High street optician
Specsavers has replaced its legacy Windows 2000 retail
applications across 600 UK stores with a Java-based open source
in-store IT infrastructure.
The retailer has created an out-of-the-box system using
Red Hat Linux, JBoss application server, the
Apache web server and Compiere, an open source enterprise
resource planning package.
Dubbed "Specsavers in a box", the product aims to support the
company's global business expansion. It is due to go live in
Finland next month and will be deployed in Denmark later in the
year.
Specsavers chief information officer Michel Kahn said a key
driver for choosing open source products was that, unlike
commercially licensed products, they would not incur
on-going licence fees.
"As we expand globally, we did not want the issues of licence
fees and upgrade costs associated with commercial products," he
said.
Specsavers-in-a-box allows the retailer to upgrade in-store
systems based on its business drivers, rather than waiting for a
commercial software supplier to release new products. Kahn said,
"We can choose to upgrade based on our business priorities, rather
than someone else's."
The company has rewritten its in-house Windows 2000-based store
system, Socrates, developed in Java, to run on Red Hat Linux.
In addition, Specsavers developed software to link opthalmic
equipment with the Red Hat store system.
Nigel Spain, Specsavers' global architecture manager, said, "Our
strategy was to move away from Windows as we saw it as a
proprietary platform. We were convinced that Linux would have a
major positive impact on our business."
By standardising on open source technology, Spain said he has
also been able to extend the life of Specsavers' hardware.
Mark Blowers, senior research analyst at Butler Group, said, "It
is rare to see a commercial organisation go so far with open
source."
Blowers pointed out that unlike organisations running commercial
packages, Specsavers did not have to wait for its software
suppliers to support Red Hat, since its core application, Socrates,
had been developed in-house.
IT and finance
must pull together >>
Standalone open source software market reaches £900m
>>
Specsavers >>
Red Hat >>
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