SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for System z Success Stories

The heavy lifting began several years earlier when Hannaford began consolidating the workloads of hundreds of servers -- four or five servers in each store -- onto one IBM z990 mainframe. Now all Hannaford's partner and supplier data, inventory controls, and payment and order processing run simultaneously on 23 separate and secure partitions on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 and z/OS on the single System z9.
Erie 1 BOCES builds a powerful portal with IBM WebSphere, System z and Linux. "With WebSphere on the System z platform, Erie 1 BOCES has a highly automated, scalable and cost-effective solution which can support growth and promote development, providing a higher level of service to our customers." — Carol Troskosky, CIO, Erie 1 BOCES
Government of Québec - Centre de Services Partagés du Québec and Direction Générale des Technologies de l'Information et des Communications Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, IBM z/VM, WebSphere Application Sever, WebSphere Portal Server, LWWCM, WebSphere MQ, WebSphere Business Integration and Tivoli Access Manager (TAM)
Housing Development Board (HDB) houses Linux on IBM The Housing & Development Board (HDB) is Singapore's public housing authority and a statutory board under the Ministry of National Development. HDB was established in 1960 to facilitate the government's vision of building affordable, quality public housing, in integrated environments that meet modern lifestyle needs. HDB is charged with improving the quality of life for Singaporeans and the communities in which they live. Today, an impressive 84% of the population lives in HDB flats.
America First is running its ATM system on an IBM eServer zSeries 890 with four virtual servers. The system now runs on one mainframe, instead of two, and is easy to upgrade and scale because the IT team can add virtual servers in minutes. The company has reduced its licensing costs with the ability to run multiple servers on a single processor. The company has also seen tremendous speed and performance improvements. Instead of processing transaction in three seconds, the new ATM system processes 85 transactions a second. Based on the performance of this system, America First is now considering moving all of its NetWare servers to Novell Open Enterprise Server, many of which will run on Linux.
"Linux has become the darling of the technology community as the open-source operating system with the ability to run on almost any type of processor. Until now, most of the focus has been on stripping down the OS to run handheld devices and small electronic appliances. Now, however, New York's Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. (BBH) is among the leading financial investment firms that have taken Linux—particularly SUSE Linux Enterprise Server—to its mainframe environment." — Waters Magazine
"Our entire Web environment is running on the IBM mainframe, with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server performing the HTTP and application serving tasks, and the backend data managed on z/OS," said Peter Wesel, Chief Organizer IT, Statistik Austria. "SUSE Linux Enterprise is the ideal platform for our needs, offering stability, flexibility, scalability and easy management."
When IBM discontinued support for OS/2, Casas Bahia needed to standardize on a new platform for its enterprise architecture. The company estimated that moving to a proprietary solution would cost more than US$8 million. Instead, Casas Bahia turned to Linux for an open platform that would provide greater flexibility and scalability. An open platform helped the company avoid the $8 million cost of a proprietary solution, as well as any increased hardware, software and training costs which would be significant for a company of its size.
Citigroup Inc. moved to Linux as a replacement for an aging legacy system. Now the company relies in an IBM System z mainframe running IBM's DB2 database and S2 Systems' OpeN/2 enterprise payment software on top of SUSE Linux Enterprise to automate transaction processing. When a consumer makes a purchase online, chances are it's coming through this system, Aaron Graves, a Citigroup senior VP, said at LinuxWorld. Citigroup is looking at a move to a 64-bit SUSE Linux Enterprise environment. Cendant is likewise considering 64-bit, a move that could include a transition from Red Hat Inc. to SUSE.
"The key argument for SUSE Linux was that, in our opinion, it runs more software than any other distribution of Linux, giving us more options for the future," said Schwarzer. "Another important factor was support, where we always aim to resolve issues as quickly and efficiently as possible. Novell provides excellent local support, with access to a team of global experts, so we can be sure of rapid solutions to any problems."
Dundee is Scotland's fourth largest city and home to 145,000 people and more than 50 golf courses around the region. The Council required more and more servers, but was running out of physical space to accommodate them. Consolidating its environment would conserve floor space and allow room for future growth. Moving to an open source solution would allow the Council to upgrade its aging infrastructure without increasing its licensing or administrative costs. Selecting SUSE Linux Enterprise Server running on the IBM zSeries 800 proved to be the best option.
EBS selected SUSE Linux Enterprise Server as its new strategic platform, running on the IBM z/VM operating system on an IBM System z mainframe. EBS can quickly and easily create a new Linux virtual server for each new application, enabling the organisation to deliver new services cost-effectively in a standardised environment.
In its previous environment, FNBO had a nearly one-to-one ratio of machines to applications and yet each machine was using only a fraction of its processing power. Using virtualization, FNBO consolidated 40 Sun Solaris servers to five Linux engines using Integrated Facility for Linux (IFL) processors on the IBM zSeries mainframe running under SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. The bank also migrated the rest of its 600 servers to 70 IBM Blade Servers.
Idaho Power determined that SUSE Linux Enterprise Server was a best fit because of the Oracle and IBM certified offerings on the platform. The company runs SUSE Linux Enterprise Server on an IBM zSystem mainframe, as well as AMD Opteron and Intel-based servers. Using virtualization, Idaho Power consolidated 30 servers to one IBM mainframe with room to grow.
Nationwide chose a solution based on the IBM System z9 running multiple Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server systems implemented under IBM's mainframe virtualization software, z/VM 5.2. The fast deployment (four months) of the solution was far quicker than the time it would normally have taken to upgrade 250 individual servers.
The Department of Transportation for the State of Oregon is migrating critical components of its driver's license management system to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server running on an IBM zSeries mainframe. By switching to Linux, the Department of Transportation has increased the system uptime to 99 percent while significantly reducing related IT administration costs. Adopting an open source solution has enabled the Department to realize a 30 percent reduction in software costs, benefiting Oregon tax payers.
Working with IBM, Securex considered its options for resolving its issues with data replication performance and reliability. Migrating from z/VSE to the newer z/OS operating system would have resolved some functionality issues in DB2 and improved the flexibility, but would have significantly increased the total cost of ownership. Instead, Securex chose to adopt Linux on the mainframe, creating a separate logical partition on its IBM System z platform and installing SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.

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