IBM Australia migrating to Linux

IBM's Linux business manager, Geoff Lawrence, told ZDNet Australia that the company commenced consolidating 96 IBM Intel-based file and print servers to 55 Linux machines in February 2002, the deployment of which will be completed in July. The migration also includes one IBM Unix backup server running IBM AIX and Tivoli Storage Manager.

Of a further 1000 servers -- either Intel-based or IBM AIX servers --doing file and print and other applications, some will also be migrated to Linux servers during the remainder of the year.

-We have somewhere over 10,000 employees in Australia now, almost all use some kind of PC on their desk, print server machines and all have some sort of file server storage," Lawrence said. -We're consolidating them onto 55 Linux Samba servers which will be located in various offices across the country."

-A smaller number [of servers] is a good thing to achieve if we can," said Lawrence, who put IBM's decision to move to Linux for file and print applications down to cost of ownership - the cost of managing a large number of servers and the cost of supporting them. -It's easier manage and run 55 servers that it is 96," he said.

-We will, in the end, run the company more cost effectively," Lawrence said, although he declined to reveal how much IBM would save from its local Linux deployment.

The migration would be -transparent to all users", according to Lawrence, who said the project within IBM is -typical of projects our customers are embarking on as well".