasing risk or sacrificing quality,” reports BBP Chief Technical Officer Amir Housseini.

Our customers come to us because they want to reduce the risk and complexity of supporting multiple platforms, procedures, and standards required in a multi-bank environment – while lowering TCO, increasing security controls, and strengthening compliance reporting capabilities. Basically, they place their trust and the success of their day-to-day business processes directly in our hands.”

That is why BBP’s entire business relies exclusively on an integrated commercial open source stack comprised of Ingres Database, a JBoss Enterprise Application Platform, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. “Ingres and Red Hat have proven, long-term track records of successful enterprise deployments,” says Housseini, “as well as world-class global support which is crucial in helping BBP meet its goals.” Additionally, BBP prefers this solution because the license-free economics of commercial open source provide the company with all the functionality of a proprietary solution at a fraction of the cost.

“With the Open Source development stack offered by Red Hat and Ingres, we can develop and deploy custom applications within the same environment. This helps us manage costs, and more confidently ensure performance, reliability, and security, because we no longer have to develop in a production environment, then deploy in another.” – Amir Housseini, Chief Technical Officer, BBP

Yet, the primary reason BBP prefers this integrated stack above all others is the fact that Ingres and JBoss are commercially proven, pre-integrated technologies that work together seamlessly. “Because JBoss is certified to work with Ingres,” says Housseini, “we know the technologies have been tested repeatedly and are guaranteed to work together. Without that certified level of assurance, we could not confidently guarantee continuous interbank connections to our customers.” Further, Housseini and his staff find Ingres to be a highend, robust database that features “solid” tools and “perfect” installation and documentation.

RESULTS

The first version of the middleware known as “IGTplus” has been in use since 2003, with a third-generation product due out in 2010. Available as an in-house solution as well as through an outsourced BBP Service Bureau solution, the mission critical application is used by leading financial institutions throughout Europe and other locations, including the United States, to:

-Access all interbank applications
-Simplify and streamline corporate payments
-Reduce TCO
-Increase security and control

Rivet Logic Helps New Gravity Venture Deploy the Application on Alfresco, JBoss, Ingres, and Red Hat

SUCCESS STORY HIGHLIGHTS

As Facebook seeks to expand beyond purely social networking, New Gravity Ventures enters the market with ConnectedWeddings.com, a Facebook application that offers an innovative and easier way to plan weddings. The new application enables couples anywhere to use Facebook, an iPhone or the Web to manage planning tasks and create a customized, professional looking wedding page-all for free.

The two most important criteria for the Facebook application were scalability and the ability to derive optimal value from the content and present it to consumers in unique ways. New Gravity Ventures also required a solution that would empower end-users with the tools they need to fully take advantage of the application’s social networking capability.

Rivet Logic chose Alfresco as the content management platform for ConnectedWeddings.com because of its ability to support content-rich applications. Rivet Logic deployed a solution based on an open source infrastructure stack that included the Alfresco content management platform, JBoss Enterprise Middleware and the Ingres Database on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Download the case study [PDF]

More about Ingres: [Ingres and Red Hat]

CHALLENGE
In May 2007, Facebook, the popular social utility tool for connecting people with friends and others around them, embarked on a strategy to make it easier for outside companies to provide their services on pages within the Facebook online community and enable them to interact with Facebook’s users and their personal networks. For Facebook, the strategy marked a significant step toward taking the business beyond pure social utility and into broader commercial territory.

To grow the application ecosystem, Facebook established the fbFund in September 2007 and began accepting grant applications to support innovative development ideas. By helping remove the development barrier, Facebook sought to build compelling businesses on the platform and broaden the scope and utility of the tool.

ConnectedWeddings.com – Developing a next-generation consumer application based on open source.

Enter New Gravity Ventures. During a 2005 trip to India, Dan and Stacy Kerzner, co-founders of consumer application developer New Gravity Ventures, were struck by the rapid pace of change in India’s retail and consumer markets. Inspired by that trip, Dan and Stacy launched Trendy.in, a free daily lifestyle newsletter designed to offer smart, fashion-conscious women-from the college-age teen to women in their 40s-the best of what’s happening around India from a woman’s point of view. The site is currently up and running with in three cities-Bombay, Delhi and Bangalore. As a result of the attention New Gravity Ventures garnered from Trendy.in, the company received a commission to write Wedding Belles: How to Make Your Dream Wedding Come True, a book about wedding planning scheduled to be published in the fall of 2008 by Random House.

