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Lufthansa Systems Chooses Linux
Nice2Cats writes "Remember all of the jokes about operating systems as airlines? Well, Heise is reporting that Linux is just going to take over the computer systems of Germany's airline Lufthansa instead. SuSE and Lufthansa Systems have a joint press release (in German, it should appear here when it comes out in English) out where Karlheinz Natt from Lufthansa Systems gushes (my translation): 'We are registering a steadily increasing demand for Linux-based solutions from our customers.' "
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Tickets will be upwards of $1000 because SCO's licensing fees will be built in to the price.
In the German press release it says that they will offer Linux as Operating System for their customers because "Customers are asking for linux based solutions"p r02009.html
Aren't they using Netware? http://www.novell.com/news/press/archive/2002/01/
Does this mean that everyone who knows Linux is a terrorist now? ;)
I realize and agree that linux, in the long run, can save tremendous amounts of money for a corporation, but there has to be a huge upfront fee to overhaul and implement an entirely new OS and set of apps. I'm neither a guru in the computer industry, nor the airlines (though I keep high level tabs on both), but the timing seems odd, given that the airlines are all hemmoraging money right now...
"We are registering a steadily increasing demand for Linux-based solutions from our custumers."
That should have read "costumers", as in those who make or supply costumes, as for plays or masquerades.
This is an agreement between Suse and Lufthansa Systems, which is the IT consulting branch of Lufthansa. This does not mean that Lufthansa itself will switch to Linux. It means that Lufthansa Systems sees a higher demand of Linux by its customers...
"Lufthansa Systems" is a spin-off company from "Lufthansa" the airline. They provide IT to many companies, airlines (e.g. Lufthansa") and others. This does _not_ mean, that Lufthansa (the airline) will switch to linux. "Lufthansa systems" has provided Linux support for quite a while to customers who request this. This means that the number of customers is increasing beyond the limit where "LH Systemes" can satisfy the demand on their own, and/or that they are not (yet?) willing to enlarge their linux department.
Cheers
KdenLive/PIAVE - non-linear video editing
See various clarification posts. It's "LH Systems" an IT-Consulting spin-off from the airline.
KdenLive/PIAVE - non-linear video editing
reduce the glare when trying to watch an in-flight movie?
Actually, using open source software is probably a good idea for ANY govt., since it not only gives them the opportunity to inspect the code, but also make changes. As long as the govt. doesn't get into the distribution business, it doesn't even have to put their changes back into the pool, although it would be a good idea for most code.
Another benefit is you don't have to worry about the vendor of the OS 'buying off' govt. officials to use their operating system. Since their is no one company that produces linux, it means they always have choices.
The other benefits are price. its not that linux is free, price wise, because its really not considering you usually need support as you would with any OS. But you can choose from more companies for support, different flavors of Linux for different projects (and still have it being compatable) Also, since it is an open standard it is cheaper to maintain. Since governments pay for all this software with their citizens taxes, a system that has the potential to save millions means more money in taxpayers pockets, or at least being spent on other projects.
Microsoft or no Microsoft, do YOU feel comfortable with your government having only ONE vendor and source for operating systems for critical services?
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
I consult to company in the Chicago area who hosts their US website. I was contracted to build their webfarm!
I am normally a Redhat fan, but they insisted I use SuSE 7 (the latest at the time) running on a cluster of 10 Compaq DL380's, using a cool content-based traffic load-balancing switch to make the individual servers into a _non-beowulf_ cluster!
I got the whole thing up and running, then web-hardened the servers, and then let the boys from Munich do their customization and configuration.
It was a fun project, one I'm proud of...
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
An upfront fee yes, but keep in mind that quite a bit of the airline industry is using stuff so old that it isn't much supported by anything anymore. In theory, making those apps in Linux will allow them to easily reintegrate and recompile them on whatever we will be using in the future.
And all the airlines aren't hemmoraging money, mainly just the American ones. The euorpean airline industry has for the most part stablized.
landing-gear.so not found.
Did you forget to run ldconfig?
I mean .. every time somebody switches to Linux it's on slashdot .. and those stories dont appear often. So obviously the frequency of occurrence sucks.
.. it's good advertising/marketing for Linux .. so more people will switch.
I think we need to have more of these stories on slashdot though
Lufthansa Systems belongs to the worldwide leading IT-serviceproviders for the airlines.
This means that the customers are the airlines not the passengers. I would have thought this was pretty clear from context. But perhaps you do not know how the airline industry works. They typically split up different activities up in companies so you have "Airline AAA catering" "Airline AAA maintenance" "Airline AAA luggage losing". Then it is not unusual for these sub companies to provide services for other airlines. After all if you have 1 line flying into a destination it makes more sense to use the services of a rival then to setup youre own company.
