FAST FACTS:

Company: Guangdong Telecom: BizNavigator

Geography: APAC: China

Industry: Telecom

Business Challenge: With continuous development of the BizNavigator platform, Guangdong Telecom needed to expand the capacity of the Internet Data Center (IDC) deployed in Guangdong, so that it would support more than 10 function modules, including Office Automation, Inventory Management, Network-based Anti-virus System and Enterprise Messaging

Solution: Guangdong Telecom deployed Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Advanced Platform on Dell PowerEdge 2950MLK servers based on Quad-Core Intel Xeon 5400 series processors

Software: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Advanced Platform

Hardware: Dell PowerEdge 2950MLK servers based on Quad-core Intel Xeon processor 5400 series

Benefits: Reduced the probability of single point of failure, and improved the availability and manageability of the entire cluster system; saved even greater energy consumptions, and hence would reduce operational cost.

Download the Full Case Study at Intel.com

Background:
As an important component of the Digital Guangdong campaign that promotes computerization in the enterprises, the Guangdong Telecom established an enterprise computerization solution service platform for small to medium enterprises, namely BizNavigator, and tried to provide the software and hardware application systems and IT environment in a one-stop computerization construction for enterprises.

Business Challenge:
By using the network, operation and professional human resources of the Guangdong Telecom, customers can customize their products according to different needs, so as to effectively control their enterprise management cost and speed up the computerization of the enterprises.

With continuous development of the platform functionality, Guangdong Telecom urgently needs to expand the capacity of the Internet Data Center (IDC) deployed in Guangdong, so that it would support more than 10 function modules, including Office Automation, Inventory Management, Network-based Anti-virus System and Enterprise Messaging.

Solution:
In January 2008, after careful comparisons and studies, Guangdong Telecom chose to deploy Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 AP (Red Hat EL) on Dell PowerEdge 2950MLK servers based on Quad-Core Intelо Xeonо 5400 series processors.

Hardware Platform with High Performance and Efficiency:
System security and stability are crucial in building such a large data center. Malfunctioning of any single system may cause the services to halt on the entire application platform, which would affect the business operations of tens of thousands of enterprises, and brings immeasurable damage to the reputation of Guangdong Telecom. Therefore, Guangdong Telecom requires the system vendor to provide a highly efficient and robust platform and multiple layers of security assurance for BizNavigator

Dell PowerEdge 2950MLK servers based on Quad-core Intel Xeon processor 5400 series , which built with 45-nm enhanced Intel CoreTM microarchitecture, brought higher performance and multi-task processing power for the core platform of BizNavigator.

Comparing with previous generation of Intel Xeon processors, the brand new 5400 series of Quad-core Intel Xeon processors with 45nm high-k technology further enhanced the system performance, and greatly reduced energy consumption, and the performance to energy consumption ratio was increased by 38%;

The Dell PowerEdge 2950MLK servers with Quad-core Intel Xeon processors were configured with two power supplies, two network cards, and RAID1 hard disk array, which greatly reduced the probability of single point of failure and improved the availability and manageability of the entire cluster system;

Benefits:
The Quad-core Intel Xeon processors were capable of multi-task processing, which ensured the reliability and high speed of the access and module functions of BizNavigator, and ensured the orderly processing of electronic businesses of enterprises;

The Quad-core Intel Xeon processors built with 45nm technology would save even greater energy consumptions, and hence would reduce operational cost.

Under the support of Dell and Red Hat, 73 Dell PowerEdge 2950MLK servers provided a reliable and efficient running platform for all the major modules of BizNavigator though grouping and clustering.

COMPANY: Verizon Communications Inc.

INNOVATION AWARD CATEGORY: Optimized Systems

INDUSTRY: Telecom; Broadband, Wireless, Wireline

GEOGRAPHY: North America

BUSINESS CHALLENGE: Needed a reliable and cost effective solution for its SAP and PeopleSoft Enterprise Resource Planning applications that would scale with its growing computing infrastructure

MIGRATION PATH: UNIX-based SMP platform to Red Hat Enterprise Linux

SOFTWARE: Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform, Red Hat Network Satellite, SAP, PeopleSoft, Oracle RAC

HARDWARE: 300 Dell and HP servers

BENEFITS: Reduced costs, improved performance, increased ability to scale and prepared for future growth, increased energy conservation efforts

Download the PDF

BACKGROUND
Verizon Communications Inc., a Dow 30 company, is a global leader in delivering broadband and other wireless and wireline communications services to mass market, business, government and wholesale customers. With more than 235,000 employees, Verizon was selected for the Optimized Systems Innovation Award for its consolidation and standardization on Red Hat Enterprise Linux for its SAP and PeopleSoft Enterprise Resource Planning applications to reduce costs, increase performance, and allow the ability to scale for growth. The company now runs its servers more efficiently,with minimal need for additional equipment, and Verizon has further bolstered its conservation efforts.

BUSINESS CHALLENGE
With a massive global workforce of more than 235,000 employees, Verizon had an increasing need to consolidate and standardize business applications, most notably, its Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. Due to Verizon’s acquisition business growth and the challenges of implementing disparate systems, and the need to serve its employees, the company needed to migrate its systems to a highly reliable and stable platform that would scale with the growing computing infrastructure while simultaneously reducing costs.

Verizon’s existing UNIX-based IT architecture lacked the ability to cost-effectively scale horizontally with the constant business growth.

SOLUTION
Verizon identified the need to migrate its large proprietary UNIX-based SMP platform to standardize on an open source operating system running on x86 based commodity hardware to achieve the required scalability, reduced costs, and equivalent performance, in regards to all of its business critical PeopleSoft and SAP applications.

After a thorough evaluation period in 2007 of multiple open source vendors, Verizon selected Red Hat Enterprise Linux as the standard operating system for the mission critical business application migration project.

Verizon decided to deploy the PeopleSoft and SAP project in phases. The first phase began in 2008 and started the financial modules, taking about 6 months to complete before moving to production. The second phase consisted of the HR and Payroll modules and due to the better than expected results, Verizon plans to continue the consolidation with its reporting, warehousing, and credit card processing applications. The PeopleSoft and SAP applications were migrated from UNIX to Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform with Red Hat Network Satellite and Proxy for Management, Provisioning, & Monitoring running on over 300 Dell and HP Intel/AMD based servers and Oracle RAC.

“With Red Hat Enterprise Linux on standard based x86 commodity hardware, we are able to scale our growth horizontally and meet the needs of our employee base,” said Michael Blake, director, systems and architecture implementation, Verizon, “The fact that Red Hat Enterprise Linux was certified with all of our third-party applications, such as SAP and PeopleSoft, allowed us to make this decision confidently and proceed quickly, as the costs continued to mount with the previous solution.”

BENEFITS
Migrating the systems off the proprietary UNIX based servers to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, allowed Verizon to reduce costs, increased its ability to scale and prepared its architecture for future growth, while at the same time providing increased performance.

“If migrating to Red Hat Enterprise Linux simply allowed us to scale at a fraction of the cost, and provided the same performance, we would have deemed the migration a success,” said Blake, “But, the real impact on the business was the increased performance with the same applications running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.”

In addition to the cost savings and performance increase, Verizon also realized a two-thirds reduction in power usage in its data center. “This is a very real and valuable benefit and will have a direct impact on our energy conservation efforts,” said Blake.

Verizon was able to increase capacity, reliability and security, allowing end users to work more efficiently. Blake commented that, Red Hat Enterprise Linux has eliminated performance surges and through the consolidation the company was able to identify bottlenecks in the system, providing a more streamlined environment. End users were minimally disrupted by the change in systems but have since noticed a more improved IT environment. The total cost of ownership has been greatly reduced.

“Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a trusted product with excellent value and allowed us to extract the value of the new HP C-Class hardware,” said Blake, “We also saw Red Hat Network Satellite as a strategic component to our deployment, it enhances patch management, and security, and without Satellite it would be difficult to manage our systems. Satellite simplifies this process and frees up our system administrators for strategic business projects.”

CUSTOMER ADVICE
“For companies in similar situations, the most critical component is to run tests, document, and confirm the expected behavior of your Red Hat certified applications as this will drastically reduce the complexities of the migration project. We knew that with Red Hat, we could worry less about the application certifications, and focus more on proving the business case to secure buy-in from the entire IT organization. By running tests and executing numerous examples for specific teams, we were able to prove to our internal customers, that not only would the solution work, but it will perform better, and at a fraction of the previous costs,” said Blake.

FAST FACTS

Company: Covad Communications Group Inc.

Industry: Telecommunications

Geography: San Jose, California

Opportunity: Transition from inflexible and costly proprietary middleware software and hardware to JBoss Enterprise Middleware to cut costs while speeding new broadband/VoIP products to market

Software: JBoss Enterprise Application Platform, JBoss Operations Network

Hardware: x86 system

Benefits: Reduce costs by more than $500,000 annually in hardware and software support; enabled cost-effective modernization of service-oriented architecture (SOA); improved performance of existing systems; reduced time-to-market of new products.

“In the current challenging economic situation, it is all the more important for Covad to retain its edge in automated Operations Support Systems while reducing the software support costs. We needed to modernize our SOA and roll out new products, all the while doing a new software rollout every six weeks and maintaining 99.9% uptime. That’s why we love JBOSS – it allows us to do more with less.”
- Unmesh Kulkarni, Director of Software Architecture and Delivery, Covad Communications Group, Inc.

Download the case study [PDF]

BACKGROUND
Covad Communications is a leading provider of integrated voice and data communications. As a broadband specialist and pioneer, Covad was the first vendor to commercially deploy DSL in the United States. It owns the largest broadband network in the country, and is the only provider of data, voice, and wireless telecommunications solutions for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) with a nationwide DSL footprint. A major supplier of broadband access for companies like Earthlink, AOL, and AT&T, Covad offers its services to more than 57 million homes and businesses to 235 major markets in 44 states.

OPPORTUNITY
Covad has an advanced and fully automated Operations Support System spanning everything from Sales to back-end provisioning, Network Management and Billing. Covad had developed a broad range of front-end applications in-house using this proprietary software that integrated with the BSS/OSS back-end applications and were accessible to sales and support representatives via the Internet. These applications were also part of a modular service-oriented architecture (SOA) Covad had built in 2003 to enable rapid deployment of new software as needed.

But Covad increasingly found the licensing terms of the proprietary software inflexible, inhibiting its ability to add new functionality to its existing systems, develop new ones, and scale to meet market demands. “If you wanted to do something as basic as use the middleware on a different network, you had to completely renegotiate the license,” said Unmesh Kulkarni, technology leader of the software and information systems (SWIS) department within Covad, that is responsible for automation of all sales and support operations for the Covad network services. “This inflexibility was really hampering our ability to innovate, which is a cornerstone of our company.”

Additionally, the proprietary systems – both the hardware and the software – were prohibitively expensive. “We were spending millions of dollars on these proprietary solutions, and knew we could find a cheaper alternative,” said Kulkarni.

But, as important as cutting costs were, Covad couldn’t afford to compromise on quality and availability. Its middleware platform was the basis for a broad range of mission-critical applications.

For example, it had built a “prequalification engine” that sales representatives use to determine which Covad services are available to a potential customer at a particular location. “You have to go through a lot of data to come up with an answer quickly,” said Kulkarni. “Our applications often had less than two seconds to respond, otherwise the customer won’t wait, and we lose the sale.” Because Covad gets literally millions of these requests every day from hundreds of partners, “this was an absolutely mission-critical system, and our middleware needed to be robust enough to handle it,” he said.

SOLUTION
Kulkarni, a long-time proponent of open source, had been keeping his eye on the developments of JBoss Enterprise Middleware for some time. His team performed extensive due diligence of both the technology and the company, and the decision turned out to be an easy one. “In the last few years, JBoss has not only caught up with the leading middleware platforms, but overtaken them in many areas. JBoss Enterprise Application Platform had everything we needed in a technology platform: it offered superior performance; a full range of functionality; high-quality support; and was reasonably priced,” said Kulkarni. “Clearly, JBoss was our best option going forward.”

Today, Covad has x86 and SPARC machines running JBoss Enterprise Application Platform, and running JBoss Operations Network, an integrated management platform that simplifies the development, testing, deployment and monitoring of JBoss Enterprise Middleware.

BENEFITS
Thanks to this flexibility, the cost savings have been substantial. “We’re saving $500,000 per year by deploying JBoss,” said Kulkarni. “My executives love the fact that our invoices are going down every quarter,” said Kulkarni.

Moving from the proprietary platform to JBoss Enterprise Middleware was part of an overall corporate mandate that came from the very top of the organization to run lean software operations – but without sacrificing the ability to provide Covad customers with the highest quality services.

“We’d recently gone from a public to a private company, and were under new management,” said Kulkarni. “With the economy shrinking, these kinds of cost savings were exactly what our senior managers were demanding. But we still had to offer our customers 99.99 percent availability, and our developers still had to roll out new software every six weeks. That’s why we love JBoss – it allows us to do more with less.”

JBoss also enabled Covad to reduce the time-to-market of new services. The software division recently designed and deployed a new JBoss-based voice over IP (VoIP) solution within four months. “We moved from concept to product within this extraordinarily tight timeframe – something we could never have done with our proprietary middleware,” said Kulkarni. “And instead of costing us millions, the cost was minimal.”

JBoss Enterprise Middleware has proven to be a boon within Covad’s SOA strategy as well. The firm first rolled out its SOA four years ago, and used the proprietary middleware as a way of deploying Web services throughout the organization. Because of JBoss Enterprise Middleware’s’ advanced support for Java Platform Enterprise Edition (JEE) and flexibility with Web Service stacks, Covad is currently migrating its SOA over to the JBoss platform. “There’s no way I could have modernized my SOA without JBoss,” said Kulkarni.

The JBoss Operations Network (JON) allows Covad to improve operational efficiency and reliability through thorough visibility into production availability and performance and effectively manage configuration with a single, integrated tool.

The fact that Covad has freed itself from vendor lock-in is another big plus. “With all the consolidation going on in the middleware industry, prices are going up and vendors are less inclined to work with customers and be flexible,” said Kulkarni. “Not only does JBoss give us exactly what we need now, it provides us with choices going into the future.”

Looking forward, Covad is currently working on a very aggressive new product roll-out for 2009, primarily in the form of providing customers with Internet-based network services delivered “in the cloud.” JBoss provides Covad with a much more flexible approach to support this growth. “We’re looking at the JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform to implement business rules and process models, and at JBoss Seam as deep Web integration platform,” he said. “Whatever we do, JBoss is certain to be a core part of our efforts.”

Companies: Advent Conferencing and CITYTECH

Industry: Conferencing/ Services/Technology

Geography: Chicago

Business Challenge: Needed to differentiate itself from the competition in a commodity marketplace.

