IRCTC opts for Linux

Gaurav Patra / New Delhi

Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) has recently selected the Red Hat Linux platform to run Oracle’s E-Business Suite, in order to automate and streamline IRCTC’s processes. IRCTC commenced operations some two years ago.

IRCTC has also hired the services of Red Hat’s Professional Services Group to provide consulting and production support services to IRCTC. “Red Hat Linux is the most popular certified kernel for Oracle Financials. Hence, Red Hat was a logical choice. Red Hat’s strength in consulting and strong technology support helped us decide in their favour,” said Amitabh Pandey, group general manager, IT Services, IRCTC. Pandey points out that IRCTC will gain due to significant cost-benefits on a trusted, stable platform like Linux.

This implementation will help IRCTC streamline business processes and information flow across its countrywide operation. IRCTC will soon scale up to a 7,000-employee catering and tourism operation spread over 1,000 locations across India. IRCTC’s operations include food courts at railway stations, in-train catering, refreshment rooms, special catering and hospitality services for Indian Railways.

The corporation’s IT set-up is in a stage of infancy today. They have only LANs at the corporate office and zonal offices with only around 70 PCs. Once the ERP system is in place, the number of PCs will increase to a great extent because the business areas, which are not part of the set-up, will be integrated into the network.

Pandey confirmed that once the ERP from Oracle is up and running, IRCTC would be going in for VPN connectivity. The corporation is right now in the process of implementing ERP from Oracle. Apart from the manufacturing module, they are also opting for almost all other modules of Oracle ERP suite.

On why IRCTC chose Linux, Pandey said that it offers very effective and distinct enterprise-wide system and it is very economical. “In our judgement it gives both cost benefits and performance. Oracle has been implemented with no major technical hiccup.”

Pandey also said that his organisation has to manage a countrywide set-up. “We can either go the traditional route, where we have to use huge manpower. Or we can do it electronically and reduce manpower and make it a more manageable and efficient system.”