Ohio Environmental Protection Agency

Success Story

A proprietary UNIX* system was taxing the hardware, software and training budget of the Ohio EPA. The agency moved to SUSE® Linux Enterprise Server for greater flexibility and reduced its server costs by 75 percent and training costs by 35 percent.

Overview

The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (Ohio EPA) is a state agency with the goal to protect the environment and public health by ensuring compliance with environmental laws. The agency has 1,250 employees across seven locations dedicated to improving Ohio's environment.

Challenge

The main challenge for the Ohio EPA is to balance budget concerns with the need to provide its users with the right technology to do their jobs. State budgets are tight and yet the agency requires current technology, particularly as it prepares emergency plans. Hence, the IT staff is always searching for ways to take advantage of the latest technology, but at a reasonable cost.

With a proprietary UNIX system, the Ohio EPA was facing increasing hardware, software and training costs. RISC servers and proprietary software was expensive, and the training required to use the system was only available out of state. The Ohio EPA also wanted to move away from a command-line architecture to a more user-friendly, graphical environment.

Novell solution

"We could not risk putting mission-critical applications on Linux without the right enterprise support. With Novell, we knew we had the right backing to move to Linux."

Sommers T. (Skip) Holler
Network Administration Manager
Ohio EPA

The Ohio EPA began a limited use of Linux* several years ago, initially piloting Red Hat*, but made the decision to migrate its core production environment from UNIX to Linux because of Novell's support for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.

"When Novell purchased SUSE Linux, that's all the motivation we needed," said Sommers T. (Skip) Holler, network administration manager for the Ohio EPA. "We could not risk putting mission-critical applications on Linux without the right enterprise support. With Novell, we knew we had the right backing to move to Linux."

The Ohio EPA now runs all of its enterprise applications on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, including its HR applications, a BEA WebLogic* Server, Apache Web server and all its Oracle* databases. The agency is also evaluating SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop for many of its users.

The Ohio EPA runs SUSE Linux Enterprise Server on Dell* and HP* servers, including several that run AMD* processors for 64-bit computing. Instead of spending $10,000 - $20,000 for UNIX servers, the agency can now purchase powerful Intel-based servers for $5,000 that deliver comparable performance to UNIX alternatives.

The ability to purchase more servers within its budget increases the agency's failover options and strengthens its disaster recovery plan. The agency is also implementing PolyServe* Matrix Server to further reduce its server costs with a highly scalable Linux cluster.

"We feel we have the best of both worlds with Linux - the performance and stability we enjoyed with a proprietary platform, combined with the graphical administrative environment of Linux," said Holler. "One of the best benefits for our users is that we made a transparent switch from UNIX to Linux."

The agency is also significantly reducing its training costs because Linux training is readily available, without the IT staff having to travel out of state for weeks at a time.

"We find that it's easy to move IT resources from a UNIX or Windows* environment to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server," said Holler. "Our IT staff is also happier with the limitless possibilities of Linux and open source."

With a wide range of Linux and open source applications, the agency can implement new systems much faster and more affordably than with its previous UNIX environment. Implementing off-the-shelf Linux applications often does not require the time and expense required to purchase new hardware.

"With SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, we can do things for our users that we never could have afforded to do before," said Holler. "We feel that the sky is the limit with Novell® and the options that are now available to us."

The agency is also moving to ZENworks® Linux Management for policy-driven automation to deploy, manage and maintain its Linux servers.

Results

"We find that it's easy to move IT resources from a UNIX or Windows environment to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. Our IT staff is also happier with the limitless possibilities of Linux and open source."

Sommers T. (Skip) Holler
Network Administration Manager
Ohio EPA

Moving from a proprietary UNIX system to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server has dramatically reduced IT costs for the Ohio EPA. The agency has reduced server costs by nearly 75 percent, allowing it to bolster its disaster recovery efforts with more servers.

With local Linux training readily available, the agency has reduced training costs by 35 percent and no longer needs to send its staff out of state. The IT staff has limitless possibilities with open source development and can quickly put new applications into production.

"Had Novell not been behind us in our move to Linux, it would not have been as easy to do what we did," said Holler. "We have had terrific support from Novell at every level - from sales and consulting, to support and training services."