Software: JBoss Enterprise Application Platform Including: JBoss Seam Framework, JBoss Messaging and JBoss Cache, JBoss jBPM Framework

Benefits: Increased sales by offering a more flexible and customized service; Boosted customer satisfaction by improving provisioning and billing procedures; streamlined internal processes and cut operational costs through integrating customer relationship management, business process management, and accounting systems.

“With an award-winning organization like Red Hat behind us, and world-class technology like JBoss to leverage for our solutions, we are primed for success,” said Matt Van Bergan, chief technology officer, CITYTECH.

“CITYTECH listens to my needs, and is very creative about coming back with ideas, they speak in terms that make me confident they understand my business, and are completely focused on making Advent successful.” – Mike Swimelar, president, Advent Conferencing

See CITYTECH in the Press: Enterprise Management Quarterly

Download the case study [PDF]

BACKGROUND
As a full-service telephone and Web conferencing service provider, Advent Conferencing offers the latest in secure collaboration technology for businesses of all sizes. It prides itself on being on the technological edge, and delivers the best sound quality and broadest range of features in the industry at competitive rates. Based in Chicago, Advent has a customer base that reaches throughout the United States, and has managed to differentiate itself in a crowded commodity marketplace through a savvy combination of the latest technologies and stellar customer service.

CITYTECH is a Chicago-based consultancy specializing in the design, development, and execution of highly available and scalable enterprise applications. A Red Hat partner, it specializes in JBoss, Java Enterprise Edition (J2EE), and other top software development platforms. CITYTECH’s mission is to help its customers achieve their business goals through technology. Founded in 2003, and growing at a rate of 25 percent annually, CITYTECH’s success is due to its ability to execute projects using an agile but methodical implementation methodology deployed by small, highly experienced teams of professionals. It forges long-term partnerships with clients and makes customer satisfaction its No. 1 priority.

OPPORTUNITY
The teleconferencing business is increasingly a commodity business. Most market participants offer roughly the same services at roughly the same price points. Mike Swimelar, president of Advent Conferencing, understood that the only way to differentiate his company from the pack of competitors was through technological innovation. By 2006, he was already offering the very the latest in secure collaboration technologies with the best sound quality and richest feature set. Its audio conferencing network, bridges, and processes were the most reliable in the industry. But he was looking for even more of an edge. “I realized there was more we could do,” said Swimelar.

Specifically, Swimelar wanted to provide advanced account management services to his customers that would enable them to do such things as generate usage reports on the fly; track expenses by conference leader, project, or account; and specify when, how, and in what format they would be billed. He also wanted to streamline Advent’s own internal operations. At the time, senior management, sales, marketing, operations, and accounting functions were served by “stovepipe” information systems that fragmented business and operational data in a way that made it difficult to see the big picture.

Billing – the lifeblood of any business – was especially problematic. “We were getting data dumps from the bridge software that we had to manually massage,” said Swimelar. “It could take days, sometimes longer, to get customer billing out.” In addition to slowing down cash flow, there was no flexibility in tailoring the bills according to customers’ specifications. And customers were also demanding more advanced management features that would allow them to track which employees were using the conferencing system, when, and for how long, and give them easy access to other usage and billing metrics. “Our customers wanted more control and visibility into the service, but our existing systems weren’t capable of providing that,” said Swimelar.

SOLUTION
Swimelar had worked with CITYTECH’s chief technology officer, Matt Van Bergan, while at another company. He went to Van Bergan for help developing an integrated Web-based application that would simultaneously meet Advent’s internal and customer-facing requirements. CITYTECH used the JBoss Enterprise Application Platform as the basis of a development and deployment platform for building an application the two firms dubbed “Advent Pulse.”

To accomplish this, CITYTECH used the JBoss Messaging functionality within the JBoss Enterprise Application Platform to provide asynchronous communication with the conferencing bridge hardware. The JBoss Seam Framework was the basis for the Web application, primarily due to its integrated AJAX functionality. JBoss jBPM was used to model and manage the human-driven business processes. Finally, the JCache support within the JBoss Enterprise Application Platform enhanced performance when communicating to the dedicated conference bridge hardware.

BENEFITS
Today, Advent Pulse provides customer relationship management (CRM), live interface with the conference bridges for billing data extraction, business intelligence, and sales commission management in one seamless application.

The benefits were immediate, and substantial. “We spend a lot less time struggling just getting data into a format for billing customers, and a lot more time on marketing and sales,” said Swimelar. Additionally, he said, Advent can provision new customers and fill orders much more swiftly and cost effectively, and provide customers with near-real-time access to usage metrics.

The net result? “Customer satisfaction is much higher, billing errors have been eliminated, and Swimelar is convinced that he’s making more sales as a direct result of the new system in place. “Because we’re able to deliver exactly what our customers need, and do it flexibly, quickly, and for a competitive rate, it has really made a difference in our revenues,” he said.

“CITYTECH listens to my needs, and is very creative about coming back with ideas. Rather than being so acronym-oriented that I don’t know what they are talking about, they speak in terms that make me confident they understand my business, and are completely focused on making me successful,” said Swimelar.

In turn, CITYTECH points back to Red Hat as the ideal technology partner. “With an award-winning organization like Red Hat behind us, and world-class technology like JBoss to leverage for our solutions, we are primed for success,” said Van Bergan. Plus, he said, the stellar enterprise support, and the direction laid out by its product roadmap have made JBoss the perfect choice of middleware for many of its clients.

Looking ahead, Advent plans to use CITYTECH’s help to keep innovating. “That’s what’s going to keep us ahead of the competition,” said Swimelar. He is currently engaged with CITYTECH’s consulting division to brainstorm how the JBoss Communications Platform – based upon the Mobicents open source project – can be used to migrate from a traditional bridge teleconferencing architecture to a more integrated solution that enables the next-generation of conferencing services. “As we get off the traditional telephone networks and more into IP [Internet Protocol], we’ll be able to implement new solutions that would allow us to integrate voice and Web conferencing even more,” said Swimelar. “We’re very excited about the possibilities.”

Delivered Value Winner: Nortel

Submitted by: Ernest Szeideman

Vertical: Telecommunications

Geography: International

Website: www.nortel.com

Company Background

By linking hundreds of millions of users the world over, Nortel is a recognized leader in delivering the communications capabilities that make its promise of “business made simple” a reality. Based in Toronto, Nortel provides enterprises and service providers in more than 150 countries with the next-generation technologies they need to support their multimedia and business-critical network applications. Nortel technologies help eliminate barriers to efficiency, speed, and performance by simplifying networks and connecting people to their information-whenever and wherever they need it.

Business and/or Technical Challenge

In 2002, Nortel faced a growing demand from its design community for the latest coding tools and the need for an absolutely stable environment in which to deploy them. Nortel began searching for a patching and management infrastructure it could deploy locally on its network to achieve these goals. This was no easy task given the network in question had more than 291,000 nodes located in excess of 350 locations worldwide-not to mention 8,000 subnets housing a myriad of servers and desktops running a wide variety of operating systems that provided access to a broad range of network services.

“We needed a robust patching solution for the machines we were deploying in the field for three key reasons,” said Ernest Szeideman, Nortel senior systems analyst. “First, we needed to ensure security. Next, we wanted to deliver increased capabilities for the systems deployed. And finally, we needed to improve the manageability of the boxes themselves.”

In short, the company needed a robust, scalable patching solution that could be accessed and used similarly across all systems-and that would be deployed locally so that the integrity of its data could be ensured.

In addition to the technical challenges of finding an adequate patching solution, Nortel was faced with another: Despite having considerable Unix expertise and a growing Linux installation, its staff was still relatively new to the Linux world. Thus it needed a true partner to help it support its growing Linux environment and to collaborate with the open-source community in general to support its very heterogeneous infrastructure that contained a variety of systems including proprietary Unix to Windows to big iron systems.

