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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."

5 of 163 comments (clear)

  1. Difficult, but big payoff by AKAImBatman · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This pretty much sums it up:

    Lutz's IT group rewrote a complex, real-time airline pricing application that serves hundreds of thousands of travel agents around the world and that also acts as the system of record for all of United Airlines' ticket reservations. When this application came up on Linux, it proved to be so demanding--it handles up to 700 pricing requests per second--that it completely redefined Cendant's expectations about what it would take to get Linux to work. "We have broken every piece of software we've ever thrown at this platform, including Linux itself," says Lutz.

    With Big Iron you're paying a LOT of money. But you're not paying it for nothing. Big Iron will give you a lot of guarantees for stability, reliability, and thoroughput that don't exist on other systems. The key to this CIO's success is that he was willing to accept the challenges of doing Big Iron work on Little Brass systems. As long as you work all the details out yourself, this *can* work. (As Google has so eloquently proven.) The issue is that you're working without a safety net. If things go really wrong, there's no backup army of specially trained techs to run in and fix things. (And trust me, if you're paying enough money you'll have your own personal army of techs.)

    The upshot to all of this is that if the gamble pays off, it pays off in a big way. All that money you were spending for a personal army, plus some other company's R&D now goes into your own pockets. You don't get away scott free (someone has to maintain the systems), but you see your rewards. And isn't that what business is about? Taking risks and making profits? If you've got the infrastructure to go for something like this, then go ahead and grab fate by the balls. No one ever got anywhere in life by playing it safe. ;-)

    The "black box" of open source has transformed into something any CIO can appreciate: reliable performance and consistent uptime. The penguin can fly now.

    --
    Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
    1. Re:Difficult, but big payoff by stefanlasiewski · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The issue is that you're working without a safety net. If things go really wrong, there's no backup army of specially trained techs to run in and fix things.

      Well, there is a backup Army, and it's you.

      Google can have a 4000-node Linux cluster because they have enough staff to maintain and optimize the system (Keep an eye on their job pages to get an idea).

      Google also has some highly specalized needs-- some machines only crunch data for the DB, other machines only serve webpages, etc. It's in their interest to optimize the Kernel, OS, Database & Web applications as much as possible. Take a tweak which gains a 1% performance gain, multiply that against 4000 machines, and it's quite an advantage.

      There isn't a vendor in the world that can totally support their infrastructure, so Google does it themselves.

      --
      "Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
    2. 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!

  2. I'm reading through this and it's interesting. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting
    There are two things I find really interesting here:
    1. Vendor support. OK, so if vendor support has gotten better, then which vendors does this CIO recommend? I don't see which ones he used in the article, maybe I just missed something.
    2. This quote
      "Open source is propelling us to adopt Java and a new way of programming," he says.
      Should be a bit of a cluebat for both Sun and the Open Source extremists. Java and Open Source can be extremely good for each other, it's just that both Sun and the Open Source community need to learn to cooperate on practical matters with those whose ideological goals differ... unfortunately it seems that neither Sun nor the Open Source community is extremely interested in realizing how much they could benefit from the other.
  3. Cost breakdown by alvinrod · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Mainframe: $100 million

    Unix: $25 million

    Linux: $2.5 million

    These numbers were taken from a table in the article. Interestingly enough, the cost if something does break favors Linux as well. From the same table we get that the mainframe solution consists of 4 IBM mainframes, whereas Linux and Unix solutions require around 144 servers for Linux and 100 - 120 servers for Unix. If the hardware goes to hell it's so much easier to replace the single bad part than a mainframe.

    Hopefully, more people will begin a transition to open source solutions when they realize it can be successful.