So anyway this is just a normal line said by almost all big IT suppliers. That more and more customers are asking about solutions that include linux as opposed to the other Unixes and Windows.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Neener! :-)
one damn good airlines. :)
So this deal really doesn't have a lot to do with Lufthansa itself. They're only now starting to offer linux solutions which previously they didnt.
Of those to whom much is given, much is required.
pay us 700$ if you want to land(sounds better in the "Come with me if you want to live" tone).
Maybe now someone will be able to change the scrolling text on the gate screens at Munich when a flight is boarding.
"Your flight is ready. Thank you, and Goodbye."
"Goodbye" is not a good word to use in conjunction with boarding an aircraft.
i think this is more a case of domestic politics, not wanting to send dollars, er, deutshmarks, overseas. it is a good thing in that it will show the enterprise capabilities of linux, etc. however, like the munich deal, their going with suse, which sounds more like keeping it home. but hey, more power to them.
plus, if i'm not mistaken, most major industries in europe are government subsidized, so, it was probably good politics to go local. (yes, i realize there are tons of subsidies in the US. i don't agree with it, i am just poitning out a fact. our governmetn tends to subsidize firms, like with boeing, buy making purchases and tax policy)
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
isn't this just quantity?
where is the quality? is there any technical, social, or political particular significance that Lufthansa is using Linux?
the only remotely interesting item from this article is the conspicuous use of the English words "Open Source", and "Support Know How" in a German language press release.
Das Unternehmen beschaftigt das weltweit groBte Entwicklungsteam fur Open-Source-Losungen und hat sein einzigartiges Projekt- und Support-Know-how in der groBten Linux-Wissensdatenbank uber das Internet zuganglich gemacht. why can't people respect the german language? if this continues the german language wil disappear very fast.
So I guess this should shut up, once and for all, the people who still claim penguins can't fly :)
Actually since systems generally must be maintained and this costs real money every year. While there may be a higher cost the first year or two the savings should be forthcoming almost right away. As for losing money, so are the baby bells, just ask them, they got the funky accounting to go along with it. So is the cable company, just ask them. They all can justify why rates need to go up.....
. I love the sound of burning women and screaming rubber....
Why would an airline's customers know or care what operating system they used to run the business, much less request that they change it? Other than the 1 in 100,000 nosy geek, perhaps?
I'm just having a hard time imagining customers saying, "Boy, since Lufthansa switched over to running Linux, flying this airline sure is so much better! I'm so glad they listened to our request to switch over." Seems kind of absurd.
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
A company can only make so many people redundant before operations begin to be affected. That said, once the optimum employment level in a service industy is reached, and was in the airlines a year ago; the only remaining cost cutting is in the infrastructure. Infrastructure solutions must, to save money, be what is lower cost in the long term - so called TCO. Linux does have a longer term lower TCO than Windows and certainly lower TCO than bog-genetic Unix, especially if one already has Unix staff. When the make the transition, they, to mint a phrase, must: "Spend money to save money". Not now, now, NOW, necessarily, but in the longer term.
Make sense?
Would you fly in a plane whose autopilot runs on Windows?
So lately there's been a couple stories about SuSE and German institutions hooking up, and also the perennial outsourcing development to 2nd-world countries discussion. On a gut instinct level, I'm for the former (down with The Man!) and against the latter (wait! I want that job!). However, my feelings about both are a bit more complicated.
You see, it's hard not to see that SuSE stuff as largely influenced by nationalism. This is not to day it's a bad choice, presumably the clients like the fact that the SuSE folks speak fluent German, which you probably can't say for Mandrake, RedHat, or Redflag. But, you know, it still has that aura of "help our boys, damn those 3v1l feriners."
The outsourcing development to 2nd-world companies is, OTOH, a-nationalistic. Much of the debate about it is full of people wrapping themselves in the flag and the like. Very much like labor unions when manufacturing jobs go overseas. The fact of the matter, however, is that those folks in India need that job much more than you do. You wouldn't think of doing the job for $4k/year, whereas they'll jump at the opportunity. And if you're a 1st worlder whose job has *not* been shipped overseas, you directly benefit from this, as development costs are (allegedly) lower.
So, the economist in me is like "Hoo-ah! Ship those jobs overseas. I can always get a job as a plumber (probably making more than I am now)." But, of course, it's not that simple. First off, you really need to be a big corp to start outsourcing overseas. You need a certain amount of infrastructure &c. Also note that due to increasing returns to investment and the like, big commercial software firms tend to become monopolies. This is much worse for the consumer than subsidizing overpriced, lazy 1st world developers. So to a large extent, buying from the local business is a sound economic decision, as it prevents you from getting locked in to a monopolist. This is especially true for organizations like governments, who have an obligation to protect their citizens from failures in the market.