“Rivet Logic’s deep Alfresco expertise was a great fit for us; we now have an end-toend open source platform that will enable us to scale quickly and cost effectively” – Dan Kerzner, CEO of New Gravity Ventures

Having retained the Web publishing rights to the book, New Gravity Ventures began thinking about ways in which it might best leverage the book’s content. It was at this time that the company turned to Facebook and applied for the company’s fbFund grant in an effort to “make a wedding application that leverages social networking functionality in order to help couples organize their lives and gain productivity through use of the social networking tool,” said Kerzner. Shortly thereafter, New Gravity Ventures became one of the first recipients of an fbFund grant and began architecting the application. To launch a successful commercial social application for Facebook, Kerzner knew that he needed a development partner who could help address several key challenges, including: the ability to fully leverage the value of the existing content; the need to develop an easily scalable solution that would provide a foundation for additional Web 2.0 functionality, such as user-generated content capability; and the ability to integrate the Facebook platform’s unique features. “With Web-based businesses, good monetization and the ability to make the most of the content assets require agility,” said Kerzner. “We’ve seen that some of the existing players in the space are spending a lot of money on their CMS systems to make them as flexible as possible in order to respond to sales needs and not just view content in a static way.”

Developing a scalable and agile Alfresco content management solution to power ConnectedWeddings.com

Perhaps the two most important criteria for the Facebook application were scalability and the ability to derive optimal value from the book’s content and present it to consumers in unique ways. New Gravity Ventures also required a solution that would empower end-users with the tools they need to fully take advantage of the application’s social networking capability. Understanding that he would need a development partner with deep open source expertise, Kerzner selected Rivet Logic, an Alfresco Certified Gold “Partner of the Year” and JBoss Certified Partner, to create a scalable and agile content delivery system based on an open source platform that would be flexible enough to address continued growth and additional features moving forward. “Rivet Logic’s ability to optimize the value of the content and build applications that scale easily made working with them a great fit,” said Kerzner.

Rivet Logic chose Alfresco as the content management platform for ConnectedWeddings.com because of its ability to support content-rich applications. Rivet Logic deployed a solution based on an open source infrastructure stack that included the Alfresco content management platform, JBoss Enterprise Middleware and the Ingres Database. The Alfresco-based Web application also supports collaboration and community functionality, such as forums, discussion threads, photo galleries, polls, and other ways for brides and grooms to contact others and facilitate communication. In this way, ConnectedWeddings.com serves as a model of the increasing significance of content services in the Web 2.0 environment and how content is connected to people in the context of social networking.

Rivet Logic led the overall architectural design of the platform. The solution design enables the Alfresco platform to publish content to an Alfresco and JBoss production Web site that integrates not only with Facebook for social network interaction, but also with an array of applications such as Web site analytics and based on an open source infrastructure stack that included the Alfresco content management platform, JBoss Enterprise Middleware and the Ingres Database. The Alfresco-based Web application also supports collaboration and community functionality, such as forums, discussion threads, photo galleries, polls, and other ways for brides and grooms to contact others and facilitate communication. In this way, ConnectedWeddings. com serves as a model of the increasing significance of content services in the Web 2.0 environment and how content is connected to people in the context of social networking.

Alfresco also provided the flexibility and agility necessary to accommodate multiple end-users and templates. With the Alfresco solution, the ConnectedWeddings.com editorial team can generate content and upload it to the site quickly and easily. Further, with single sign-on support across the application, Web-based administration, and the ability to easily integrate dynamic Web pages and portlets, JBoss Enterprise Application Platofrom offered the scalable enterprise-grade solution that New Gravity Ventures needed moving forward. Alfresco provided a robust back-end solution that features sophisticated workflows, rich metadata modeling, full-text and metadata search capability, and support for rich content, including audio and video.

The Ingres Database was selected because of its track record of high performance and scalability in mission-critical environments, and because of the advantageous economics that open source software offers over proprietary alternatives. Ingres is also a certified Alfresco database partner which helped to shorten development timelines and simplify deployment.

