Auckland to get Linux centre

By ADAM GIFFORD


IBM has established a Linux centre of competency in Auckland on the back of work it is doing to shift many of Air New Zealand's core applications to the open-source environment.

Centre head Chris Phillips said the 10-strong team had built tools and processes to simplify deployment of Linux in large- or medium-sized organisations.

"We have built an enterprise infrastructure, a cookie-cutter machine which can deploy Linux guests across the enterprise. Whether it be on mainframe or midrange server, it does not matter, nor does it matter what type of Linux it is," Phillips said.

"We see Linux as a key enabler for customers. Lots of companies have infrastructure they have built up year on year on proprietary systems, where they have been told, 'You need this type of machine to put this application on.'

"Linux has the ability to change all that. We can take that equipment, centralise and downsize, and lower the total cost of ownership by double-digit figures."

Phillips said Linux was particularly suitable for web infrastructure.

"A lot of people have multiple servers across the shop floor all running Windows, with all their web infrastructure hooked up. Well, why would you?

"Let's get rid of all those servers, put in machines where we can LPar [logical partition] them up to create virtual servers, cut 150 servers to 20, so cut down all those machines you are paying for, all the Windows licences on those platforms."

Phillips said his team was building a new web infrastructure for Air New Zealand. "The infrastructure will be live in February, and we will be porting applications to it through to June."

That includes a project to move the airline's SAP system to Linux.

Phillips said Air New Zealand might split the application so the parts which involve mainly input/output processing could be done on a Linux partition on a mainframe, while more processor-intensive parts could be done on midrange servers; or it could run the whole application on midrange servers on Linux.

The application is currently run a large Sun server using Sun's proprietary Solaris Unix operating system.

"We are looking at all those options with Air New Zealand because they are looking at dropping their cost of ownership," Philips said.

He said big corporates were reluctant to move to Linux despite perceived cost advantages because they were worried about the support.

"The last thing you want as a corporate is to put your financial system up on Linux and then have it all fall over, and have to open yourself up to asking for help from the open-source community.

"The difference here is IBM will do this for you and stand behind it. We will sign the service-level agreements and provide first, second and third level support, we will represent you to the open-source community if required."

Phillips said he had sheaves of resumes from people who wanted to be involved with the competency centre, which would also service clients in Australia and Asia.

Among those hired so far is Andreas Girardet, who founded Yoper (Your Operating System), a desktop Linux which monitoring DistroWatch said was the fifth most downloaded distribution over the past 12 months.