John Lewis has become one of the first UK blue-chip
organisations to deploy Linux on a strategic business
application.
The retailer used the quiet period over the Easter weekend to
install in-house Linux customer service software, based on IBM's
Websphere application server on a new eSeries mainframe.
Originally developed for Windows, the application is being
migrated to Linux running on the mainframe because of concerns that
Windows could not cope with the growing number of transactions,
said John Keeling director of computer services at John Lewis. He
described the Linux application as "strategic".
The deployment is part of a wider project to upgrade John Lewis'
mainframe to support expansion as the partnership takes on board
the 19 Safeway stores it purchased from supermarket chain Morrisons
last month.
The installation represents a major step forward for Linux in
the enterprise. Although 60% of European mainframe users had taken
up IBM's offer of a free processor to run Linux on the mainframe,
few were running live Linux systems, according to Rakesh Kumar,
senior vice-president at analyst firm Meta Group.
"Less than 7% of IBM's customers are running Linux on the
mainframe," he said. As far as he was aware, John Lewis was the
first UK company to state publicly that it was running a strategic
application based on Linux.
However, Kumar warned companies looking to follow John Lewis'
lead to ensure they were confident Linux could meet the performance
demands of running on a mainframe. Gary Barnett, senior analyst at
Ovum, predicted that other companies would follow John Lewis'
example with Linux.
"Linux gives existing [zSeries] users a way of using the
processing capacity of the mainframe," he said.
Julie Ann Williams, who heads the large systems special interest
group at IBM user group Guideshare Europe, said, "If you are
planing to run business applications on Linux, the mainframe is the
way to go due to the stability of its hardware and infrastructure.
A zSeries is far less likely to fall over compared to a
Windows-based server."
Benefits of Linux on the mainframe
- The mainframe is able to run thousands of separate instances of
Linux on a single machine, which makes it attractive when users
want to consolidate server infrastructure
- Linux benefits from the mainframe's reputation for rock-solid
reliability and security
- IBM has made it attractive for users to pilot Linux projects on
their mainframes by providing free mainframe processors to test
Linux applications
- Applications written for the Websphere J2EE 2.0 application
server can be migrated from Windows to Linux relatively easily,
according to industry analysts, as the application server runs on
both operating systems.