A cost-effective, zero-license-fee approach based on open source and open standards will enable New Gravity Ventures to scale the platform to meet user demand, without incurring prohibitive costs. As a result, the open source approach will also allow New Gravity Ventures to minimize upfront investment and focus efforts on customization and innovation. The open source model will establish a foundation from which to reduce operating costs and accommodate future extensions.

Rivet Logic-Developing open source solutions for the next generation of social networking applications

For New Gravity Ventures, Rivet Logic’s combination of deep technical knowledge, and experience designing and implementing innovative open source applications proved to be a winning combination.

“We were building a unique, socially aware application so we needed a trusted development partner who had a proven track record of building rock-solid solutions,” said Kerzner. The launch of ConnectedWeddings.com makes Alfresco the first platform of its kind to form the backbone of a content-intensive Facebook application.

Critical to the success of ConnectedWeddings.com is the ability to scale and integrate Web 2.0 functionality, such as discussion threads, photo galleries, polls and other forms of user-generated content. Alfresco enables site editors to create and upload content quickly and easily, while allowing end-users to participate in community activities, reference site features easily, and communicate with other users through the power of social networking. Ultimately, Rivet Logic provided an objective view of the unique challenges faced by New Gravity Ventures and delivered a solution based on a set of proven best practices and an understanding of the unique needs of the ConnectedWeddings.com site.

ABOUT RIVET LOGIC
Rivet Logic is an award-winning consulting and systems integration firm that helps organizations better engage with customers, improve collaboration and streamline business operations. Through a full suite of open source content management services, Rivet Logic enables organizations to fully leverage the power of industry-leading open source solutions. With deep expertise in the Alfresco Enterprise Content Management platform, Liferay Portal, Ingres Database and JBoss Enterprise Middleware, Rivet Logic crafts content-rich solutions that power the new generation of Web properties, Enterprise 2.0 applications and collaborative communities. With offices in Reston, Virginia and Cambridge, Massachusetts, Rivet Logic serves clients across a wide range of industries. Rivet Logic-Artisans of Open Source.

FAST FACTS

Industry: Financial Services

Geography: Hong Kong

Business Challenge: Rapid business growth and the expansion of its service portfolio made it necessary to replace website with an efficient financial information portal, and to leverage virtualization technology to reduce hardware footprint and increase operational flexibility

Migration Path: Microsoft Windows and UNIX to Red Hat Enterprise Linux AP with integrated virtualization

Software: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 with integrated virtualization, Red Hat Satellite, JBoss Enterprise Application Platform, Hibernate

Hardware: Intel Xeon based servers

Services: Red Hat Consulting

Benefits: High-performance, flexible IT infrastructure delivered through the integrated virtualization technology in Red Hat Enterprise Linux and 50-70% Reduction in software and hardware costs

“Previously, in the financial services industry, companies were forced to rely on proprietary vendors. We are using Red Hat because of our confidence in the company to meet our very high levels of availability, performance and security that are essential in our business. The use of Red Hat and JBoss has enabled us to save approximately 50-70% overall on the entire project costs and even more in annual costs.”
-Philip Choi, Head of Technology for Quam Limited

Download the case study [PDF]

BACKGROUND
Quam Limited serves both institutional and retail investors and provides an array of services supporting participation in capital markets and wealth management. The company’s history goes back to the founding of Quam Limited in 1986 and the listing of Quam Ltd on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 1997. Today Quam Ltd is the holding company of a diverse financial services and wealth management group with a major and fast-growing stake in Mainland China through strategic alliances and intermediaries.

The Quam Limited used Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Advanced Platform with virtualization technology and JBoss Enterprise Application Platform, to re-build its website, www.quamnet.com, as a high-performance information portal in three languages and serve several million customers. The new portal is designed to combine the financial services offerings with an online financial information and investment advisory portal, for retail clients and investor relations services for corporate clients.

BUSINESS CHALLENGE
In 1998, Quam built the first financial services website in Hong Kong. However, by the spring of 2007, Quam’s rapid business growth and the expansion of its service portfolio made it necessary to replace the existing website with an efficient financial information portal that would provide a much stronger link between the firm’s financial services and its hundreds of thousands of members.

