Enterprises around the world are putting Oracle on Linux to work

From e-government projects to industrial companies from Australia to the USA. Oracle continues to play a major role in helping organizations realize the massive savings with Oracle software on Linux.

E-Government in Australia
'We run five operating systems-everything from Linux to NT to Solaris to NetWare-and Linux has probably been more stable than the other four.' Mike Kennedy - CIO for the New South Wales Office of State Revenue.

As CIO for the New South Wales Office of State Revenue (OSR), Mike Kennedy is responsible for the IT systems that monitor and collect taxes, for example on regulated transactions such as land purchases, security and stock sales, and duties on goods sold.

Over the past three years the OSR has been able to automate 30 percent of its business duties by using Oracle9i Application Server running on Linux for its e-commerce implementation. The OSR has also lowered its cost for collecting money to less than 6 cents per AUS$100, which is the most efficient of all state offices.

Transaction times have also been cut to less than 10 seconds for approximately 96 percent of its transactions.

Perhaps it's the heady feeling of handling all that money that makes one bold, but when the OSR decided to migrate to Linux, it didn't waste any time doing departmental or pilot applications. 'We went straight in for a core business application that's critical to our business-e-commerce-and now Oracle9iAS is supporting the system that collects AUS$11 billion,' says Kennedy. 'We're not just stomping around on the edges.'

With the new system, e-commerce transactions have gone from zero to 30 percent in two years and have doubled in the last six months. Originally OSR was running its Oracle8i database and some PHP on Linux, and then about two years ago it installed the Oracle9i Application Server running on Linux, along with J2EE programs and XML e-commerce connections.

It's all been remarkably stable. 'We've been running all that Web infrastructure very successfully,' says Kennedy. 'We run five operating systems-everything from Linux to NT to Solaris to NetWare-and Linux has probably been more stable than the other four.' And, OSR is currently implementing Oracle9i RAC on Red Hat Linux to further improve the reliability of its services.

Not only has moving to Linux dramatically cut the OSR's processing time and cost, but it's also a considerably cheaper platform than traditional alternatives. 'The capital cost savings are significant. The big capital item is the hardware itself, and the ability to buy Dell boxes or any old Intel boxes compared to buying high-end UNIX boxes is the real benefit,' says Kennedy. 'They're basically about a quarter of the price.'

A Medical Center in USA
'With Red Hat and Oracle's initiative with Unbreakable Linux, we don't have to purchase more expensive hardware, we can just plug in more boxes with Oracle9i RAC. Because of Oracle's clustering technology, it made a great deal of sense to us that Linux was probably the way to go for scalability.' Alan Wamser, a systems analyst at HMC.

You might not expect doctors to be the target market for Linux, but Hays Medical Center (HMC), in Hays, Kansas, does. That's because HMC has recently migrated a series of applications from its IBM AS/400, Lotus Notes, and Windows systems to Oracle products running on Linux. 'We want the system to be an integral part of everyone's daily life,' says Alan Wamser, a systems analyst at HMC.

'That's how they will do business through our Oracle Portal, including calendar, e-mail, scheduling, and many HR applications.' Overall, approximately 1,000 people-everyone from doctors to maintenance staff-will be using the portal. Although implementation is still in process, HMC has already deployed its Web site and the Oracle database on Linux and is currently migrating its Lotus Notes applications to Oracle Collaboration Suite.

By using Oracle's Collaboration Suite; Oracle9i Database; Oracle9iAS; and, in the future, Oracle9i RAC (all running on Linux), HMC is able to meet the hospital's needs for information sharing, internal communications, and healthcare patient-information support without having to spend additional money on legacy systems and managing multiple platforms.

Its previous IT architecture had a variety of systems and operating systems: Web applications running on Lotus Notes, NT servers doing ASP, and more. 'One of our goals was to consolidate this into one platform and one architecture so we didn't have to manage multiple development environments and maintain different types of systems,' says Wamser.

HMC needed a system that would be very scalable and reliable. Being a core system in a healthcare environment means no downtime. 'With Red Hat and Oracle's initiative with Unbreakable Linux and its scalability, we don't have to purchase more expensive hardware,' says Wamser. 'We can just plug in more boxes with Oracle9i RAC. Because of Oracle's clustering technology, it made a great deal of sense to us that Linux was probably the way to go for scalability.'

To start off its migration, HMC replaced some of the DNS servers around the hospital with Linux, adding more Linux servers as they went along. To take the next step, though, HMC needs to work with the CFO to justify all the costs and compare them to HMC's existing RS6000 systems and Lotus Notes system on the AS/400. For example, the difference in yearly maintenance costs on an RS6000 or AS/400 versus an enterprise Linux box is considerable.