Vendor Selection Process

Already familiar with Red Hat from its work with the company on other projects, Nortel nonetheless considered a number of offerings-including one from Ximian (now Novell)-but in the final analysis Red Hat was selected due to the capabilities offered,manageability of its products, and the ease of installation and use across the board.

Most importantly, Red Hat “enabled us to use Linux within our heterogeneous environment,” said Szeideman.

Specifically about Red Hat Network (RHN) Satellite, Szeideman said, “We wanted a product that would allow us to perform the patching while making certain that no information left our internal network.” Ximian wasn’t as mature, he pointed out. “And it was absolutely key that we partner with a company that had a solid service offering to support our business,” he said. Red Hat was able to do just that.

Szeideman also said that it didn’t hurt that Red Hat had the best independent software vendor (ISV) support of any Linux vendor Nortel was able to identify-a factor that was critical for Nortel’s ability to run its business.

Solution

In 2003, after much collaboration with and input to the Red Hat Network team, Nortel was one of the first Red Hat customers to deploy RHNSatellite along with various proxy servers to service its Red Hat installed base. Today, the company is using version 5.0.1 of Red Hat Network and employs both servers and workstations running Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Nortel employs primarily Hewlett-Packard hardware (DL380, DL580, DL385, and DL585 servers as well as xw4300, xw4400, and xw4600 workstations); however, it also uses a significant quantity of Dell equipment. The range of software used on these machines includes Clearcase, Oracle, VMware workstation, and a variety of in-house applications for load builds. Today, Nortel has approximately 2,000 machines registered against its RHN Satellite server.

Benefits

For Nortel, the benefits of deploying RHN Satellite for its patching and infrastructure needs were numerous and immediate. Not only were the initial upfront costs (including licensing and hardware) substantially lower than proprietary Unix solutions, but the solution’s continually upgraded feature set has enabled Nortel to do things like automatically clean up duplicate entitlements (thanks to its exposed API), easily determine the number of each version of RHEL deployed on its networks, and provide patch penetration statistics for SOX and other audit points. The company has also been able to develop a front end to the “up2date” and “yum” commands that enables system administrators to patch supported machines by simply touching a file and running a command-regardless of operating system.

Most importantly, however, RHN Satellite has enabled Nortel to patch its Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems seamlessly via its internal networks (providing bandwidth savings even for those outside of Nortel)-and it has done so in a safe, secure, and tested manner.

According to Szeideman, RHN Satellite long ago proved itself in terms of return on investment-so much so, in fact, that the company is now exploring Linux for the desktop. “Although hard-core designers represent the current market for Linux, we’re now exploring the option of going full scale with Linux as a potential replacement for the Microsoft offering,” said Szeideman. “It’s becoming a key to our environment.”

Red Hat Support, Training, and Consulting Services Leveraged

Nortel was also one of the first Red Hat customers to make use of a technical account manager (TAM), and it continues to do so very enthusiastically today. In addition, a number of Nortel engineers attended Red Hat Certified Engineer training, which helped the organization work effectively with both Red Hat and its offerings.

Today, Nortel continues to collaborate with its Red Hat TAM from both an image development and a support perspective-and continues to be extraordinarily pleased with the results which not only benefit Nortel, but the open source community as a whole.

Advice for Other Companies Facing a Similar Business Challenge

Based on Nortel’s positive experience working with Red Hat technical account managers, Szeideman strongly recommends that any large company interested in deploying Red Hat throughout the enterprise should work with a TAM to get this done.

Said Szeideman, “I view the TAM as a cheerleader for us within Red Hat to bring about whatever we require in our environment and to meet our business goals.” These days, said Szeideman, Nortel is “lean, mean, and focused from a technology point of view. We deliver value for our customers-and over the years, we’ve been able to rely on Red Hat to help us with that mission.”

Raleigh, NC – June 3, 2008 – Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that Cybercity, a leading Danish broadband supplier and part of the Telenor group, has chosen to use the JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform for system integration and middleware. The JBoss solution is expected to significantly reduce Cybercity’s total cost of ownership (TCO).In selecting an SOA solution, Cybercity initially evaluated Oracle Fusion, BEA WebLogic and JBoss solutions.

The organization ultimately selected the JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform over an existing BEA WebLogic platform and its pre-installed COTS closed source system for the provisioning of Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) customers. In the future the JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform will serve as a link between systems such as the CRM/Customer support client, backend BSS/Billing system, external partners, ISP platforms and the actual network itself. The SOA Platform will be used for point-to-point integration as well as to expose systems as reusable services. As experience with the initial deployments is obtained, further use of the platform is expected.

“The versatility of the platform allows us to use one development tool, technology and set of standards for many purposes. Also, applications deployed on the JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform can be monitored and controlled in a standardized way,” said Thorbjørn Blixen-Finecke, chief architect at Cybercity. “Our aim was to create a more agile IT stack that is familiar to a larger part of the IT-development organization, ultimately resulting in a shorter time to market and easier management and monitoring.”

In addition to TCO savings, deploying the JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform solution as a standard framework will also provide Cybercity with the opportunity to benefit from easier monitoring, uniform deployment and governance of integration applications and the ability to reuse services and components.

“Red Hat is a proven alternative to other proprietary middleware platforms and has a sound business model with no licensing costs, which was one of the main reasons we chose the company as our preferred supplier,” said Blixen-Finecke. “Price was certainly a differentiator, but Red Hat’s reliable products and support are prerequisites for considering open source products. As an open source product, the JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform also provides us with the opportunity to bring commonly used features back into the product, reducing in-house development costs.”

“Our collaboration with Cybercity fully demonstrates the benefits of the JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform,” said Pierre Fricke, director, Product Line Management SOA Products at Red Hat. “The flexible nature of the system gives Cybercity the opportunity to quickly develop new business applications based on existing services and scale up or down with less development effort, providing Cybercity with a more agile IT stack and a shorter time to market.”

For more news about Red Hat, visit www.redhat.com. For more news, more often, visit www.press.redhat.com.

About Red Hat, Inc. Red Hat, the world’s leading open source solutions provider, is headquartered in Raleigh, NC with over 50 satellite offices spanning the globe. CIOs have ranked Red Hat first for value in Enterprise Software for four consecutive years in the CIO Insight Magazine Vendor Value study. Red Hat provides high-quality, affordable technology with its operating system platform, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, together with applications, management and Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) solutions, including the JBoss Enterprise Middleware Suite. Red Hat also offers support, training and consulting services to its customers worldwide. Learn more: http://www.redhat.com.

Forward-Looking Statements Certain statements contained in this press release may constitute “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements provide current expectations of future events based on certain assumptions and include any statement that does not directly relate to any historical or current fact. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including: risks related to the integration of acquisitions; the ability of the Company to effectively compete; the inability to adequately protect Company intellectual property and the potential for infringement or breach of license claims of or relating to third party intellectual property; risks related to data and information security vulnerabilities; ineffective management of, and control over, the Company’s growth and international operations; adverse results in litigation; and changes in and a dependence on key personnel, as well as other factors contained in our most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K (copies of which may be accessed through the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Web site at http://www.sec.gov), including those found therein under the captions “Risk Factors” and “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations”. In addition to these factors, actual future performance, outcomes, and results may differ materially because of more general factors including (without limitation) general industry and market conditions and growth rates, economic conditions, and governmental and public policy changes. The forward-looking statements included in this press release represent the Company’s views as of the date of this press release and these views could change. However, while the Company may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, the Company specifically disclaims any obligation to do so. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing the Company’s views as of any date subsequent to the date of the press release.