Slow access time was becoming a problem with the old website. “In our business, users expect very rapid response time,” said Philip Choi, Head of Technology for Quam Limited, “and our infrastructure was not able to handle the large user base that we had acquired.”

The financial information portal also has to process direct connections to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange for stock announcements on listed companies as well as wire news services, including Xinhua and Infocast Financial news for news of Hong Kong and Asia.

“We have a very large number of active members, many of whom are involved in online trading,” said Choi. “We needed to provide them with market information, including financial news, reports, analysis and real-time stock quotes.” In addition, the financial information portal needed a redesign of its front-end, the Content Management System, and back-end, the Customer Relations Management System, in order to enable Quam to know and serve our members better.

Another problem with the old website was the inflexible infrastructure, which made updating web content a tedious business. “Our financial information has to be altered frequently, so we needed a fast, simple way of updating the site,” said Choi.

When Philip Choi joined Quam in May 2007, he was asked to completely re-build the website. “We were asked to totally revamp and restructure the website, so we basically did everything from scratch,” said Choi.

SOLUTION
The main operating systems used in the existing website were Windows and UNIX. “For the financial services industry, Windows may have some security issues,” said Choi. “UNIX is more costly, in terms of license fees and related hardware. I also had to consider the availability of skilled support labor.”

In his previous experience, Choi had used Red Hat Enterprise Linux successfully, so he decided to measure it against the existing alternatives. “One advantage would be that Red Hat Enterprise Linux can run on powerful and inexpensive servers, with a wide choice of hardware vendors,” said Choi, “So we would not be locked into any proprietary technology.”

Another factor in Quam’s decision was the wide acceptance of Red Hat Enterprise Linux as the leading platform within the financial services sector. Quamnet has the same demands for performance, availability and security as other major financial institutions, said Choi. “Like other players in the financial services market, we seek alliance with the leading vendors to optimize the performance and security of our operations.”

Today, Red Hat is a very mature OS, and the vendor provides high quality direct support. “I have confidence in the top management of Red Hat in Hong Kong and believe the company is a long-term partner for Quam,” said Choi.

Quam IT Department started the study project on the new financial information portal in May 2007, and the staff talked to several vendors. “We decided to go with Red Hat Enterprise Linux for its cost-effectiveness, enterprise support, ease-of-management, and flexibility,” said Choi.

Red Hat Consulting provided guidance and hands-on support to the Quam IT team, right from the planning stage. “Once our server hardware was installed, Red Hat Consulting certified the platforms as stable and scalable and carried out all the software installation work, providing a guarantee to remedy any platform issues,” said Choi.

Throughout the installation process, Red Hat helped Quam with the sizing and planning of how to configure the resources. “We gave them figures, such as the number of portal visitors and page views per day that we needed to support,” said Choi. “This helped us determine how many servers, how many CPUs and how much memory we needed. We have a requirement of so many transactions per second, and we need to guarantee the response time provided to end-users.”

Quam’s infrastructure includes server farms to support front-end users’ access and back-end service delivery with all Intel Xeon based servers on rack mounted blades. Quam relied on Red Hat for the majority of the sizing work on planning the financial information portal, server utilization, and connections to the database and application layers.

In the Red Hat Linux Advanced Platform, virtualization is more powerful than ever. Features such as distributed lock management, global file system, logical volume management, can now operate over multiple physical systems and guest operating environments.

Quam also uses Red Hat Network Satellite to help the company keep its open source environment up-to-date and to help efficiently manage its physical and virtual servers. “The beauty is we can reassign memory and CPUs on-the-fly and whatever applications need more resources, we can provide them immediately,” said Choi.

Clustering is one of the elements of virtualization that Quam required. Red Hat Advanced Platform Virtualization Technology allows Quam users to easily move applications and resources between servers.

Powerful middleware: JBoss Enterprise Application Platform
The financial information portal build was carried out at high speed, aided substantially by Red Hat Consulting, and was mostly complete in months. “My in-house programmers had to write a number of new applications from scratch, mostly using Java J2EE,” said Choi. “It was then subjected to extensive testing, after which we went live in mid-January 2008.”

