With 16 outlets in Ireland including 10 Home Focus stores Hickeys has become a household name spanning some 70 years in business. Burdened by both ageing hardware and operating systems platforms however, the Company sought a solution for its in-house Line of Business application. With Securelinx assistance Hickeys Fabrics selected Novell’s SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.
Highlighting performance, resilience, ability to service current requirements while providing a comprehensive roadmap for the future, the Company cites lower maintenance and support costs also as key drivers in its investment decision. The solution is being rolled out to each of its locations nationwide – reducing management overhead and freeing up highly skilled employees to work on other projects.

The company undertook intensive research and testing to find the right platform to support its stock management and EPOS applications – looking in particular at future roadmaps, support and performance issues. Securelinx provided the necessary integration experience, expertise and support to the project which continues to this day.

Commenting on the deployment, Noel McShane, IT Director at Hickeys said:

“We’re delighted with the performance of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and the first class support provided by Securelinx. The new system offers exceptional value, is easier to maintain and caters to our current requirements. We have a terrific roadmap and story going forward now….The support from Securelinx has been invaluable and we’re looking forward to further ventures, cost savings and efficiency gains from our partnership over the years ahead.”

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is one of the leading Linux server distributions on the market today. Novell’s Linux server solutions give businesses greater flexibility, are scalable, inexpensive and easy to maintain.

With more than 1 million customers and an expanding presence in Europe, the insurance company needed to upgrade its core Web-serving platform to ensure it could handle a rapidly increasing number of customers. Quinn-direct Insurance chose Novell’s SLES over competitive Linux distributions due to the solution’s resilience, security and performance.

The company also cites a lower support burden for its IT personnel as a key driver for the deployment. All of the company’s internet-based activity is supported by one operating system now – freeing up highly skilled employees to work on other projects.

The company undertook intensive testing to find the right platform to support its web-based business looking in particular at integration with IBM WebSphere and the ability to handle very heavy loads. Securelinx provided hands-on Linux expertise and support to the project which took three-months from start to finish.

Commenting on the deployment, CJ Johnston, IT Server & Desktop Manager, Quinn-direct Insurance said:

“We’ve already started to see a healthy return on investment from our standardisation on Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server…The website is considerably more responsive for end users and we now typically handle four times as many quotes as before. Automated XML requests from partner websites are completed and returned within seconds.”

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is one of the leading Linux server distributions on the market today. Novell’s Linux server solutions give businesses greater flexibility, are scalable, inexpensive and easy to maintain.

EBS Building Society, based in Dublin, Ireland, offers a broad range of banking, mortgage, saving and investment products. EBS employs approximately 600 people in its head office and branch network serving over 400,000 members. It is the fifth largest retail credit institution in Ireland with total assets under management of over €16 billion.

Challenge

EBS is a highly successful mutual society, attracting new savers, investors and borrowers. Each time the organisation creates new financial products, it typically introduces new applications to support them, including Internet banking services and other online tools. As a result of this continual innovation, EBS found that both the number of physical servers and the diversity of operating systems were increasing, with a consequent rise in complexity and cost of operation. Core banking systems run on the IBM System z mainframe platform, while most newer applications run on UNIX* servers – and the branch offices used both Linux- and Windows-based front-end applications. EBS wanted to rationalise its physical infrastructure, reducing the number of standalone servers to cut its management and maintenance costs, and reducing the total number of processors to cut software licensing fees.

Solution

EBS selected SUSE Linux Enterprise Server as its new strategic platform, running on the IBM z/VM operating system on an IBM System z mainframe. EBS can quickly and easily create a new Linux* virtual server for each new application, enabling the organisation to deliver new services cost-effectively in a standardised environment.

EBS Building Society – Official Novell Case Study (PDF)

Headquartered in Cobh, Co Cork and with offices in the US, South Africa and Australia, Eirteic Consulting needed a solution that would enable the company to expand its communications and storage platforms to accommodate continued growth. Since its inception in 2000, Eirteic Consulting has evolved from a Systems Integrator (SI) into a Next Generation Systems Integrator (NGSI). The company, which provides services and solutions to industry-leading customers such as British Telecom, Cable and Wireless, T-Mobile, Bell South and Cingular, chose Novell Open Workgroup Suite over competitive offerings due to the solution’s strengths in identity management and web access, as well as overall cost savings of approximately 47 percent.

The other key drivers for the Novell implementation included:

• The improved management of systems;
• A single platform for Solaris, Windows and Linux environments
• Improved storage volume management with Novell Storage Service (NSS). This allows the company to identify current and historical data that can be relocated to inexpensive storage

Local Irish Novell business partner, Securelinx was instrumental in the implementation, which has seen increased response times from services and improvements in webmail, calendaring solutions and file storage. During the testing and roll out phases, Eirteic Consulting had constant access to the Linux specialist’s telephone support.

