ZTE Corporation

Success Story

ZTE Corporation's IT landscape included servers running UNIX* and Windows*. The former required high-end hardware, while the latter needed constant patching - giving ZTE an infrastructure that was expensive, insecure and difficult to manage. Migrating to SUSE® Linux Enterprise Server provided a cost-effective solution to all these issues.

Overview

Based in Shenzhen, ZTE Corporation is one of China's leading and most innovative providers of telecommunications equipment and services. The company employs more than 40,000 people and markets to telecom operators in over 100 countries, generating annual revenues of more than 20 billion RMB (USD 2.7 billion).

Challenge

Operating in the highly competitive telecommunications market, ZTE customers constantly demand new products and the best deals from their suppliers. To meet this need to innovate and deliver existing offerings at the best prices, ZTE devotes 10 percent of its budget and 40 percent of its workforce to research and development.

The need to fund research and development creates a constant pressure on other areas of the business to increase efficiency and reduce operational costs. The IT department realised that it could make a significant contribution by rethinking the company's IT landscape.

ZTE was using a combination of low-cost servers running Microsoft* Windows and high-end proprietary hardware running various UNIX platforms.

"In many ways, this heterogeneous infrastructure gave us the worst of both worlds," said He Jun, Project Manager at ZTE. "The UNIX platforms required expensive hardware, while the Windows servers were insecure and costly to maintain because of the constant need for patches and updates."

Novell Solution

"With SUSE Linux Enterprise, we have reduced our IT maintenance workload by 70 percent, and reduced downtime by 90 percent."

He Jun
Project Manager
ZTE Corporation

Looking for an operating system that could provide a 'middle ground' - a secure environment that would be simple to manage and would perform well on low-cost hardware - ZTE decided to test Linux*.

"We needed an operating system that would be flexible enough to handle all of our customers, from the largest to the smallest," said He Jun. "A Linux-based infrastructure would provide both high performance for our top-end clients and cost-efficiency for those with lesser requirements."

As a large enterprise, ZTE needed to find a partner with the resources and global reach to support its new Linux environment effectively. Novell was one of the few software companies capable of offering both an enterprise-level Linux distribution and the required levels of service.

"We evaluated various Linux distributions, and found that SUSE Linux Enterprise Server had all the qualities we were looking for," said He Jun. "It is already a highly respected operating system in the telecommunications industry. Moreover, the successful collaboration between Novell Technical Services and our in-house team made us certain that Novell would be the right partner for our organisation."

Novell® Technical Services helped to design a blueprint for moving a number of the company's key systems from UNIX and Windows to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, utilising industry-standard AMD64T-based servers. Despite the size and complexity of the project, the team successfully completed it within a single year.

"For our long-term Linux strategy to succeed, it was important that this project go smoothly," said He Jun. "We want to convince the whole business that SUSE Linux Enterprise is the right choice for the future, so we can standardize our entire landscape on a single operating system. Novell Technical Services deserves a lot of credit for helping us deliver the project rapidly and successfully."

Results

"The SUSE Linux Enterprise solution is helping us cut costs, improve security and reduce downtime - giving us all the benefits of our previous infrastructure with none of the disadvantages."

He Jun
Project Manager
ZTE Corporation

By moving its core UNIX-based systems to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, ZTE has been able to replace a number of proprietary hardware platforms with AMD* processor-based servers, reducing hardware costs by more than 40 percent.

Equally, by migrating from Microsoft Windows to SUSE Linux Enterprise, ZTE benefits from increased security and reduced threat from malware. The occurrence of viral infection has significantly decreased, and IT staff no longer need to install security patches every few days. As a result, the new infrastructure is much easier to manage, reducing maintenance workload considerably.

"We used to spend around 100 man-days per year purely on ensuring that our Windows machines were all running the latest security updates and removing viruses," said He Jun. "In addition, any infected machines could cause downtime for our core systems. With SUSE Linux Enterprise, we have reduced our IT maintenance workload by 70 percent, and reduced downtime by 90 percent."

The improved availability offered by SUSE Linux Enterprise helps ZTE staff to work more efficiently and with fewer interruptions. Ultimately, this translates into better service to customers at lower operational cost, as well as freeing up skilled IT staff to focus on higher-value projects.

"The SUSE Linux Enterprise solution is helping us cut costs, improve security and reduce downtime - giving us all the benefits of our previous infrastructure with none of the disadvantages," said He Jun. "With Novell as our partner, we have gained an IT environment that delivers real value to our business."