Latin American-based Sixbell Nekotec Solutions finds success after migrating to Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Raleigh, NC — September 25, 2007 — Red Hat (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that Sixbell Nekotec Solutions, a leading Latin American telecommunications company, is experiencing heightened flexibility, increased cost savings and enhanced performance after migrating to Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Sixbell Nekotec Solutions is engaged in the design, development, marketing and support of integrated telecommunications solutions. With corporate offices in Chile, Mexico, Colombia and Brazil, it has been offering comprehensive solutions to enterprises and network operators for 18 years. The company recently looked for a flexible solution based on a standard and open operating system that would provide interoperability with a greater number of hardware and software providers. With an expanded open environment, Sixbell would offer solutions in infrastructure environments to better fit its client’s needs.

After months of analyzing the support, flexibility and robustness of multiple solutions in mission-critical environments, Sixbell selected Red Hat solutions and began the implementation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux in early 2006. With Red Hat solutions, Sixbell diversified its platforms, mounted applications and incorporated new hardware vendors like HP, IBM and Sun. The company was additionally able to mount its previous Unix platforms on Linux, reducing hardware costs and supporting more hardware alternatives with heightened performance.

“Following our successful experience with Red Hat solutions, we now always provide Linux to our clients if they do not impose any infrastructure scheme,” said Rodrigo Perez, network development manager at Sixbell. “This allows us to have a broad array of hardware options, with Intel or AMD processors. We’re convinced that the use of Linux will be only to our advantage. For future implementation, we’re exploring JBoss solutions to continue enhancing our infrastructure.”

Flexibility and performance are important elements in every organization’s IT infrastructure, said Gabriel Szulik, general manager of Latin America at Red Hat. We are happy to be able to deliver these benefits, in addition to cost savings, to Sixbell and its customers.

For more information about Red Hat, visit http://www.redhat.com. For more news, more often, visit www.press.redhat.com.

About Red Hat, Inc.: Red Hat, the world’s leading open source solutions provider, is headquartered in Raleigh, NC with over 50 satellite offices spanning the globe. CIOs have ranked Red Hat first for value in Enterprise Software for three consecutive years in the CIO Insight Magazine Vendor Value study. Red Hat provides high-quality, low-cost technology with its operating system platform, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, together with applications, management and Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) solutions. Red Hat also offers support, training and consulting services to its customers worldwide. Learn more: http://www.redhat.com.

About Sixbell Nekotec: Sixbell Nekotec Solutions is a leading Latin American corporation developing value added software and service systems and system integration. We offer complete telecommunication services for network companies and operators. For 15 years, more than 250 companies have relied on our solutions, delivering value to their new services by helping them to differentiate from the competition, obtain customer loyalty and generate higher revenues. www.sixbell.cl

Forward-Looking Statements: Certain statements contained in this press release may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements provide current expectations of future events based on certain assumptions and include any statement that does not directly relate to any historical or current fact. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including: risks related to the integration of acquisitions; the ability of the Company to effectively compete; the inability to adequately protect Company intellectual property and the potential for infringement or breach of license claims of or relating to third party intellectual property; risks related to data and information security vulnerabilities; ineffective management of, and control over, the Company’s growth and international operations; adverse results in litigation; the dependence on key personnel as well as other factors contained in our most recent Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q (copies of which may be accessed through the Securities and Exchange Commission’s website at http://www.sec.gov), including those found therein under the captions Risk Factors and Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations. In addition, the forward-looking statements included in this press release represent the Company’s views as of the date of this press release and these views could change. However, while the Company may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, the Company specifically disclaims any obligation to do so. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing the Company’s views as of any date subsequent to the date of the press release.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux and JBoss Application Server create ideal combination for SAP and other business-critical applications

RALEIGH, NC — August 14, 2007 — Red Hat (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that Swisscom IT Services, a subsidiary of the biggest Swiss telecommunications provider, is relying on the full suite of Red Hat solutions for its standardized Linux infrastructure. Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat Cluster Suite, JBoss Enterprise Platform and additional Red Hat technologies are currently used by Swisscom IT Services as the platform for its “Simply Managed Linux” (SIMLUX) infrastructure, the highly flexible and effective infrastructure for the company’s data centres. Using SIMLUX, Swisscom supplies outsourcing services to more than 50 customers.

“We compared Red Hat and Novell solutions when searching for the best platform for SIMLUX,” said Bertrand Dafflon, Head of Linux and Middleware Engineering at Swisscom IT Services. “Red Hat’s open source strategy and focus on the reliability of its software tipped the scale in favor of Red Hat solutions. Also, our clients depend on the SAP installation in our Linux environment and with SAP’s certification on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux platform, no alternative could really be seriously considered.”

“Xen-based virtualization is a good example of a feature that other vendors released prematurely without being able to provide the necessary stability and integration,” said Thomas von Steiger, System Engineer for Swisscom IT Services.”We, to the contrary, want to optimize our hardware utilization without endangering the reliability for our customers. Red Hat’s virtualization solution makes this possible.”

SIMLUX is a flexible IT infrastructure that Swisscom IT Services centrally manages using Red Hat Satellite Server on IBM blade servers. Swisscom IT Services has assigned data storage and the operating systems to a Storage Area Network (SAN) and enables the diskless blade servers to boot directly from the SAN, ensuring reliability and hardware independence. All software is installed in the RPM-format, developed by Red Hat, allowing Swisscom IT Services to set up a new website, application or database server in less than 30 minutes.

Currently Swisscom IT Services runs approximately 70 SAP, 40 Oracle, 90 Web and 100 application servers within the SIMLUX environment. The IT service provider also uses Red Hat Cluster Suite as a basis for 20 cluster nodes. Swisscom is now working on a SIMLUX extension, building a cluster of JBoss application servers in virtual machines on Red Hat Enterprise Linux so that systems are provisioned as virtual machines. Red Hat Enterprise Linux and JBoss Enterprise Application Server enable architectures in a virtual infrastructure at an attractive price.

“The acquisition of JBoss by Red Hat was a stroke of luck for us,” said Dafflon. “This way we profit from the same outstanding price-performance ratio at the middleware layer as well as on the operating system level.”

“Customers like Swisscom IT Services provide magnificent proof that our long-term focus on reliability and manageability of our solutions pays off,” says Werner Knoblich, vice president and general manager EMEA at Red Hat. “We are very pleased that our solutions meet Swisscom IT Services’ tough criteria in choosing its IT platform and that we can support the company in its continuing expansion of the SIMLUX-platform.”

To learn more about Red Hat, visit www.redhat.com. For more news, more often, visit www.press.redhat.com. About Red Hat, Inc.

Red Hat, the world’s leading open source solutions provider, is headquartered in Raleigh, NC with over 50 satellite offices spanning the globe. CIOs have ranked Red Hat first for value in Enterprise Software for three consecutive years in the CIO Insight Magazine Vendor Value study. Red Hat provides high-quality, low-cost technology with its operating system platform, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, together with applications, management and Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) solutions, including the JBoss Enterprise Middleware Suite. Red Hat also offers support, training and consulting services to its customers worldwide. Learn more: http://www.redhat.com.

