Linux gets its wings - News - Business

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This story was printed from ZDNet Australia.
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Linux gets its wings

By Vivienne Fisher, ZDNet Australia
August 21, 2002
URL: http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/business/soa/Linux-gets-its-wings/0,139023166,120267574,00.htm

The outsourcing contract between IBM Global Services and Air New Zealand, which will see 150 Compaq NT servers replaced with two IBM mainframes running Linux, will provide consolidation of distributed environments and cost savings for the airline, according to IBM New Zealand.

Bob Morton, northern region manager at IBM New Zealand, said Linux had been attractive from a total cost point-of-view, and also enabled the consolidation of distributed systems down into a centralised environment.

-It very much enabled us to take some of the costs out of the infrastructure," Morton told ZDNet Australia, adding that it would also allow for new applications and operating systems to be added at relatively little cost, once the base mainframe and Linux infrastructures were in place.

More generally, Morton said that in his opinion Linux was gaining a lot more acceptance, particularly at the corporate level. He said that for both IT departments and business-level managers it had the potential to allow more funds to be driven into business infrastructures.

According to Morton, IBM had run various levels of proof-of-concept and piloting to make sure it met the client's needs, before the rollout got underway at Air New Zealand.

Morton was unable to disclose the full term of the outsourcing contract it had signed with Air New Zealand, only revealing that it was for multiple years.