Commenting on the implementation, AJ McKee, Eirteic Consulting MIS Manager said:

“The products offered in Novell Open Workgroup Suite are excellent at providing web access to internal resources, whilst still retaining security. There were so many competing and add-on products that licensing itself would have been a painful experience, let alone support. Novell’s Open Workgroup Suite provided us with the ideal cost effective IT infrastructure and workgroup services. With Novell we didn’t just get one product we got an infrastructure that we could work with in the future – all at an affordable price for an SMB.”

Jacqueline de Rojas, Managing Director, Novell UK & Ireland adds: “Unlike a proprietary solution, Novell Open Workgroup Suite is made up of open, standards-based software. Eirteic Consulting’s choice of Novell reiterates the completeness of our infrastructure and productivity solutions – from the desktop to the server. Add to that strong support from partners like SecureLinx, and your enterprise has the recipe for success.”

Summarising the benefits for Eirteic Consulting, McKee concludes: “Not only can we now manage applications better, but also be confident that both our information and our customers’ information will remain secure.”

About Novell
Novell, Inc. (Nasdaq: NOVL) delivers infrastructure software for the Open Enterprise. Novell is a leader in desktop to data centre operating systems based on Linux and the software required to secure and manage mixed IT environments. Novell helps customers around the world minimize cost, complexity and risk, allowing them to focus on innovation and growth. For more information, visit novell.com.

About Eirteic Consulting
Since inception in 2000, Eirteic Consulting has been dedicated to providing quality OSS solutions. With a proven track record of providing services and solutions to enterprise, service providers and telecommunication organizations in over 20 countries, Eirteic is highly active in the global marketplace. Eirteic Consulting has offices in the United States, South Africa and Australia, with headquarters in Cork, Ireland. For more information, visit eirteic.com.

In order to reduce its total cost of ownership for IT, while increasing flexibility, reliability and security, Ogilvy has embarked on a project to migrate email and file-and-print servers to Linux®. The strategic drivers behind the move include cost efficiencies as well as improved flexibility—the ability to support small office environments as well as larger regional hubs where new business requirements can be satisfied rapidly and intelligently with only a marginal impact on costs.

The migration to Linux began with a pilot project in Ireland, where Ogilvy worked with Securelinx (www.securelinx.com), an IBM “Leader for Linux” Business Partner. Formerly a division of a leading Irish systems integrator, Securelinx was launched as an independent company in August 2002, specialising in the deployment of secure Linux-based platforms for enterprise computing. Says Yuri Aguiar, Ogilvy’s CTO,

“We made a strategic decision to adopt Linux globally, and teamed up with Securelinx to start the rollout. This was, and continues to be, a major project – it’s not just about the technology, but also about building the right internal skill sets and changing the way we work within the organisation.”

Read the full case study (PDF)

The deployment will see Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 and Novell eDirectory running on HP hardware to support the roll out of Oracle 11i applications. According to Brinsley Sheridan, Group IT Manager:

“The deployment of Oracle 11i on Novell’s SuSE SLES 9 provides Bord na Mona with a consolidated server platform, reduced cost and a fully supported operating environment to implement mission critical applications. Collaboration between HP, Oracle and Novell working with local service delivery partner SecureLinx eliminated the risk for Bord Na Mona that the deployment of multi vendor systems can sometimes bring.”

Novell provided Bord Na Mona with a strong operating system value proposition which included Novell’s Open Enterprise Server to run the core services such as email, file and print. They will be moving their existing Netware servers to OES on a phased basis. They also choose SUSE Linux Enterprise Server to run mission critical database and web applications and eDirectory to secure access to network resources – all under a single licence agreement.

During a tough evaluation process Bord Na Mona ultimately chose Novell’s platform over competitive Linux providers due to the increased performance, support and scalability of Novell’s SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. The business relationship Bord Na Mona has with Novell ensures a fully supported environment from the hardware platform through the operating system to the application suite. Implementation by local Novell partner Securelinx working with HP and Oracle provided the confidence needed for a successful deployment of the solution.
Securelinx was able to provide a structured methodology for the implementation phase which has many lasting benefits including a secure environment, customised and automated build processes, and highly responsive on-going support of the Linux infrastructure – essential features that the competition just couldn’t match.

Commenting on the deployment Novell Ireland’s Client Manager, Kevin McAteer says

“The scale of this implementation confirms the view that enterprise customers, such as Bord Na Mona, can deploy Linux software solutions, using open source and proprietary software, confidently throughout the enterprise to support the applications that drive their businesses. Although Novell has a successful track record in enterprise implementations this deployment of Oracle 11i on Novell’s SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is one of our first in Europe”.

Read the official Novell Case Study