'Part of the justification we've made is that Intel is cheaper than our existing systems. But we also needed high availability, which is why we felt that Linux, rather than NT, was the way to go,' says Wamser.

An Industrial Company from the UAE
'From a technology perspective, running the Oracle E-Business Suite and Oracle Collaboration Suite on Linux creates a cost-effective, reliable environment with scalability to expand as our business grows' says Al-Hareth Al-Khaled, SVP, Emirates Industrial Gases

Emirates Industrial Gases LLC, a leading UAE based producer and distributor of industrial, medical, and speciality gases, has selected Linux as the deployment platform for Oracle E-Business Suite which will centralize and streamline the company's financial systems, manufacturing processes and distribution activities.

The gas provider intends to automate its external and internal systems, increasing employee productivity and overall cost control. The company is also deploying Oracle Collaboration Suite on Linux to enhance collaboration between its employees, suppliers, partners and customers via Oracle Collaboration Suite's email, file management and calendaring capabilities.

The comprehensive automation initiative will see Emirates Industrial Gases deploy Oracle Process Manufacturing to optimise production of its gas products; Oracle Purchasing, Oracle Order Management, Oracle Inventory, and Oracle Business Intelligence to link supply and demand while responding more efficiently to customer needs; and Oracle Financials to create greater financial visibility across its different lines of business.

Emirates Industrial Gases has also selected Oracle Collaboration Suite to create an integrated messaging and collaboration infrastructure to provide email, voicemail, fax, calendaring, and file-sharing capabilities. The entire Oracle environment will run on the Linux platform, which Emirates Industrial Gases opted for based on its associated lower total cost of technology ownership, improved reliability and security.

To improve customer delivery times and general service levels, Oracle E-Business Suite will enable Emirates Industrial Gases to link supply and demand processes; provide its customers with accurate, timely order promises; and then efficiently deliver on those commitments. Increased business intelligence will enable the gas producer to better understand customer trends and buying patterns to create more tailored products and services for its target markets.

A Leading University in USA
'The total cost of acquisition and support and everything else was about 30 to 40 percent lower with Linux' says Sanjeev Mohan, enterprise database architect at GGU

Like many organizations migrating to Linux, the differential in the cost of hardware was an important factor for Golden Gate University (GGU), in San Francisco. The 100-year-old accredited university specializes in business and law education for professionals who live remotely or attend school part-time. When it came time to develop a new intranet to support GGU's 1,000 faculty distributed throughout the U.S., money caused the university to seriously consider migrating to Linux.

'The total cost of acquisition and support and everything else was about 30 to 40 percent lower with Linux on Dell than it was for used high-end UNIX boxes,' says Sanjeev Mohan, enterprise database architect at GGU. 'Comparing Dell and Linux to top-of-the-line UNIX boxes, it was closer to 60 percent cheaper for the Dell hardware.'

Originally, GGU's applications were running on Sun boxes. But as Mohan's team evaluated technology needs going forward and looked at what it needed to support application growth and data-center needs, it decided to start testing existing applications on Red Hat Linux on Dell hardware.

'From that point forward, we came to the realization that the cost of deploying Dell and Red Hat Linux was significantly lower than running the similar configurations on Sun,' says Keith Rajecki, GGU's IT infrastructure manager.
The decision to move forward with Linux took time, though. After considering it on and off for a year, it was Oracle's announcement of Unbreakable Linux that clinched the decision.

'When Red Hat and Dell came out with their partnership where they provided integrated support for Linux on the Dell platform, and then when Oracle joined Red Hat and Dell and provided three-way integrated support servers and certified all of its Oracle9i products on Linux, that's really the industry support we were looking for to move ahead with it,' says Anthony Hill, GGU's CTO. The university is now running Oracle9i Database on a highly available Linux cluster, as well as Oracle E-Business Suite 11i and the Oracle9i technology stack on Linux servers.

Although GGU could have used Oracle9i RAC or advanced replication in order to ensure high availability, GGU decided that a logical Data Guard would be the best solution. It set up a primary database that the applications point to, as well as a logical database running on a second Linux server. In the case of failure of the primary database, GGU can switch or fail over to the standby database, with minimal downtime. GGU has configured Oracle Data Guard so that no data is lost. The whole system is monitored through Oracle Enterprise Manager, which can page people on a cell phone in the case of an error.

Although the current Oracle on Linux systems support GGU's intranet, the university is also actively building a new Web site with Oracle and Linux that will support between 50,000 and 100,000 registered users. Based on GGU's experience, Oracle on Linux is a solid and reliable choice. 'Compared to Oracle9 on Windows, our Oracle on Linux implementation is much more reliable,' says Mohan.

'We've closely monitored things such as block corruption, and hardware failure, and find that the combination of Dell hardware and Red Hat Linux makes Oracle very reliable-which is a major testament to the ability of the platform.'