Völcker Informatik AG

Success Story

Völcker uses Mono to gain competitive advantage in the Linux market

Overview

Völcker Informatik AG is a software and services company headquartered in Berlin. Since 1995, the company has been offering exceptional software solutions and services focused on provisioning and IT service management.

Challenge

Völcker built its business providing solutions for Microsoft systems, using C++, Visual Basic and .NET to create its ActiveEntry software for provisioning and automated IT management. In recent years, many of Völcker's customers, particularly those in the German government, began migrating to Linux*. The City of Munich, a longtime client and third largest city in Germany, migrated its servers to Linux and needed Völcker to convert its ActiveEntry software to Linux.

To enter the Linux market, Völcker began searching for the right development platform to efficiently port its existing applications to Linux.

Novell solution

"We found Mono to be very stable and easy to learn. It's a commercial-grade development platform that really works. The ability we now have to run our source code seamlessly on both Windows and Linux platforms is vital to our business."

Matthias Bauer
Head of Development
Völcker Informatik AG

Völcker had two options to recode its software: Java* tools or Mono®, an open source development platform based on Microsoft's .NET framework. The company selected Mono for its rich set of tools and APIs to create software for both Microsoft Windows* and Linux platforms.

"Mono is now a critical part of our cross-platform development," said Matthias Bauer, head of development for Völcker Informatik AG. "Using Mono was the only way for us to leverage our existing software and give our customers what they need on Linux."

In just nine months, the Völcker team used Mono, .NET and C# to recode its Active Entry software to run on Linux, reducing the existing 7 millions lines of source code to 2 million. This efficiency saved a tremendous amount of development time and gives Völcker a single source code that now runs on both Windows and Linux platforms.

"We began having no real experience with Linux, but we had a complete development and testing environment ready in two to three weeks," said Bauer. "It was a big adventure for us and we have a team that likes new challenges."

The City of Munich is modernizing its educational network with more than 350 new Linux servers, one for each of its schools. The City of Munich needed all of its software to run on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, as well as Microsoft Windows clients. Völcker used Mono to create a new and modern implementation of its ActiveEntry software, based on a .NET framework-based environment.

Völcker's ActiveEntry software for Linux servers provides the City of Munich with identity management, help desk, asset management and provisioning capabilities that allows a few administrators to manage thousands of students and 40,000 PCs.

"With 150,000 students changing grades every year, there is no way a small team of administrators could manage without automated identity management and service provisioning," said Bauer. "Mono gave us a way to provide our services on Linux with no compatibility issues."

Völcker used Mono to port the ActiveEntry database from a Microsoft SQL server to run on an Oracle* system. The Oracle database also integrates data from SAP systems.

"We found Mono to be very stable and easy to learn," said Bauer. "It's a commercial-grade development platform that really works. The ability we now have to run our source code seamlessly on both Windows and Linux platforms is vital to our business."

Novell is the sponsor of Mono and also a member of the ECMA committee that defines the future of the .NET standard (C# and Virtual Machine specification) with Microsoft, Hewlett Packard and Intel.

"It's great to have Novell's support behind Mono," said Bauer. "Miguel de Icaza and his team were quick to help us out. We were really impressed with the quality of support. They were always willing to answer our questions and give us new ideas."

Results

By using Mono to port its software to Linux, Völcker has opened a new market to serve customers running both Windows and Linux platforms. Using Mono as its development platform, instead of Java, has reduced the company's testing time by 60 percent and eliminated the need to hire 5-10 new programmers. Migrating to Linux is also paying off for its customers who are gaining all the benefits of an open source network, as well as an enormous reduction in server licensing costs.

"Linux is now ready for the enterprise and is no longer a single server solution," said Bauer. "Our customers can easily integrate Windows and Linux servers and clients to reduce costs, and we are able to create software for both platforms. Not a lot of companies are doing this, so Mono gives us a competitive advantage."