City of Bergen

Success Story

The City of Bergen turns to SUSE Linux for one of the largest Linux migrations in Europe, consolidating its hardware by 80 percent

Overview

Bergen, the second largest city in Norway, is centrally located by the North Sea. Since its foundation in 1070, Bergen has attracted people from all quarters of the world. The City was named the European City of Culture in the year 2000.

Challenge

With nearly 50,000 users, the City of Bergen needed a stable, secure and cost-effective IT infrastructure to provide better municipal services to its citizens. The City's educational network, which serves 32,000 students and 4,000 teachers, was outdated and difficult to manage with 100 servers, one in each of its schools.

The City also wanted to migrate its Oracle* database servers from UNIX* and Microsoft Windows* to an open platform.

Novell solution

"Our move to Linux was not a decision against UNIX or Microsoft, but a decision for freedom. We wanted more competition because we know that results in lower prices and better services. And we also wanted more scalability, stability and security."

Janicke Runshaug Ross
CIO
City of Bergen

The City of Bergen decided on Linux* to reduce licensing costs and avoid being tied to a proprietary vendor. The City evaluated both Red Hat* and SUSE Linux before selecting SUSE Linux Enterprise Server to run on HP Integrity Itanium* 64-bit servers.

"We chose SUSE Linux because we found that it is ahead of Red Hat technically in some respects," said Ole-Bjorn Tuftedahl, chief technology officer for the City of Bergen. "For example, SUSE Linux has support for 64-bit processors, a higher security standard and better management tools for larger networks."

By migrating from UNIX to Linux, the City of Bergen can retain the stability associated with UNIX, but can reduce costs by no longer being tied to a proprietary platform and a single vendor.

"Our move to Linux was not a decision again UNIX or Microsoft, but a decision for freedom," said Janicke Runshaug Ross, chief information officer for the City of Bergen. "We made the decision for a combination of strategic, financial and professional reasons. We wanted more competition because we know that results in lower prices and better services. And we also wanted more scalability, stability and security."

The City of Bergen is consolidating the 100 servers from each of its schools to 20 IBM eServer* BladeCenters running SUSE Linux Enterprise Server in its data center. By centrally running the network in the data center, the City reduces maintenance time and costs without the need for dedicated IT staff in each of its schools.

"After the consolidation, we will only need the IT group at the data center and it will not have to grow very much," said Tuftedahl. "The dedicated people can then move into teaching and supporting the teachers, more of the pedagogical side of IT."

One of the biggest benefits of Linux for the City's new educational network is greater stability with less downtime and fewer virus problems. The City is also planning an intensive test of a Linux desktop that could help reduce its desktop software costs.

"We believe in open standards and have been waiting for big vendors such as HP, IBM, Oracle and Novell to enter the arena," said Ross. "SUSE Linux was more attractive with the backing of Novell's size, financial strength and presence in Norway. We are also impressed with the direction Novell is taking with Ximian® on the desktop."

The City is also replacing its 20 Oracle database servers running on HP-UX* to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. These mission-critical databases power the City's core health and welfare services applications among others.

"Most people know that moving to Linux and open systems will pay off in many ways," said Ross. "But many may wonder if it's possible to see such benefits in a large organization. Our tests and experience so far proves that it can be done. SUSE Linux does work, it's stable, and it has all the tools and software we need to run a large enterprise."

Results

The City of Bergen is transitioning to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server to provide a stable, cost-effective network for a large enterprise of 50,000 users. Running a Linux environment has already significantly improved network uptime and has reduced hardware, software and maintenance costs. The City has consolidated its hardware by 80 percent and reduced its overall costs by 30 percent compared to a Microsoft solution.

"We use one percent of our total budget for IT, including telephony," said Tuftedahl. "So compared to large organizations, we are trying to do a lot with little resources. SUSE Linux has made it possible for us to establish a modern and highly efficient education network on a modest budget."