PROVO, Utah Oct. 16, 2003 — With 12 judges hearing nearly 3,000 cases a year, the Georgia Court of Appeals is the third-busiest court in the United States. The intermediate appellate court for the state of Georgia, the Georgia Court of Appeals recently ported its legacy docketing system from a mini-mainframe computer to a LAN in order to modernize its data and move toward electronic filing of appeals. The Court also wanted to leverage Web services to make this docketing information available to the public securely and quickly, reducing the number of daily calls to the clerk's office.

Concerned about being locked into proprietary technology, the Court began exploring open source technologies. The Court could rely on open source to reduce its costs, but also knew that exposing the docketing process to the public via a Web portal would require the most secure and reliable environment possible.

After evaluating multiple environments, including Microsoft Windows, the Court selected Novell NetWare 6.5 with its integrated support for open source technologies such as Apache, MySQL, Perl, PHP and Tomcat. The Court also used Novell exteNd and Novell iChain to build and secure its portal, as well as Novell ZENworks to manage its desktops.

"We weren't comfortable with the all-or-nothing licensing options from other vendors," said John Ruggeri, IT project manager for the Georgia Court of Appeals. "We didn't want to be locked into a proprietary solution for our database, Web design and Web services. Flexibility and portability are key issues for us."

The Court leveraged NetWare 6.5 to rapidly implement open source solutions on a secure and stable platform, saving significant development costs and avoiding recurring licensing costs. Creating a secure Web portal for user access to information decreased phone inquiries by 30 to 40 percent in the first few months, increasing the productivity of the Court's 10 clerks. With ZENworks, the Court avoided the cost of hiring additional staff through streamlined desktop management and more efficient user support.

"NetWare has morphed into an environment that goes well beyond file and print," Ruggeri said. "With NetWare 6.5, we didn't have to learn an entirely new platform and can get the power of open source in an environment we know and trust. Our users don't even know the meaning of downtime."

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Novell, Inc.
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Email: kbarney@novell.com