To support the large number of applications on their financial information portal, Quam selected JBoss Enterprise Application Platform, which it found to be the best platform for innovative and highly scalable Java applications. Integrated and simplified, it includes powerful open source technologies for building, deploying and hosting enterprise Java applications and services.

A key part of Quam’s use of JBoss Application Platform is Hibernate, a framework that
enables users to express queries in native SQL, an extension called HQL, or with an object-oriented Criteria and Example API. Hibernate provided a ubiquitous object-relational mapping and persistence framework which does not require hand-written SQL or stored procedures and this provides a significant increase in performance and scalability.

Another JBoss technology used was the JBoss cluster, which is a group of nodes comprising JBoss server instances within a server partition. “Individual nodes can be added to or removed from a cluster at any time,” said Choi. “JBoss Clustering provides high availability for J2EE applications running inside of JBoss.”

The use of JBoss middleware enabled Quam to speed up the creation of applications. “Our system is very stable, and that enables our IT team to concentrate on the programming operation,” said Choi.

BENEFITS
Quam has invested in multi-lingual market communications. “Our financial information portal provides both traditional and simplified Chinese language versions, plus English,” said Choi. “Our competitors have traditional Chinese only, some with English. I am proud of the fact that we were able to build a best-in-class information portal with Red Hat within six months, in three languages.”

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform provides integrated server and storage virtualization technologies. The virtualization provided is easy-to-deploy, simple to manage, flexible. “Red Hat Virtualization has enabled us to reduce the numbers of servers we need,” said Choi, “and that in turn has reduced the space, cooling and power consumption.”

For users, the new information portal provides a much faster response to queries, even at peak times during the stock exchange trading hours. It’s also much easier to update information on the new financial information portal. JBoss provides a programming framework which facilitates changes to business logic using minimum programming effort.

“Previously, in the financial services industry, companies were forced to rely on proprietary vendors,” said Choi. “We are using Red Hat because of our confidence in the company to meet our very high levels of availability, performance and security that are essential in our business. But we are not locked in to any vendor. The beauty of open source is that it enables freedom of choice.”

Red Hat service team not only supported the financial information portal build, but also provided valuable information on best practices. This was vital in helping Quam to achieve an outstanding time-to-market for the project. “The use of Red Hat and JBoss has enabled us to save approximately 50-70% overall on the entire project costs and even more in annual costs,” said Choi.

The success of the project confirms the value of open source solutions as a long-term strategy. “Overall we made a solid decision in choosing Red Hat as our partner and our customer’s have benefited from our decision to use Red Hat and JBoss technologies,” said Choi.

“Our next project will be a financial information portal specifically for the Mainland China market and we will need to deploy servers on a larger scale,” added Choi. “We are committed to open source software over proprietary software, and we definitely plan to keep using Red Hat in future.”

FAST FACTS

Customer: Kliniken des Landkreises Lörrach

Industry: Healthcare

Country: Germany

Solution: Enterprise Resource Planning, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Optimizing IT, Supply Chain Management

Business Partner: IBM, SAP, EGT InformationsSysteme

Business Need:
Kliniken des Landkreises Lörrach, a hospital with 1,400 staff and an annual budget of around €100 million, wanted to improve both business and clinical efficiency. Users found that SAP applications were slow to respond to their requests, as the underlying database had reached its performance limit. The system could not be extended or developed, and the database had to be taken offline for maintenance.

Solution:
The hospital implemented the latest SAP applications and selected IBM DB2 running under Red Hat Enterprise Linux on the IBM BladeCenter platform. It also chose IBM System Storage and IBM System x hardware to support a new storage area network for clinical imaging.

Benefits:
SAP application and database response times have been cut by more than 30 per cent, and users gain rapid, reliable access to critical business data. Database maintenance can be completed online, avoiding interruptions, and a clustering solution ensures system reliability. The new SAN offers scalable storage up to 112TB, a tenfold increase in current capacity.

“Our 32-bit operating system was limited to 4GB of main memory, which was limiting our ability to improve performance. Running 64-bit Red Hat Enterprise Linux on IBM blade servers immediately allowed us to increase system RAM to 16GB, and this alone produced significant improvements in performance.”
-Dieter Reichl, Head of Business Technology

Download the IBM Case Study: IBM Case Study PDF

Overview

The Lörrach region is tucked into the south-western tip of Germany, bordering France and Switzerland. Kliniken des Landkreises Lörrach, based in the city of Lörrach itself, serves the local population with both in- and outpatient general healthcare. The hospital employs some 1,400 staff, with an annual budget of around €100 million, very largely generated by medical insurance payments.

