The FAA Saves $15 Million by Migrating to Linux

Neopallium writes "Red Hat has announced that the U.S. Department of Transportation's Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) saved the federal government more than $15 million in datacenter operating and upgrading costs by migrating to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The FAA executed a major systems migration to Red Hat Enterprise Linux in one-third of the original scheduled time and with 30 percent more operational efficiency than the previous system."

Comments

careful of the source

[yagu]

Disclaimer: I love Linux (and Un*x), and I hope someday Linux (and Un*x) becomes a majority player in the computing world. But, ...

The article paints a rosy success story, but consider the source. This is a Red Hat press release. While it all may be completely true with no misdirection, I put little stock in self-congratulation, especially after an amazing experience with a similar Microsoft claim.

I worked for a major Telcom years ago and we merged with a smaller firm... Shortly after the merger, Microsoft put a full page ad in Time magazine describing an enourmous success story of how our new company now comprised of two previous companies combined the two companies' IT systems and integrated them seamlessly with Micosoft's then new .NET platform.

This would have been an amazing success story except for the fact that:

1. .NET still had not been released for general consumption
2. noone in our IT knew of this stunning success effort
3. our "integrated" systems weren't

For those who doubt, I can provide the digital photograph of the ad, I was so amazed I actually took a picture of it (I will have to dig it out, but I know I have it.)

I know many would not be surprised by a bogus claim from a Microsoft, but I don't trust that any company providing a press release to be providing real news (or trustworthy, or balanced, etc.).

This whole "press release" presented as "news" would be more honest if they placed the disclaimer information up front. (If you don't read all the way to the VERY LAST LINE of the article, you won't know the source is Red Hat.

Re:careful of the source

[gdek]

There's nothing disingenuous about this. We released it as a press release on our own site:

http://www.redhat.com/about/news/prarchive/2006/fa a.html

Everything about it shouts "press release", including the SEC warnings at the bottom and the press contact information. As is typical with press releases, it was picked up and run all over the place. That's what press releases are for. Anything that comes from Business Wire is a press release.

If you think it's dishonestly masquerading as "real news," that's your mistake.

Re:careful of the source

[hawk]

>Everything about it shouts "press release",

Not quite. Looking carefully, I found a sentence in which the author failed to use "Red Hat Enterprise Linux." There might be a scond one, but I missed it :)

hawk

Re:careful of the source

[Mistshadow2k4]

Uh... that happens all the time. Remember those (many) comparison studies of Windows vs. Linux, all of them funded by Microsoft and all of them concluding that Windows was better for this-or-that reason?

Re:careful of the source

[igaborf]

There's nothing inherently wrong with a press release. Sure, they only give one side of the story. If you want a more balanced analysis, find a publication that attempts to provide that. Slashdot is not such a publication, has never been, and has never purported to be. Slashdot is little more than a community blog (although it predates the term), with all of the one-sided postings and comments that implies.

Slashdot doesn't practice "journalism." If you want that, look elsewhere.

It should be pointed out, though, that the ./ item begins with "Red Hat has announced..." That makes it pretty clear what the bias of the report is going to be.

Re:careful of the source

[Olix]

...what FTA really said...

F*cking the article? You have a strange fetish, my friend.

Playing Devil's Advocate

[JustASlashDotGuy]

"The FAA's successful and impressive migration truly exemplifies the value, performance and security
of Red Hat Enterprise Linux,"

All the stories talks about is how they came in under budget. Another reason for saving 15 million
could be that someone simply budgeted too much money. Much like when your wife spends $200 on a pocket
book that normally cost $250, and then she tells you that she saved $50!.

D*mn women.. oh wait.. what was I talking about again?

Re:Nice point for linux arguments:

[FerretFrottage]

I think lift has more to do with keeping planes in the sky. Otherwise the FAA coud declare gravity a terrorist "force"

Re:More of these types of success stories

[YU Nicks NE Way]

Umm...you didn't read TFA, did you? This is a Unix->Linus transition. Microsoft wasn't involved in the case at all.

new Linux ad campaign

[syrinx]

"So, airlines are going bankrupt all over the place, ticket sales are down, and we're still in no position to catch terrorists."

"That sounds bad."

"But there is good news."

"What's that?"

"I just saved a bunch of money on datacenter operating and upgrading costs by switching to Linux."

ETMS System

[apfistler]

For all of those who are curious as to what was there before. I worked on this project and was incharge of automating the installation process on the integration side and was part of the integration team for this project. The old system were old HP C360's running HPUX 10.20. The whole TFMI system has been ported and updated since the early 90's. Before they were running on the 360s the system was running on Apollo's before. Of course this refresh was way cheaper in '05 than the earlier refresh because in the '98 refresh they had to swap out thinnet for CAT 5. And if you ever seen some of the cable trays at some of these TRACONS on Towers.... some aren't pretty, espically at BWI. Since the CAT 5 was in place it was as simple as swapping out the machines and putting in the new routers when we got on site. And yes for a govement project this went realitivly smoothly. Once I set up the kickstart server and scripted the install for the ETMS software, intergrating the HP XW8000 workstations was as easy as just hitting F12, so even our warehouse logistic's person could integrate the machines.

Re:careful of the source - The Real Question Here

[iotashan]

Let's say you're this telco giant. Microsoft releases the ad (with approval from the telco's PR people, of course). Now, are you going to admit to your shareholders that the ad was, in fact, not true at all? No.

Microsoft was never punished because the telco couldn't admit that it wasn't true.