So I come to my concluding paragraph with no conclusion. I'm still of two minds on the whole economic nationalism thing. If perfect competition could be insured, a policy of buying locally would be folly. However, power laws create huge distortions of market economics. Hard to say, at least for me.
Quote:
At the time many analysts speculated that SCO's behaviour might deter enterprise companies from using Linux. However, this has not happened to date, at least in respect of their internet visible web sites. In the last two months Linux has made a net gain of over 100 enterprise sites; sites which have migrated to Linux including Royal Sun Alliance, Deutsche Bank, SunGard,T-online and most noteworthy, Schwab
Help fight continental drift.
...and the food was damn good.
Yes, I must say it is a bit disconcerting to see a blue screen of death when standing in an airport's departure lounge, thinking "the people who choose the software to run their aircraft-related systems on chose THIS!".
Follow me
Can I get a translator, please? About the only bit I get is the "one of many things" paragraph.
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
Maybe we wouldn't have to RTFA if all of the critical information was presented in the headline and summary approved by the editors.
the timing seems odd, given that the airlines are all hemmoraging money right now...
On the contrary, these are exactly the economic conditions under which an up-front investment to reduce long-term operating costs make more sense than ever. It's only during the fat times that gross inefficiencies from, say, excessive downtime or wasteful license audits, can go unnoticed and uncorrected.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
I don't know what would be the worse, the autopilot BSODing (duuh) or saying "Segmentation fault" (due to faulty closed source 3rd party drivers, ofcourse).
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
It's a good thing.
If Luftansa Systems sees demand for Linux, they'll be pushing their solutions to Luftansa Airlines and other customers.
It only means more and more commerial organisations will bestow faith in Linux.
Which only bodes good in these SCO lawsuit times.
Lufthansa Systems GmbH, a subsidiary of Lufthansa Airlines AG, is an IT service provider focused on the airline industry (as opposed to an IT devision focused exclusively on the parent company's IT needs.)
The press release announces that Lufthansa Systems will be offering Linux solutions due to customer demand. It does *not* state which of its customers are demanding Linux. In particular, one would expect that if the parent company were planning to deploy Linux in its airline operations, this fact should have been mentioned in the press release.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the War Room!
"Perhaps they use self-check-in computers. Where passengers can check in their own luggage."
Again, who woudl a customer care (or even KNOW) upon what OS such an application was running?
Nope, it still sonds like bullshit to me.
People should not be afraid of their governments - Governments should be afraid of their people.
You need money for investments!
Better stop making any investments, I'm sure that will solve all our problems!
Nope, it still sonds like bullshit to me.
Did you read the comments saying:
Lufthansa Systems belongs to the worldwide leading IT-serviceproviders for the airlines.
This means that the customers are the airlines not the passengers.
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
However these days they have signed up other customers like Deka Bank (a traditional German Bank).
When you are looking at systems that have a relatively narrowly defined functionality, you don't want to have XP licenses everywhere. Much of their front end could easily be done by a minimalist PC with Linux, better than loading it with XP. For the backend, they work with big databases, but they still want ways of flexibly adding and removing backend capacity to suit their customer's changing needs. Windows licensing for servers, frankly, sucks. The moment you start to add capacity, you must also add lots of licenses and then follow th MS led upgrade dance.
Frankly we are not talking about computers, we are talking about functional black boxes marked with labels like "Reservation System". This is very attractive to their customer base as they can buy a cheap solution.
SUSE is a german company. Do you think this has more to do with munich et all adopting linux or do you think it is based on the technical merits?
The problem is that a small aitline either has to buy an expensive system, or buy into an outsourced solution which being based on dinosaur technology (i.e., SABRE) isn't exactly cheap. So I have five planes and want to start an airline, where do I go for the IT?
What can those mini-airlines buy? Well LH Systems hope to find a solution which can cut costs. And it isn't just airlines, LH Systems is into providing and facilities managing a lot of other stuff too.
Funny how all those German companies are all opting for suse. Why should we be happy about that?
My apologies for not including enough background information to the point where the post in its current form is obviously misleading; I had thought that putting "Lufthansa Systems" in the headline was clear enough, and that it was obvious that the costumers involved would not be flight passengers (but wouldn't that be a truely awesome form of hard-core advocacy: Go to a travel agency and demand an airline that uses Linux!). Obviously, I was wrong, and you are correct to complain.
Sorry. Next time, more detail, more background, better post.
Well, they could be using the Edirectory". They still need to manage all those Linux machines.
It's been a while since I had German in School, so Google does a better job than me :)
Lufthansa's of system wants in the future strengthens the operating system Linux with the realization of its customer projects to begin. Before this background the IT Dienstleister agreed upon a close co-operation with of Germany leading Linux offerer, the Nuernberger SuSE Linux AG.
