There would not be much point in manufacturing very low cost
boxes that simply didn’t work. Many of the chips and other
equipment included in the boxes are commodity items that are freely
available to all companies. Competitive edge comes from smart
design and manufacture of well performing and reliable boxes.
Anthony Walton, chief executive of SMB Access Devices points out
that it’s really quality that has cemented his company’s strong
market position. "We’ve held our market share of 10% on the basis
that [our products] are very reliable. The set-top retailers hate
returning equipment more than anything. Our boxes have a return
rate of 1%; the average industry rate is around 7% so we are really
holding our own in there on reliability and also on
performance."
The company’s business maintains a design philosophy that allows
the company to use a relatively small number of engineers to design
quite a large number of products. The company was adamant that it
didn’t want to repeat the mistakes of rivals burgeoned with
engineers. Yet even with this doctrine, Access Devices realised
that even though it was keeping down the number of engineers per
product, the number of IT support engineers in the company was
actually going up.
Anthony Walton is very clear about the reasons why: "This was a
lot to do with using Windows as a server system; in terms of the
update efforts keeping desktops at the same level all the time, and
interoperability issues between the different levels of the
different versions of Windows. Every time we bought a new PC we
were introducing a new operating system; you either had to bring
all of the other machines up [to meet the new one] or drag the new
machine back to meet the older ones."
Cost was also an issue, but not necessarily the cost of the
licences of the operating system but the cost of people to support
the operating system. Access Devices decided towards the autumn of
2004 that it simply had to make a change;and that change was to
embrace Linux-based technology.
Access Devices feels that it was steered in a way by its
decision because its software team had been involved in the open
source movement and other engineers were very familiar with Linux
regarding reliability and performance. The Access Devices engineers
were using two PCs in their work: one for engineering work and one
for office applications. Anthony Walton does concede that if the
company hadn’t had such in-built knowledge, it may well have not
been so keen to move to Linux.
"If we hadn’t been so confident in the capabilities of Linux it
would have been a much more difficult decision to make," he
accepts.
Yet despite having no technical misgivings, Access Devices did
need some help in terms of using Linux to add value to the
business. To rectify this problem it produced a tender document and
a request for information based on the findings of a key committee
within the company encompassing key parts of the business that
would be most affected by any change.
"The committee had indicative members including those from
graphics, software, finance etc. We took people who we thought
would have the most difficulty in the transition to guide us. We
also picked one or two naysayers to get their opinion," says
Walton.
One member of the committee was head of marketing Anthony
Allison. He recalls: "We have an extensive range of graphics
material for user guides and packaging. Our [business's] range of
software is extensive: we had to be sure that the entire range of
applications would work with the new systems."
The company that best suited the needs of Access Devices and
offer the potential for adding most value was Weybridge-based
Sirius, a founding member of the Open Source Consortium and a
consultancy that offers enterprise open source deployment
capabilities.
With Access Devices, Sirius’ basic approach was to bring a broad
vision of what Linux could offer and then focus on what part of
Open Source had best fit with the company’s operations. This
impressed Anthony Walton. He says: "The first thing they said was
'don't be blinded by Linux; Linux is a huge success and your
engineers love it but it its not all that’s out there.' [Sirius]
introduced a number of products that replaced Outlook, our calendar
system and other tools.
"They broadened our minds to what open source was and used their
experience to introduce this to the company [in a way that] didn’t
introduce frictions. We were impressed with Sirius’ enthusiasm more
than anything and also their vision gelled with us: they talk
business."
The replacement programme was six months, beginning Christmas
2004, a "mad, mad time when half of our products are sold”, reveals
Walton. "It could have blown up horribly but it was managed
properly by Sirius and our IT department. Sirius did a very good
job and there were people here at the key times to deal with
problems as they happened."
Making the change over the Christmas holiday ensured that all
problems were dealt with over when most staff were not present.
Walton insists that most of the transition was taken up with
planning and management. He adds: "It’s gone relatively smoothly
with only one crash so far. We’ve now got a much more stable and
better protected system."
Specifically, Access Devices sees Linux as much better at being
able to deal with worms and viruses and no longer would PCs crash
on a regular basis.
As seems the normal case, Access Devices made the switch with
the mail server first, then the file server and then over to the
desktop. The last things to change will be the company’s laptops
and personal digital assistants. What won’t be going to Linux right
now is the internal operating system of the set top boxes: Walton
regards Linux here as creating too big an overhead and incurring
too large a cost per unit.
Another functional benefit was that gong to Linux solved a
problem regarding interoperability between documents created by
the company’s PCs and marketing documents created using
Macintoshes by the internal marketing department and by outside
agencies. Walton readily concedes that one of his greatest fears
was compatibility issues regarding open source documents and those
created by other companies using Windows. He says: "There have been
some incompatibilities with documents received from external
sources but these are no worse than dealing with different levels
of Windows. In moving to Open Office [as a replacement for MS
Office] there have been a lot of advantages."
That said, like any transition, Access Devices experienced some
snags and teething problems. Yet Walton asserts that there has been
nothing of any real consequence, just "one or two items with
compatibility problems and format differences; we’d got them
anyway. There have been no real drawbacks over and above the
existing problems with the MS products and a lot of these problems
have gone away." Adds Anthony Allison: "In general terms, the
implementation of a fairly sophisticated system was less
troublesome than the day-to-day operation of the previous
system."
That said, there are one or two things that Walton conceded may
have been done differently. For example, he believes that more work
could have been done with the financial side of the business. The
company had used Sage under Windows but there was no Linux product.
Walton says that he feels Access Devices had outgrown Sage anyway
and maybe the company should have begun searching for a new system
before the transition-at one period the company running two
accounting packages simultaneously, that is Sage and a new Linux
program for which Walton is very happy with.
Fundamentally, Access Devices has reaped very clear business
benefits from open source. Anthony Walton doesn’t hesitate to state
exactly how Access Devices is now a much more streamlined and
flexible a business: "We’ve taken 50% out of the cost of the people
to support company because the system is flat across the company
and it is much more stable, robust and easier to protect. There are
two or three salaries saved there immediately and we will continue
to make [savings]."
Walton sees that one day Linux will be used right across the
company in terms of basic IT and in the products that it sells.
However, the story right now is that, ultimately, open source has
made Access Devices a more competitive concern adding benefit right
across the company.