Migration news: Windows to Linux, and vice versa

Austereo Group

  • Industry: Entertainment
  • Employees: 1,000
  • Operations: Sales, marketing, advertising, multimedia, and other business units manage 13 commercial radio stations broadcasting to all mainland capital cities and Newcastle
  • Financials: First half 2006: revenues $128.1 million, profit $38.1 million

Austereo's Windows defection still charting well

Concerns over the stability of Microsoft enterprise applications may have driven it to embrace Linux years ago, but national radio broadcaster Austereo Group is now singing a different tune after growing frustrations with a Microsoft-free environment finally led to a switch in allegiance. David Braue tunes into Austereo's new IT.

Sometimes, the little things slowly eat away at your sensibilities even when everything seems to be working smoothly overall.

For national radio broadcaster Austereo Group, which either manages or co-manages 13 top-rating commercial radio stations including 2Day FM, FoxFM, and Triple M, three years of little things -- including the inability to use BlackBerry handheld e-mail devices, poor identity management, administration difficulties, and a few too many irretrievable e-mails -- eventually became frustrating enough to convince the company to give Microsoft a go.

This time around, things are working much better, with a full range of Microsoft server applications providing a deeply integrated, highly effective IT infrastructure that has significantly improved productivity and transformed information management within the company.

It wasn't always that way at Austereo, which committed to Red Hat Linux years ago after concerns about the stability and security of Microsoft software. Subsequent efforts to build a robust infrastructure on top of Linux saw the company roll out a host of core applications, including HP OpenMail (later supported by Samsung) and Novell ZENworks system management.

This approach worked well enough to support the requirements of the company's 1,000 employees for some time. After three years with Linux, however, Austereo began reconsidering its choice as continued growth in the company led to increasing complexity within its IT strategy -- exposing the limitations of the Linux-based environment in some very painful ways.

For example, remote users struggled to grapple with a virtual private network (VPN) login system that required three different passwords to establish a connection. Furthermore, plans to introduce a customer relationship management (CRM) system floundered after it became clear that integrating CRM with the existing environment was simply going to be too much effort.

Ultimately, it was the failure of a network interface card and a hard drive that taught IT systems manager Ross Forgione just how wide the gap can be between vendor promises and reality. -Restoring and recovering of any messages that may have been deleted took 24 hours-plus," he recalls. -We were assured that there were procedures and processes you could follow to recover down to the individual message, but when it came to reality, it was a lengthy process and an absolute nightmare."

-Importing our network environment and applications onto a new platform required some fairly specific skills," he adds, -and those skills were not abundant within the group. As the business started to grow and we realised we needed to provide additional services to help people accomplish their day-to-day tasks, it became a very obvious and glaring issue."

The new, new Austereo
Fixing that issue took Forgione back to the doors of the same company he had shunned those three years earlier -- yet even he concedes that the Microsoft option -just made more sense". Working with Microsoft consultants, he and his team sat down to map out their future infrastructure and found that their requirements could be easily met using an integrated suite of applications built on top of Windows Server 2003.

After thorough discussions, Austereo committed to a move away from Linux onto an architecture combining Microsoft SharePoint Server, Exchange Server and SQL Server as well as Office 2003 and BlackBerry-related add-ons like the BlackBerry Enterprise Server. It was a hard decision, but even Forgione concedes he was impressed when comparing the company's existing and potential computing environments.

Ross Forgione, Austereo

-I'm probably the hardest sell Microsoft has ever had," he laughs. -I had to decouple myself from my love of open source because of the availability of tools. If something breaks in Linux and you've got the knowledge, you can generally fix it and get it up fairly quickly by yourself."

-The problem was that just one or two people in the group [out of 15 IT staff] could do that, and it was hard finding people who understood that [open source] isn't just about playing with these tools, but delivering something. The moment we switched to Microsoft, the field opened up."

More than a year later, Forgione's excitement about the switch is still tangible. Austereo has been able to consolidate the functionality of seven servers down to just two. A number of employees across the company -- which comprises about one-third marketing, programming, promotions, creative and other teams -- are up and running with BlackBerry handhelds.

Active Directory now manages user identities for VPN and other applications, removing the need for multiple-password logins that were the bane of remote users' existence. A number of SharePoint-based portals are providing -an excellent collaborative environment" that links employees across the company's offices nationwide. And a new 4TB storage area network (SAN), implemented concurrently with the Windows switchover, has simplified the management of the company's core data.

Although he misses some features of ZENworks, Forgione says the new Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS) environment has been more than capable of helping his staff refocus energy that was often spent on resolving issues with the previous Linux environment -- for example, a nagging bug with OpenMail that was preventing some outgoing e-mails from being read by their recipients.

I'm probably the hardest sell Microsoft has ever had. I had to decouple myself from my love of open source because of the availability of tools.

Ross Forgione, Austereo IT systems manager

-We haven't faced a single one of those problems since we changed platform," Forgione says. -We're seeing efficiencies in our staff utilisation, because we can actually now focus on what we should be doing, and not on just keeping the systems running. That was a key thing for us from a technical point of view. We've even got happy users now, whereas before we were hearing a lot of grumbles."

Confidence for the future
Perhaps the most beneficial aspect of Austereo's new life with Windows is that it has allowed the company to once again plan for the future in ways that were simply impossible in the past.

A growing focus on multimedia development, for example, is likely to be strengthened by the ease with which desktop multimedia tools can be integrated with the Windows back-end. The improved identity management made possible by Active Directory will soon be extended to the company's SAP environment. An increasing number of remote workers are finding that they can keep in touch from anywhere with the new collaborative environment.

Planned integration with the radio stations' digital music management and general administration systems -- -the real pointy end of the triangle", as Forgione calls it -- is expected to further enhance the benefits from the new environment by bringing the company's various operations even more closely together.