Lufthansa's of system belongs to the IT Dienstleistern for aviation, leading world-wide. The power spectrum extends IT infrastructures interlaced by the strategic consultation over the organization of the business processes, the conception and implementation enterprise further up to their enterprise.
With the status "SuSE Business partner" honors SuSE the Linux Fachkompetenz like also the high service standards, which offer Lufthansa's of system to their customer. By the Business partnership Lufthansa's of system secures itself the active technical support of the Linux experts of SuSE with test installations, problem solutions and projects.
"we register a constantly rising demand for solutions on Linux basis" at our customers, describe Karl Heinz Natt, plenipotentiary of Lufthansa of system network GmbH. "we are convinced that we can realize a new level of cost-efficiency for our customers together with the SuSE Linux AG."
"impressing the efficiency like also the high yardsticks at quality and customer satisfaction of Lufthansa of system," explain Petra Heinrich, Vicepresident partners Sales & services are with SuSE Linux. "the combination of technical authority and innovation joy guarantee us and our partners long-term success in the market with Linux, to that at present at the fastest increasing operating system of the world."
Over Lufthansa's of system
Lufthansa's of system is one the IT Dienstleister for the airline and aviation industry, leading world-wide. As system integrator the 100%-ige daughter of the Lufthansa company covers the entire spectrum at IT achievements - from the consultation over development and implementation up to the enterprise. Within the range IT infrastructure and enterprise offers Lufthansa's of system their achievements industry-spreading. The internationally operating enterprise with seat in Kelsterbach with Frankfurt/Main is present with several locations in Germany, has foreign addresses in 13 countries and busily world-wide approximately 4,200 coworkers. In the financial year 2002 Lufthansa's of system obtained a conversion of 557.4 million euro.
Over the SuSE Linux AG
The SuSE Linux AG, Nuernberg, is one the offerer of complete solutions on basis of the open SOURCE operating system Linux, leading world-wide. Apart from operating system and application software for private customer the SuSE Linux offers AG software solutions and complete systems for the Linux employment in the enterprise. SuSE with a comprehensive pallet supports their business customers on qualified consultation -, training and support services. The enterprise employs the world-wide largest development team for open SOURCE solutions and its singular project and support know-how accessible in the largest Linux Wissensdatenbank over the InterNet made.
In the German press release it says that they will offer Linux as Operating System for their customers...
Fly to Munich and get YOUR free Linux CD!
Yeah, yeah, not quite the same Luthansa, BUT I once got an unadvertised copy of Turbolinux with a network card I bought....
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Wow! BA use Athlons?!
I'm only flying with them in the future now!
(even though I don't like flying, I'll overcome that if they use Athlons!)
With so many hi tech jobs being shipped to cheap labour regions, you miss one important point: when you buy closed source products, chances are that they were coded in places like India. When you adopt an open source alternative, you do need to hire ad hoc support (and probably some coders to tailor your applications), which will be, most likely, physically located in the vecinity of your offices.
That alone, makes Linux such a good alternative. It creates tech jobs in your local market. Chances are that if you buy MS and pay for their support, you will be dealing with a phone helpdesk guy located in Bangalore.
... or did anybody else first read the subject as "Luftwaffe Systems Chooses Linux" and do a double-take?
SCO has agree to leave SUSE alone due to being in a joint project.
Do you understand what the word "redundant" means? Idiot. Did anyone else post about the fact that they built their website for them? I really hope I get to metamod you, schmuck.
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
I usually don't run Windows for gaming. It's a very rare occurence anyway. :-)
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Linux is good, but it better not be flying the plane!
Some airplanes can be remotely flown as discussed in this link!
Note: Lufthansa spent billions of dollars designing their OWN computers, as discussed in the article so that their airplanes can't be remotely flown by U.S. authorities!
Who the hell modded parent as "funny"?!
I realize and agree that linux, in the long run, can save tremendous amounts of money for a corporation, but there has to be a huge upfront fee to overhaul and implement an entirely new OS and set of apps.
If they were to "stick" with Microsoft they'd be more or less forced to "upgrade" every few years. Where in practice the difference between an "upgrade" and "overhaul & install an entirely new system" isn't really that great.
but the timing seems odd, given that the airlines are all hemmoraging money right now...
So probably a good time to see what can be done to stop so much money flowing out of the company. Getting rid of Microsoft's expensive, both in terms of initial expenditure and administartion, licencing model. Is one way to do this.
Lufthansa has been using SuSE GNU/Linux for a long time now. Increasingly over the last year. Although all desktops run NT4 (damn it to hell!) but we are promised XP some time next year. I do now see SuSE desktop in the future 4-5 years, because of extreme dependency on MS Office and the future rollout of XP desktops. GNU/Linux is taking the role of servers all over the corporate infrastructure. (Don't worry, planes are not being ported to GNU/Linux :) )
Free speech is getting expensive...