Linux has won another battle over proprietary software
with the decision of Bergen, Norway's second-largest city, to
consolidate older Windows and Unix servers on Novell's SuSE Linux
Enterprise Server 8.
The agreement was announced shortly after Munich decided to go
ahead with a deal which will see 14,000 desktops switched from
Windows to Linux.
However, Bergen's plan does not involve desktops, and therefore
poses less of a potential threat to Microsoft. The shift will
affect 50,000 users and is expected to deliver immediate cost
savings by drastically reducing the complexity of the city's IT
systems, according to the city's chief technology officer, Ole
Bjoern Tuftedal.
Linux is increasingly popular in enterprises, where many
industry observers believe it will ultimately replace Unix.
Unlike Unix, which traditionally was used on proprietary
processors designed for a particular flavour of the operating
system, Linux distributions are largely interchangeable and
normally run on commodity hardware from Intel or AMD.
Linux competes with Windows in the Unix-replacement market, and
has the potential to compete with Windows on business desktops,
particularly for terminals running a fixed set of applications,
such as in call centres.
Recent figures from IDC showed that Linux server unit shipments
grew 46.4% in the first quarter of this year over the same quarter
last year, compared with 26.5% for Windows server shipments.
Novell, along with competitors such as IBM and HP, sees Linux as
a way of allowing customers to standardise on a single low-cost,
non-proprietary platform, migrating from a number of systems to
Linux-based clusters or mainframes.
"You need one operating system to do that. What we have is an
important initiative to help customers to add Linux to their
infrastructure," said Novell EMEA president Richard Seibt.
The Bergen arrangement will put these Linux arguments to the
test.
Initially, 20 Oracle database servers running on HP-UX, HP's
version of Unix, will be replaced with about 10 SuSE servers on
Itanium-based HP Integrity servers.
In a second phase, the city plans to consolidate more than 100
application servers used in schools around the city into a
centralised set of 20 IBM eServer blades running Linux.
Once the database servers are moved over - which will affect
all the city administration's databases, including those used for
heath and welfare services - the city plans to standardise its
network, mail and DHCP servers on SuSE Linux Enterprise Server
8.
Many are already running various versions of Linux, so
standardisation should simplify things for the city's IT staff,
resulting in a short-term pay-off, Tuftedal said.
The city said keeping costs down was an important factor in its
choice of Linux over Unix or Windows, something that will resonate
with many enterprise customers.
"In addition to the IT-based benefits from migration to Linux,
we attain a business model that doesn't tie us to a single
suppliers architecture," said Bergen's chief information officer,
Janicke Runshaug Foss.
The roll-out is expected to be completed by the end of this
year.
Matthew Broersma writes for Techworld.com