The Lörrach region is tucked into the south-western tip of Germany, bordering France and Switzerland. Kliniken des Landkreises Lörrach, based in the city of Lörrach itself, serves the local population with both in- and outpatient general healthcare. The hospital employs some 1,400 staff, with an annual budget of around €100 million, very largely generated by medical insurance payments.

Approximately 600 people require regular access to business and patient management systems. The hospital had been using SAP applications, supported by a Microsoft SQL Server database running on the Microsoft Windows platform. System response was slow and becoming slower, and the opportunities for database tuning – which required downtime – were limited. Additionally, healthcare legislation requires that medical records and images are retained for 30 years, contributing to a significant rise in storage needs.

Dieter Reichl, Head of Business Technology, comments, “The aim was to introduce the latest SAP applications, which would enhance our business processes and give us new reporting and control capabilities. The existing system landscape would not be capable of supporting the new applications.

“Ultimately this was a technical issue. Based on the 32-bit Microsoft Windows Server operating system, the MS SQL database had reached its performance limit. To meet our business needs, we wanted to shift to a 64-bit operating system and database, and looked for the best combination of software and hardware to give us high performance, high reliability and low operational cost.”

Choosing a SAP application landscape

Starting with the target SAP applications, the clinic selected the SAP for Healthcare solution portfolio, with the addition of specific financial accounting, asset management, materials management, project systems and project management applications.

“The SAP applications provide a powerful environment for all our hospital operations,” says Dieter Reichl. “We track every patient, procedure and process within the SAP ERP landscape. With a shared information resource for all our activities, the SAP applications help us to run a highly efficient healthcare service for the citizens of the Lörrach district.”

Knowing that database performance, scalability and reliability would be key to providing effective service to clinicians and managers, Dieter Reichl selected IBM DB2.

“DB2 offers key advantages for the hospital, particularly its close integration with SAP applications, its ability to complete administration tasks online, and its very high performance,” says Dieter Reichl. “The exceptional price-performance combination offered by DB2 met our desire to reduce operational costs, and simple administration means there is no need to employ a specialist database administrator.

“The migration process ran smoothly and efficiently, and we found that we needed very little training to transfer to the new DB2 environment.”

“The price-performance ratio lead us to the decision to select DB2. In addition, we have no time for reorganization runs of the database, which is not possible in our environment, and DB2 is able to handle these runs even during production.”

Red Hat Enterprise Linux on BladeCenter

Kliniken des Landkreises Lörrach looked at possible 64-bit operating systems, including Windows Server, UNIX and Linux, and selected Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The next stage was to select suitable infrastructure, capable of delivering the promised improvements and offering a stable long-term solution.

The hospital chose to deploy an IBM BladeCenter with HS21 blade servers, featuring quad-core Intel Xeon processors, to support the SAP applications and DB2 database. IBM BladeCenter offers integrated servers, storage and networking systems in a single chassis. The BladeCenter’s future-proof design, with the emphasis on high availability, is the right solution for meeting the challenging demands of the hospital’s IT infrastructure.

“Our 32-bit operating system was limited to 4GB of main memory, which was limiting our ability to improve performance. Running 64-bit Red Hat Enterprise Linux on IBM blade servers immediately allowed us to increase system RAM to 16GB, and this alone produced significant improvements in performance,” says Dieter Reichl. “We run the servers in a cluster, and the BladeCenter approach allows us to increase total compute capacity quickly and easily by adding another blade server to the cluster with minimum physical deployment effort.”

Implementation was completed in partnership with EGT, a division of DataGroup. Server clustering, using Veritas Cluster Server, ensures that should an application or physical server fail, the environment can be restarted on an available server and reconnected to storage and services – so users can continue working.

“The collaboration with EGT and Veritas was very good, and IBM completed the database migration effectively. The transfer to the new systems was completed on time and without a hitch,” says Dieter Reichl.

