Oregon Department of Transportation

Success Story

Moving to Linux increases uptime to 99.999 percent and reduces software costs by 30 percent

Overview

The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) provides a safe, efficient transportation system that supports economic opportunity and livable communities for 3.6 million Oregonians. ODOT has approximately 4,500 employees.

Challenge

The ODOT legacy OS/2 system for managing driver's license record communication statewide was difficult to manage and impossible to upgrade. When the system went down, ODOT was forced to send home anyone waiting for a driver's license in a DMV office while they worked to restore the system.

ODOT needed a reliable system to protect the confidential driver information of all its citizens, without straining its IT budget. Completely replacing the system was cost-prohibitive, so ODOT turned to open source tools to rewrite the communication component to run on Linux*.

Novell solution

"The biggest advantages of SUSE Linux are reliability, performance and cost. We are saving a ton of money with the ability to run it on Intel-based hardware, as well as mainframes. There's a big belief out there than mainframes are expensive, but mainframes running Linux are not."

Steve Adams
Senior Systems Administrator
Oregon Department of Transportation

As a Microsoft Windows* and mainframe shop, ODOT evaluated using Windows, as well as OpenConnect, before selecting open source and Linux. Using open source tools and C code, the department rewrote the communication component of the driver's license management system in about 80 hours.

"We could not have achieved such remarkable development speed without open source tools," said Steve Adams, senior systems administrator at the Oregon Department of Transportation. "We now have an agile, modular system that would have taken us three times as long to create with any other platform."

The new system has been running for more than six months without a minute of downtime. ODOT selected SUSE Linux Enterprise Server to replace Red Hat* and run the application on its IBM z800* mainframe server.

"Support is important to us and we've had difficulty getting timely support in the past," said Adams. "Novell's purchase of SUSE Linux and dedication to the Linux market makes all the difference. Novell's support is legendary."

A reliable system has dramatically reduced administration time, freeing up members of its IT staff to do more than look after an aging system. The staff no longer gets off-hour calls to get the system running again and can easily make changes to the system when needed.

"With Linux, our department users have zero downtime and we can give faster and better customer service," said Adams. "SUSE Linux is just a good solid operating system and everything we do with it is successful."

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server provides unparalleled security to protect confidential personal information such as a citizen's license number, address and date of birth. Tight security helps ODOT comply with strict Privacy Act requirements.

"Security is always a compelling factor in everything we do," said Adams. "With Linux, a published kernel bug will get fixed in a matter of hours. In the Windows world, it takes months to get a patch."

"The biggest advantages of SUSE Linux are reliability, performance and cost," continued Adams. "We are saving a ton of money with the ability to run it on Intel-based hardware, as well as mainframes. There's a big belief out there than mainframes are expensive, but mainframes running Linux are not."

Results

By rewriting a component of its driver's license management system using open source and Linux, ODOT avoided paying $120,000 for a new system. An agile system running on Linux gives the department 99.999 percent uptime, instead of its previous 82 percent. Moving to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server has also reduced its software costs by more than 30 percent.

"We deployed Linux as another tool to help overcome some of our state government's biggest challenges – a shrinking budget and increasing demands for service," said Adams. "Now we can deploy applications at a lower cost and get far greater reliability. Linux simplifies things tremendously."