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Linux From A CIO's Perspective

Posted by Zonk on from the look-at-all-the-penguins-down-there dept.

An anonymous reader writes "CIO.com has a story on Linux and OSS in the enterprise from the perspective of the CIO of Cendant Travel Distribution Services, Mickey Lutz. 'In the summer of 2003, Mickey Lutz did something that most CIOs, even today, would consider unthinkable: He moved a critical part of his IT infrastructure from the mainframe and Unix to Linux. For Lutz, the objections to Linux, regarding its technical robustness and lack of vendor support, had melted enough to justify the gamble.' His organization saved 90% in costs in so doing. Read on if you want to see how the top brass views OSS."

4 of 163 comments (clear)

  1. Linux beats Unix on cost by bedroll · · Score: 4, Funny

    The only thing that makes this news is that a CIO actually recognized it.

  2. hey Mickey... by C0vardeAn0nim0 · · Score: 3, Funny

    some guy name "bill" called from redmond. he wants to explain you why linux is more expensive...

    --
    What ? Me, worry ?
  3. Re:Difficult, but big payoff by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny
    Take a tweak which gains a 1% performance gain, multiply that against 4000 machines, and it's quite an advantage.

    Let's see . . . that's . . . [pencil scratching] . . . 1%! Amazing!

  4. No, Linux saved that guy's a$$. by khasim · · Score: 3, Funny
    Like most critics, I'm not good at leading large companies. But I know good leadership when I see it. This guy Lutz has his head bolted on right.
    I'll have to disagree with that. He made a good choice in going to Linux from Unix, but he did so is such a fucked up way that it was only Linux's technological goodness that saved him from being a poster boy for Microsoft's "Linux sucks" campaign.

    Here, from TFA:
    The decision not to focus more on testing came back to haunt them.
    The CIO decided not to TEST the system correctly?
    Frantic calls began coming in from some of the 44,000 travel agency locations in 116 countries that were unable to access Fares.
    Their customers cannot access their new Linux system!
    Lutz would not comment on the financial losses incurred by United or Galileo during the downtimes.
    They were LOSING money with their new Linux system.
    "In hindsight," says Lutz, "we shouldn't have tried to cut over to a new infrastructure at the same time we were deploying a new software application. It was too much at once."
    This guy made novice-level mistakes and it was only because Linux is so good that this became a huge success rather than a terrible failure.
    Rather than falling back to the old platform at the first signs of trouble and reworking the new one, the engineers always thought the answer was around the corner.
    You always have a back-out plan. Always.

    This guy took a huge risk ... screwed it up royally ... and was saved by IBM, Red Hat and Linux.

    And the Linux system STILL saves him $$$MILLIONS$$$ every year and OUTPERFORMS his old system.

    It's one thing when you're a genius CIO who plans and test for every contingency and deploys a working Linux system.

    It's a completely different thing when you don't BUT YOU STILL SUCCEED BECAUSE OF LINUX.

    This story is important because it shows the average CIO that, even if you aren't a genius and you DO make mistakes, Linux can STILL save you barrels of money and make you LOOK like a genius.