Forward-Looking Statements Certain statements contained in this press release may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements provide current expectations of future events based on certain assumptions and include any statement that does not directly relate to any historical or current fact. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including: risks related to the integration of acquisitions; the ability of the Company to effectively compete; the inability to adequately protect Company intellectual property and the potential for infringement or breach of license claims of or relating to third party intellectual property; risks related to data and information security vulnerabilities; ineffective management of, and control over, the Company’s growth and international operations; adverse results in litigation; the dependence on key personnel as well as other factors contained in our most recent Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q (copies of which may be accessed through the Securities and Exchange Commission’s website at http://www.sec.gov), including those found therein under the captions Risk Factors and Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations. In addition, the forward-looking statements included in this press release represent the Company’s views as of the date of this press release and these views could change. However, while the Company may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, the Company specifically disclaims any obligation to do so. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing the Company’s views as of any date subsequent to the date of the press release.

AIS turns to Red Hat Enterprise Linux for its Value-added Service Control Point System

Raleigh, NC – April 3, 2007 – Red Hat (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that Advanced Info Service Public Company Limited (AIS), a mobile communications company in Thailand, has chosen Red Hat for its reliable, high-performing and cost-effective solutions.

AIS is Thailand’s mobile communications market leader with approximately 20 million customers. The company ranks first in both the wireless communications business as well as remaining the leading mobile phone operator and network system provider and prides itself as a pioneer in technology innovation. AIS’s responsibilities include acting as operator and service provider of Digital Global System Mobile mobile phone network, importing and distributing mobile phones, accessories and telecommunications equipment and providing call center, Internet and over-the-phone online data communication service.

Differing from the majority of telecommunications service postpaid markets, in Thailand the prepaid service market serves the vast majority of all mobile phone users. Prepaid service markets challenge companies like AIS with integrating next-generation technologies into legacy systems where implementation and usage tracking of services are lacking and expensive. AIS realized that upgrading systems for this market would cost tens of millions of dollars, and so developed its own Value-added Service Control Point (VSCP) system, providing the functionality needed to launch new mobile services to the postpaid market. AIS’s VSCP system runs on a cluster of 200 Red Hat Enterprise Linux servers, which enable the system to provide reliable service control functions, service rating functions and service charging functions at low cost.

AIS is currently the biggest mobile phone operator in Thailand, so the availability preference for us is 99.999 percent uptime, said Arakin Rakchittapoke, Infrastructure Platform Development, ICTM, AIS. For every minute of downtime, there is potential for 60,000 complaints and we can’t have that. We need a cost-effective solution that will be resilient and reliable as our demand in the telecommunications industry and the prepaid market continues to grow. For this, we turned to Red Hat solutions and have since reaped excellent benefits.

With Red Hat solutions, AIS was able to save millions of dollars for a telecommunications upgrade system. The company drastically reduced both hardware and software costs and has enjoyed great flexibility in tweaking its own solution and avoiding vendor lock-in. Also, since the full implementation of Red Hat solutions in June 2003, AIS has experienced 100 percent uptime without a single system outage.

We are thrilled that AIS turned to Red Hat solutions for its VSCP system, said Joanne Rohde, Executive Vice President of Vertical Marketing, Red Hat. The company has already seen significant benefits that will only continue to help it serve its telecommunications customers. As AIS continues to deploy additional services on top of this system, the company will continue to gain a return on investment as a result of Red Hat solutions.

For more information on Red Hat, please visit www.redhat.com. For more news, more often, visit www.press.redhat.com. About Red Hat, Inc.

Red Hat, the world’s leading open source solutions provider, is headquartered in Raleigh, NC with satellite offices spanning the globe. Red Hat is leading Linux and open source solutions into the mainstream by making high-quality, low-cost technology accessible. Red Hat provides an operating system platform, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, along with applications, management, and middleware solutions, including JBoss Enterprise Middleware Suite. Red Hat is accelerating the shift to service-oriented architectures and enabling the next generation of web-enabled applications running on a low-cost, secure open source platform. Red Hat also offers support, training and consulting services to its customers worldwide and through top-tier partnerships. Red Hat’s open source strategy offers customers a long term plan for building infrastructures that are based on and leverage open source technologies with a focus on security and ease of management. Learn more: http://www.redhat.com.

Forward-Looking Statements: Certain statements contained in this press release may constitute “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements provide current expectations of future events based on certain assumptions and include any statement that does not directly relate to any historical or current fact. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including: risks related to the integration of acquisitions; the ability of the Company to effectively compete; the inability to adequately protect Company intellectual property and the potential for infringement or breach of license claims of or relating to third party intellectual property; risks related to data and information security vulnerabilities; ineffective management of, and control over, the Company’s growth and international operations; adverse results in litigation; the dependence on key personnel as well as other factors contained in our most recent Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q (copies of which may be accessed through the Securities and Exchange Commission’s website at http://www.sec.gov), including those found therein under the captions Risk Factors and Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations. In addition, the forward-looking statements included in this press release represent the Company’s views as of the date of this press release and these views could change. However, while the Company may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, the Company specifically disclaims any obligation to do so. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing the Company’s views as of any date subsequent to the date of the press release.

LINUX is a trademark of Linus Torvalds. RED HAT and JBOSS are registered trademarks of Red Hat, Inc. and its subsidiaries in the US and other countries.

Category: Business Process Auotmation

Winner:Helio/SK Telecom

Submitted by: Junwon Lee, Manager, Convergence and Internet R&D Center, SK Telecom

Industry: Telecommunications

Geography: Korea/USA

Overview
SK Telecom (www.sktelecom.com), Korea’s leading wireless telecommunications services provider, and Helio (www.helio.com), an advanced U.S. mobile service provider, were selected for their use of JBoss Enterprise Application Platform and JBoss jBPM to build and streamline its wireless data portal (WDP). After deploying Red Hat solutions, Helio quickly experienced cost reductions. Operational savings amounted to 50 percent monthly and the company experienced a 90 percent reduction in commercial software and licensing costs.

Please describe your company. (Number of employees, private/public, industry, etc.)

SK Telecom
SK Telecom is a mobile network operator in Korea and the leader in the Korean telecommunications market. SK Telecom has over 50 percent of the market share in Korea with nearly 20 million subscribers. The revenue is $11,368 million USD and net income is about 1,544 million USD. (based on 2006, 1USD = 937KRW)

Helio
Helio is a U.S.-based MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator) and has about 600 employees.

Please describe the business and/or technical challenges you faced in this project.

Helio’s core mobile Internet infrastructure system, wireless data portal (WDP), serves as a mobile web portal, manages and delivers mobile content, and manages customer/device information. Its service was released to the market in May 2006. Simultaneously, WDP 1.0 was launched to provide wireless data service to subscribers. This system was implemented based on the Unix operating system WebLogic, Oracle, and commercial BPM software.

WDP 1.0 was not designed for U.S. businesses, so it was difficult for Helios to work with U.S.-based business partners, and a BPM tool in the system often malfunctioned, resulting in significant amount of data loss. Having been built on a commercial operating system, middleware, and application server, the maintenance, licensing, and hardware costs surged as the number of subscribers grew.

What was the desired solution?

The desired solution was to create a joint migration project, substituting WDP 1.0 with WDP 2.0, an open source-based platform, splitting resources and budget between SK Telecom and Helio. The migration would resolve the problems inherent with using using the previous system and to meet new requirements for working with U.S.-based providers. These changes would be reflected in the new system, WDP 2.0. Priorities included minimizing the system management cost, and offering better functionality, performance, and stability.

Please describe your vendor selection process and why you chose JBoss in the end.

The WDP 2.0 project had several missions to complete, which involved incorporating middleware, support, and flexibility.