It's strange to hear such abject enthusiasm about Microsoft software from an avowed Linux supporter, but Forgione concedes that in the end the company had to go with the right solution for its needs. The new environment -has been an amazing enabler, not just for the IT team but for the actual business itself," he explains.

-It really has opened up doors that were shut, and has helped the IT guys get out of the way of the staff. Staff can now just focus on using their PCs and not having to worry about contacting us as often as they used to, just to do simple things. We've had to build up our confidence in Windows' stability, but we're really at that point where we're quite confident and comfortable with the system's abilities -- not only to be stable, but to be recovered in the event of a failure."







Editor: Fran Foo | Copy Editor: Ella Morton | Design: Brice Lechatellier | Production: Melissa Siu

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Talkback 9 comments

    GNU/Linux Does Make Coffee D.C. Parris -- 25/04/06 (in reply to #120133303)

    Not only does GNU/Linux make coffee (http://www.linuxsa.org.au/pipermail/linuxsa/1998-October/002868.html), a recent news report has GNU/Linux operating an instant ice cream machine (http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT9296154631.html). It's called Moobella. :-)

    FUD Anonymous -- 25/04/06

    OMG.... more ZDNet FUD.... simply depressing. Oh well, I have first-hand experience with switching and know what is involved....and how to succeed.

    Too bad the dime-a-dozen MCSEs can't think in terms of anything outside of MSFT.

    Ringing True? Anonymous -- 25/04/06

    Something just doesn't seem right about this article.

    Austereo:
    “Importing our network environment and applications onto a new platform required some fairly specific skills,” he adds, “and those skills were not abundant within the group

    Sounds like the problem was lack of skills in Linux, and lack of knowledge of how to make it work at its best.

    Coffey International:
    "The way they set up their Linux-based infrastructure had promoted the silo mentality; information wasn’t stored in any sort of intuitive manner, and it wasn’t easy to access information across the various geographical areas".

    It seems that their Linux environment was not set up very well. This can happen in any enterprise environment Windows Linux etc. Did they consider doing it right with Linux before going back to Windows?

    Again, it sounds like a lack of experienced Linux admins was the problem, not the OS itself.

    If this is the case, then the article brings into focus the fact that Linux admins are in great demand because good Linux admins are thin on the ground. Perhaps it should have finished urging people to get Linux training so they can get jobs at companies like these and show them how it should be done on Linux.

    This tells a good story about the Microsoft/Linux differences Anonymous -- 25/04/06

    This article tells agood story about what I beleive are core difference between Microsoft and Linux environments.

    My experience is that Linux environments are still far superiour in security, performance and stability - even though Windows Server 2003 has made good gains. Linux is an excellent application environment. That's one reason why Oracle and similar application providers use it.

    But Linux still falls short when it comes to supporting a general IT solution for business. Just look at the integration that Exchange/Outlook gives with virtually no setup effort. It just can't be matched by any Linux based solution (yet - I've looked at a bunch in some detail). Add third party product support like Blackberry to the Exchange formula and the argument to deploy anything else is that much harder.

    This is illustrated by the story - the general IT infrastructure guys found it easier on Windows. The guys with the application focus found Linux better.

    So a lot of companies end up with a mixed environment - Windows server for general IT infrastructure, and Linux for application environments.

    A full Linux solution is still attempted by the brave, but until desktop Linux becomes mainstream (face it - Windows XP is pretty good and the best Linux desktops just don't compare e.g. fonts), and Linux servers provide a complete out of the box business environment Windows will have a place.

    For me, the cost of Windows is not the issue - rather my main concerns are the restrictions, overhead in just managing licenses, interoperability and security issues. But that's the price we pay.

    Touche Anonymous -- 27/04/06 (in reply to #120133364)

    It's hard to see the story revolving around two different environments one is general IT and second is Application Environment. Obviously for the companies that moved from Linux to windows, infrastructure isn't setup properly or the network personnel people didn't do proper job. However, Application development especially j2ee provides scalability and security, technical skills are not that hard to find. I believe that if Linux wants to survive they need to concentrate more on provide general IT solutions. I think linux made much progress in this area and it will continue to do that.

    linux admin Anonymous -- 02/05/06

    now there IS a good thought.
    BUT what constitutes a good linux admin?

    Less resources required Anonymous -- 04/05/06

    I agree that Linux is far more superior in terms of security. However a hardware firewall will overcome that. for simplicity and ease of implementation Windoze wins.

    Demonstrative of the Microsoft Mentality Anonymous -- 09/05/06

    This whole article is filled with the result of the mentality of increasing complexity which has been the hallmark of Microsoft from the beginning. For exceedingly "collaborative" environments, one of the simplest solutions is a wiki. Everything is documented (even deletions) which covers the legal trail, everyone has easy access, and access can also be controlled. Instead, people are convinced they need a bloated microsoft application to fill this requirement. I find it quite amusing that so many IT staffers fall for being upchanged like this, especially since it generally equates to an increased workload for them.

    The users drive IT - not admins Greg -- 09/05/06

    Perhaps we (IT Admins) need to remember – it’s the users that drive IT procurement, not the Admins. I know the average user in my company wouldn’t have a clue or even care about what a wiki is, or Linux, or GNU whatever. They used Outlook in their last job so they want Outlook here. They know employers want skills like MS Office, Windows XP, et al, so that’s what they want in this job. They used a certain popular Windows-only application in their last job, probably will in their next, so that’s what they want here. I can’t tell them that OpenOffice.org works just a well for most tasks – they don’t care. They want IT to be completely transparent from all that consideration, so they can focus on just doing their job – and not on ours!

    So sorry, until the users themselves request a Linux solution, it won’t even get look in in my office.

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