Medical imaging database

Medical images generated by x-ray, CT and similar scanning techniques, are retained in a separate database. Image storage and retrieval requests are generated by clinicians using the SAP patient management applications, and slow response time was becoming a significant source of frustration. Healthcare legislation requires 30-year retention of patients’ medical records and associated images, which means that image data could not be deleted to reduce storage needs or increase performance.

With some 12TB of live and archived images, existing storage systems were struggling to deliver image requests rapidly and reliably. The hospital replaced its direct-attached storage servers with a new storage area network (SAN), based on an IBM System Storage DS4700 Express, controlled by two IBM System x servers.

“The DS4700 offers very high performance, and total capacity of up to 112TB – almost ten times more than our current needs. It offers very cost-effective expansion opportunities, and is helping us meet our legal requirements with reliable, secure data retention.”

Improved performance and reliability

The new, fully integrated SAP and IBM solutions are already proving their worth at Kliniken des Landkreises Lörrach. Clinicians and business users report that system response times have halved or are even faster. The Red Hat Linux cluster ensures that the SAP applications and DB2 database is always available, essential to hospital efficiency.

“Using SAP applications we have a fully integrated performance monitoring and communications system, and some 90 per cent of departments and services rely on this solution. Operating theatres, endoscopy and x-ray – and of course patients – all depend on IT reliability and performance, and without it the hospital stops working.”

Dieter Reichl concludes, “The SAP and IBM solution brings us low costs and high reliability, perfect for critical healthcare at Kliniken des Landkreises Lörrach.”

FAST FACTS

Geography: Republic of Korea

Business Challenge: Searched for a reliable, high-performing alternative to reduce server failure, optimize resources, and enable faster response times

Migration Path: From UNIX to Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform with integrated virtualization

Software: Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform with integrated virtualization technology, Oracle database

Hardware: Dell PE2950/ PE1850, EMC CX3-10

Benefits: Achieved significant cost savings by deploying a reliable, open source virtualization solution with Red Hat, reduced maintenance costs with hardware integration and clustering, acquired operation flexibility, and experienced ease of use and ease of management

“By deploying Red Hat’s open source-based virtualization solution, we were able to receive the proven stability of the platform and Red Hat’s reliable support and services.”
Hwang Sae Yong, assistant manager of Computer Operation Team for Korea Federation of Banks

Download the case study [PDF]

BACKGROUND
Korea Federation of Banks (KFB), a non-profit organization founded in 1928, plays a role in the development of the Korean finance industry. Its members include all commercial banks, special banks, and provincial banks, while its associate members include all Korean branch offices of foreign banks. It promotes the development of financial industry through cooperation between financial institutions, R&D of financial issues, and improvements of business practices of banking industry. It also establishes healthy credit transaction order with centralized management of credit information and evaluation about financial institutions clients.

BUSINESS CHALLENGE
KFB faced the challenge of unreliable systems that could not meet the organization’s performance needs. Its previous server system lacked resources and often experienced failures that resulted in delayed response and availability of its mission-critical systems. In addition, the usage of the overall system was not balanced, causing some servers to be under-utilized.

It was important to KFB to integrate its many physical servers into a virtualized environment to benefit from ease of management, cost savings, and for the ability to configure multiple guest operating systems. It also wanted to increase system availability.

SOLUTION
To address these challenges, KFB decided to deploy Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform for its integrated virtualization technology. By duplicating the configuration of existing systems to server virtualization from Red Hat, KFB was able to leverage a reliable solution that provided no downtime.

“We chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advance Platform after considering maintenance cost reduction, support, and manageability,” said Hwang Sae Yong, assistant manager of Computer Operation Team for Korea Federation of Banks.

“By deploying Red Hat’s open source-based virtualization solution, we were able to receive the proven stability of the platform and Red Hat’s reliable support and services. This also resulted in ease of management for our solutions. With Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform with integrated virtualization, we are able to leverage our full hardware capabilities and cannot tell the difference between our physical and virtual systems.”

BENEFITS
In addition to integrated virtualization, Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform includes Red Hat Cluster Suite and Red Hat Global File System (GFS) technology for no additional cost. With these solutions, KFB was able to achieve high availability, maximizing availability by minimizing service downtime, and significantly increased reliability and availability of service.