When a runtime environment is constructed with JBoss, instead of being single-use, it can be paired with a JMX management tool, which saves on maintenance. Also, with open source, costs are low, but the technology stays competitive with higher-priced commercial solutions. Additionally, open source model development provides more secure and higher-quality code, and there is no vendor lock-in. JBoss also offers an impressive customer base and track record.

Describe the application you built using JBoss. What role did JBoss and/or JBoss products play in the final solution?

WDP 2.0 is comprised of four server groups: web, application, download, and database. JBoss Web Server (WS), JBoss Application Server (AS), and jBPM modules are installed on each server in accordance with its usage. The new WDP 2.0 platform has various types of business processes that administrators have to perform or confirm. Business Process Management (BPM) enables administrators to monitor and control the “to-do” list in an easy and flexible way. Hence, every request submitted by content providers can be completed very quickly, turning a very complex process into a very simple one via the Business Design Tool.

What value did you gain from implementing JBoss solutions and how did this impact your business? (e.g. improved ROI, increased competitive advantage, better time to market, etc.)

Helio reduced system maintenance costs, saved approximately 65 percent in hardware costs, saved 90 percent in purchasing commercial software and paying maintenance fees, and saved 80 percent for systems operation and maintenance in comparison to its previous solution. Additionally, Helio saved approximately $25,000 per month on service operational costs.

With the wireless data portal platform based on open source, the initial system construction cost for SK Telecom will be reduced significantly when launching services in an international project. Consequently, this means that SK Telecom can have more opportunities for global business, including in China and Southeast Asia.

Please provide a technical description of implementation, including the size of deployment. (I.e. Hardware specs, applications, O/S, databases, etc.)

WDP 2.0 platform enables enhanced support for new target deployment platforms. With the added flexible support requirements & features, installation for alternate operating systems will be made possible, including the various flavors of Linux available in the marketplace. Additionally, the targeted runtime environment will be supported on open source platforms and systems, and providing support for other J2EE application servers adds enhanced flexibility in installation and production deployment scenarios. Adding the JBoss Application Server (AS) to the mix as a target deployment platform also helps to minimize the licensing costs and overall cost per deployment. WDP 2.0 is composed of two web servers, two web application servers, two download servers, and three Database servers.

Did you leverage JBoss support services, training, or consulting? If so, please describe your experience?

We utilized consulting for the migration from WebLogic to JBoss in order to help predict any problems that might result from the switchover, as well as what the managing strategy should be for the revised project plan. The results of the consultation were effective numbers for the necessary amount of man power and the timeframe for the switch, which helped contribute to a successful completion of the project.

The main use of consulting was concentrated on the BPM tool conversion, mostly on the functional differences between the commercial BPM and jBPM. Thanks in large part to the advice gained, a successful conversion to jBPM was realized and has since been successfully managed.

For the successful WDP project, we had our developers receive JBoss training. After the training, they have, in turn, trained the other developers. This series of education induced them to develop projects with a clear understanding of JBoss technologies and methodologies.

Do you have advice for other companies facing a similar business challenge?

With JBoss’ open source solutions, we were able to adopt advanced technology that was available for a fraction of the price of our previous solution. We were hesitant to adopt an open source solution at first, but encourage other to have confidence in open source technology because there are excellent support options and resources available. We have had no problems with our JBoss solution and are producing higher-quality service for a lower cost.

Industry: Telecommunications

Geography: Chile, with operations throughout Latin America and offices in Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico

Opportunity: Sixbell looked for a flexible solution that would provide interoperability with a greater number of hardware providers and would encourage the incorporation of innovative technological solutions from different market leaders. The ideal solution would be based on a standard and open operating system and have excellent support.

Solution:
Software: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4
Hardware: HP Proliant DL servers, Intel X86 servers, Sun Galaxy servers

Benefits:

• Heightened flexibility with the ability to offer its solutions through a broader array of technological alternatives.
• Increased cost savings and enhanced performance after migrating from proprietary solutions to Red Hat solutions.
• Fast, reliable support.

This story is available in the following languages: [  ]

Background

Sixbell Nekotec Solutions is a leading Latin American company engaged in the design, development, marketing, and support of integrated telecommunications solutions. With corporate offices in Chile, Mexico, Colombia, and Brazil, it’s been offering comprehensive solutions to enterprises and network operators for 18 years. The company presently has four regional units and two technological development centers that satisfy the telecommunications needs of over 100 million users across Latin America.

Opportunity
Sixbell looked for a flexible solution that would provide interoperability with a greater number of hardware providers. The ideal solution would be based on a standard and open operating system. With an expanded open environment, Sixbell would be able to offer solutions in infrastructure environments to better fit its clients’ needs.

Sixbell searched for a solution that featured a distribution with certification agreements for solutions targeted at the telecommunications market. The solution needed high performance and uptime levels, reliable support, and a strong history of successful migrations from proprietary Unix to Linux.

Solution
Ultimately, after months of analyzing the support, flexibility, and robustness of multiple solutions in mission-critical environments, Sixbell selected Red Hat solutions. The implementation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux began in early 2006 and Sixbell received excellent, timely Red Hat support from the start.

After implementing Red Hat solutions, measurements of Red Hat’s performance in open x86 infrastructures became available. The measurements concluded that Red Hat’s performance was far higher than the alternatives managed with proprietary systems. “We conducted preliminary tests with some solutions based on SIP protocols (convergence solutions) and performance almost doubled. There is a margin that may be related to the implementation and hardware used, but there was a remarkable change shown by the operating system,” said Rodrigo Pérez, Engineering Manager at Sixbell.

The migration to Red Hat solutions was smooth and educational for Pérez, who expressed that Sixbell had initially underestimated the open source migration process. “My chief advice for others looking to migrate to open source solutions is to program everything based on a standard basis,” said Pérez. “When we dealt with new hardware vendors, we had to compile processes and adjust programming practices. It’s also good to avoid using programs that seem to facilitate programming and tie the company to one type of software. With open source, there is more flexibility and choice.”

Benefits
With Red Hat solutions, Sixbell diversified its platforms, mounted applications, and incorporated new hardware vendors. Red Hat’s flexibility in supporting units from vendors including HP, IBM, and Sun was valued most by Sixbell.

“When Sixbell first entered the market, it had multiple proprietary platform workhorses including Sun Solaris and Oracle that gave us enough backup,” said Perez. “Now, Sixbell is recognized in the market and we have been able to further our growth in cooperation with Red Hat. We’ve kept the Sun platform, but now have been able to incorporate HP, IBM, or other varied hardware in our solution.”

Additionally, Sixbell was able to mount its previous Unix platforms on Linux, reducing hardware costs and supporting more hardware alternatives with heightened performance. “After our successful experience with Red Hat, if our client does not impose any infrastructure scheme, we provide Linux,” said Pérez. “This allows us to have a broad array of hardware options, with Intel or AMD processors. We’re convinced that the use of Linux will be only to our advantage. For future implementation, we’re exploring JBoss solutions to continue enhancing our infrastructure.”

Industry: Telecommunications

Challenge: Increase performance and reliability of billing system to ensure timely payments from growing customer base.

Solution: Platform: Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS
Software: Oracle Database
Hardware: HP

Benefits: Increased processing speed by 400% over legacy Sun Solaris environment. Cut costs by nearly 50%. Met TransACT’s ‘zero fault tolerance’ policy.

This story is available in the following languages: [  ]

TransACT Communications, based in Canberra, Australia, specialises in building and operating a fibre optic broadband network. It is capable of delivering a full range of communication services, including video on demand, pay TV, permanent high-speed-internet, and various mobile and fixed line telephone services.

TransACT operates a network reaching over 60,000 homes and 5,000 businesses and has announced plans to extend its network beyond the Australian Capital Territory.

The System

TransACT’s billing data system is linked with the company’s telephony switch. The system transfers data from the switch to the database. This information is then tested for accuracy and completeness before going to accounts payable. The information is critical as telephony accounts for a large portion of the company’s revenue. If the system is inaccurate or down—TransACT doesn’t get paid!

The Challenge

TransACT needed to increase the processing environment and data recovery platform for its billing data system because of a growing customer base and needed a reliable replacement system that could grow with the needs of the business.

The company’s telephony system runs an Oracle Database, so it was important that TransACT chose a platform that was certified to run with the existing system.

“Reliability and capacity are key virtues of the Oracle Database,” said Stephen Supple, Senior Oracle Analyst/Programmer, TransACT Communications. “The database processes hundreds of thousands of records a day very quickly and reliably with no margin for error. We needed to be certain that the underlying operating system could support this heavy work load.”

TransACT chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux for a number of reasons. “I had seen Red Hat in operation for a number of years and have a greater comfort level working with a Unix/Linux type system. In addition, the Oracle Linux certification meant we wouldn’t have database conflicts and the bottom line cost savings were impressive,” said Mr Supple.

The Solution

TransACT chose to implement Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS on a HP Server in tandem with its previous billing data system.

The billing data system is fairly robust and has fail over systems, but processing lag can have a negative eff ect on billing cycles, revenue and cash fl ow. This system is absolutely critical to the bottom line of the business; as such TransACT has a zero fault tolerance.

For this reason, TransACT conducted extensive testing over a three-month period. The performance of its new Red Hat Enterprise Linux servers was a dramatic improvement over the older system.

“The processing time was cut down by 400%, so something that previously took us 20 minutes now only takes 5,” said Mr Supple. “That combined with the accuracy of the data – the system was audited by PWC and found to be correct– meant that our choice to move to full production with Red Hat was an obvious one.”

“Our decision to go with Red Hat as the Linux vendor was largely because they are a well-known brand and I am certain that they are a long-term enterprise player.”

The Benefits

Along with increased speed and accuracy, TransACT found the new system to be cost effective.

“We were at a point where we had to migrate the system. With our previous system we would have had to spend approximately $140,000 for one server and one terabyte of storage. With the Red Hat solution, we paid around $80,000 for two servers and 1.5 terabytes. It’s not hard to see why we went with Red Hat,” said Supple.

TransACT not only saved approximately $60,000 in set-up costs, but also will enjoy ongoing savings because the annual subscription for Red Hat Enterprise Linux license is less expensive than Solaris support annually. “The way I see it is we have a better system taking care of our billing data, more scope for growth and all for less cost,” Mr Supple concluded.

Industry: Services

Geography: Switzerland

Opportunity: Swisscom IT Services needed to create a standardised and stable operating system environment to host outsourced services for its customers. The company also wanted to simplify the provisioning and allocation of new servers by creating an automated staging infrastructure.

Solution: Hardware: IBM Blade servers
Software: Simple Managed Linux (SIMLUX) including Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 with virtualization, Red Hat Cluster Suite, Red Hat Satellite Server, JBoss Enterprise Application Server

Benefits:

• Swisscom IT Services now has a highly stable standardised Linux platform called Simply Managed Linux (SIMLUX).
• The solution, combining Red Hat and JBoss solutions, delivers simple management through the reliable Red Hat subscription model.
• The solution also delivers top price-performance ratios for Swisscom IT Services.

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Background

Swisscom IT Services is a strategic subsidiary of the Swisscom Group, the largest Swiss telecommunications provider, and is one of the largest outsourcing companies in Switzerland. It offers services that range from the integration, operation, and further development of complex IT environments to the development and maintenance of applications.

Opportunity

Swisscom IT Services was running a comprehensive Linux infrastructure at the beginning of 2005. But Bertrand Dafflon, the head of the internal IT department, decided to further advance the company’s infrastructure. Dafflon’s team looked to implement a completely standardised Linux environment with an automated staging infrastructure for the majority of applications.
Solution

Under the name “Simply Managed Linux” (SIMLUX), Swisscom decided to work with Red Hat to develop a highly flexible and effective infrastructure for its data centres.

“Over the years, we have seen time and again that Red Hat follows a more conscientious approach than others. Red Hat only makes functions available once they are stable and suitable for enterprise use,” said Thomas von Steiger, systems engineer at Swisscom IT Services. “We run many applications within the SIMLUX environment that are critical to our company and our clients, making Red Hat’s concentration on the reliability of its software essential to us. We believe that the principles of open source development are best represented by Red Hat. We would rather use open source software for SAN multi-pathing than the tools provided by the SAN provider. In this way, when we carry out a kernel update, we can update the multi-pathing functions at the same time without having to worry about proprietary drivers and so on.”

The decisive factor in choosing Red Hat was the company’s total commitment to the reliability of its software and its open source strategy. Our clients depend on installations such as SAP in our Linux environment. There was no serious alternative to Red Hat in that respect.

Swisscom IT Services uses IBM blade server hardware for the SIMLUX infrastructure. The IT team has assigned both data management and the operating system to a Storage Area Network (SAN) and has enabled the blade server to boot directly from the SAN without a hard drive. This ensures system stability and hardware independence. The server hardware can be replaced easily with minimal configuration, as all the data is held separately on the SAN. As a result, the blade servers now require less cooling because without a hard drive, they produce much less heat. In addition, the SAN images serve as the basis for the automated staging infrastructure, making it possible to allocate a new server with just a few clicks in a web interface—a process which only takes about 30 minutes.

Swisscom IT Services deploys web, application, and database servers. All software is installed in the RPM format developed by Red Hat. So the company can use Red Hat satellite server as the central administration centre for updates, monitoring, and allocation.

As of June 2007, Swisscom IT Services operates approximately 70 SAP, 40 Oracle, 90 Web and 100 JBoss application servers in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux-based SIMLUX environment. The IT service provider also uses Red Hat Cluster Suite as the basis for 20 cluster nodes. The SAN provides 40 Terabyte of memory too. With the benefits of Red Hat’s management tools, Swisscom IT Services’ two Linux administrators are more than capable of maintaining the entire infrastructure. They ensure optimum supply for more than 50 outsourcing clients on the SIMLUX platform in addition to other responsibilities.

Benefits

The SIMLUX infrastructure offers Swisscom IT Services an extremely stable and flexible data environment that can be managed centrally by Red Hat Satellite Server. Red Hat’s subscription model also gives Swisscom the ability to benefit from technical innovations and updates without incurring additional costs. Since 2006, Swisscom IT Services has implemented 64-bit applications and device mapper multi-pathing for booting from the SAN after a corresponding operating system update. At the start of 2007, Dafflon’s team also began the most crucial test phase for server virtualization with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5. “Virtualization with Xen is a good example of a function that other providers have pressed ahead with, without being able to offer the required stability and integration into the complete solution,” said von Steiger. “In contrast, we wanted to optimise our hardware capacity without endangering reliability for our clients. Red Hat’s virtualization solution makes this possible. With virtualization integrated with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, new systems are provisioned as virtual machines. Red Hat Enterprise Linux and the JBoss Application Server make it possible to integrate even the most demanding of architectures into a virtual infrastructure. Swisscom IT Services has installed a cluster of JBoss Application Servers in virtual machines on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.”

“Red Hat’s acquisition of JBoss was another lucky break for us,” said Dafflon. “Since the acquisition, we have been able to profit from the same excellent price-performance ratio for middleware as for the operating system layer.”

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