“In addition, with Red Hat virtualization, we were able to reduce the number of servers we were maintaining, and were able to innovatively reduce operation costs including server and power costs,” said Yong.

“After implementing Red Hat virtualization technology, our systems are running much more smoothly, and we are able to achieve flexible service operation through online migration.”

FAST FACTS

Industry: Information Technology

Geography: Australia

Business Challenge: CVSDude required a platform that was affordable, bullet-proof, and ensured scheduled release cycles

Software: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4

Hardware: 24 x AMD and Intel servers, up to quad code 2.5GHz

Benefits:

• Stable and reliable platform with optimal uptime
• Superior security
• Affordable
• Built-in, scheduled release cycles

Download the case study [PDF]

BACKGROUND
Since 2002, CVSDude has served as the original provider of free and commercial Subversion hosting and CVS hosting for individuals, startups, and Fortune 1,000 companies.

CVSDude’s technology allows maximum availability to source code while ensuring its security. It delivers this service through dual CPU servers running hardware RAID-5, each connected by 6x redundant 10GigE pipes, and all housed in state of the art US-based data centres.

CHALLENGE
More than 65,000 users, including Government institutions, private enterprises, universities, and not-for-profit organisations across 110 countries rely on CVSDude to deliver a highly available solution for their mission-critical systems responsible for activities from hosting code to providing collaboration and project management.

One of Australia’s leading web design agencies depends on CVSDude to manage team-based development of client portfolio projects, and to distribute deliverables to Fortune 500 clients. Similarly, Zuora, a high-growth Software as a Service leader in the online subscription billing space, uses CVSDude to manage two China-based development teams and achieve rapid 4-week release cycles.

“Customers pay us to guarantee that we can provide 99.9 percent uptime, but we needed a rock-solid, reliable support system in place so that we had the foundations to deliver on that promise,” said Mark Bathie, CTO, director, and founder of CVSDude.

In order to offer a service that was fit for managing mission-critical workloads, CVSDude required a platform that was not only stable and affordable, but ensured scheduled, built-in release cycles.

“From the outset we knew we were looking for a Linux solution — we wouldn’t use anything else for what we are hosting — but we needed enterprise-ready Linux that would offer CVSDude and our customers absolute confidence.”

SOLUTION
With more than 15 years of Linux experience, CVSDude’s team was well aware of the cost efficiencies and security benefits that were possible with a commercial application of Linux.

“You can’t compare code that has been developed, reviewed, and tested by thousands of coders worldwide to closed-source code, which is generally developed by a much smaller team. The former is going to be far more resilient, secure, and more cost-effective than anything closed code can offer,” said Bathie.

Working with its US data centre providers, in 2005, CVSDude selected Red Hat Enterprise Linux over a variety of Linux alternatives, as the basis of its hosted solution. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 was deployed across the 24 servers that comprise CVSDude’s distributed development environment.

The decision to use Red Hat Enterprise Linux was based on Red Hat’s well-established reputation for enterprise-class Linux, its prompt release cycles, affordability, and first-class security.

“Our distributed development model allows for richer functionality along with the flexibility to evolve our business more rapidly. Enhancing that set-up with Red Hat Enterprise Linux just made good business sense,” said Bathie.

BENEFITS
Since deploying Red Hat Enterprise Linux four years ago, CVSDude has acknowledged that without the backing of a reliable, secure platform like Red Hat Enterprise Linux, it couldn’t have delivered the level of service customers have come to expect from its organisation. Bathie believes the business can’t afford not to work with Red Hat.

“It stands to reason that customers use CVSDude for the same reason we use Red Hat Enterprise Linux – it continues to provide a superior level of service for a better price and with better security,” he said.

The longer lifecycles of between six and 12 months have been of particular value to CVSDude, removing the need to change packages and enabling more effective planning for the future. According to Bathie, the guaranteed release cycles delivered with Red Hat Enterprise Linux are another way Red Hat has been good for business.

Today, CVSDude is continuing to grow exponentially, adding some 100 customers a month to its service.

“Around 10 per cent of new customers are coming to us from proprietary systems. People are looking to save money and benefit from more feature rich systems, and are therefore looking to open source solutions and to open source leader Red Hat,” said Bathie.