Linux moves into the core

From humble beginnings at the edge of the network Linux has moved into the heart of the corporate data centre, says Akhtar Pasha

We take ownership to fix kernel-based problems to improve the overall performance of Oracle applications. L Gopalakrishnan Director-Platform Technologies Group Oracle India

Everybody’s using it—whether it is IRCTC that runs its vendor management, financial and HR management systems on Red Hat Linux or IDBI Bank whose financials, HRMS (ERP) and e-banking are powered by Tux at its data centre or even BSNL Chennai’s billing apps, South Asia Petro’s and Haldia Dock Complex’s ERP systems. Enterprises and businesses are using Linux to run their core applications. Tux has developed a knack of showing up in unexpected places. In the past, companies were experimenting with running their non-critical applications on Linux. It had become a popular option for mail-servers, proxies and firewalls. Having seen the benefits of lower TCO and gaining confidence in its scalability, India Inc is putting core applications on Linux.

“Linux has proved that it is capable of running mission-critical applications across industries,” says Sanjay Sharma, CTO, IDBI Bank. He adds “It is stable, reliable and handles high workloads well. The enterprise mindset has changed over the years since they began testing Linux on non-core applications. This trend is expected to culminate into a macro trend as more enterprises and small and medium businesses (SMBs) look at reducing their TCO.”

A case for lower TCO

Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) has two development and two production servers that run Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). IRCTC required a scalable and unbreakable backend system. The total cost of ownership was a critical consideration. The Oracle e-Business suite running on Red Hat Linux addressed both these requirements. Amitabh Pandey, group general manager, IT Services, IRCTC says, “We considered Linux to run our entire vendor management system because we were concerned about costs. The feedback we received from vendors was that other Unix platforms such as Solaris would be an expensive proposition and adopting one of those would result in our getting stuck with one vendor.” IRCTC picked the Oracle e-Business Suite on RHEL because Oracle certifies its applications on Linux. Investing in a Unix server would have cost two or three times as much. Currently there are 15 users on its system but IRCTC’s goal is to scale up to 100 users.

High uptime and cost effective to boot

CIOs say that a big advantage of Linux is that it is much easier to move a system to a faster or more cost-effective platform when the need arises. Says Sanjay Sharma, CTO, IDBI Bank, “We conducted an experiment running our e-mail server on Linux. At that time we had 400 users. Today Linux has allowed us to scale up to 2,000 users—that’s a four-fold increase, without investing or upgrading to a higher box. Additionally, there has been no downtime and no patches were required.”

IDBI Bank is running Oracle Financials and HRMS successfully for the third year on an Intel Xeon dual processor machine. Sharma says, “Without investing in new hardware and OS we have been able to grow from 60 branches to 100 with the number of HRMS users growing from 400 to 1,900. The TCO is zero in the last three years as we have not upgraded or invested in new boxes. The uptime of the Financial and HRMS applications has been 99.9 percent. The investment in Linux is justified as we are saving four times on the cost of hardware (RISC-based), AMC and upgrades.”

Six of the nine servers at Haldia Dock Complex that run the core ERP application (administration, finance, materials management and operations) run it on Red Hat Advanced Server 2.0. These applications and database servers were migrated from Windows to Linux without any migration issues. A source at Haldia Dock Complex says, “We chose Linux primarily because it offers a lower TCO and lets us achieve a fault-tolerant system. We rate it higher than Microsoft in the area of security and stability.”

Mrigank Dhanuka, director-South Asia Petro adds “We are using Oracle e-Business Suite on Red Hat Advanced Server 2.4.9 to avoid licensing hassles and patching problems. Linux is more secure because as a root user we have tighter control of open ports. This leaves us with a lesser number of virus attacks and lower downtime.”

Dhanuka says, “Linux allows us to add ERP users without spending more on hardware. Additionally it supports clustering of applications and resources. Linux provides an open source operating system and gives you the freedom to provide available, flexible, and scalable networks with reduced cost.”

No compulsion to upgrade

Linux with support isn’t free. Javed Tapia, director-India, Red Hat says, “Enterprise customers are not looking for free Linux. They are not risking their business and applications by using free Linux. However there is no extra charge if you increase the number of users. Moreover, we kept a longer release cycle for RHEL (12 to 18 months) so that customers need not bother about upgrades. Patches and upgrades are up to customers.” Sharma of IDBI bank concurs, “What is more appealing to us is that the decision on version upgrades and patches is left to us, resulting in significant cost savings. We can pose any problem to the open source forum and we get the best solution to tackle it from the masters of Linux. There are new tools available for free download that help to secure the system.”

Holistic support

Tapia says, “Linux is supported by many vendors—hardware vendors such as IBM, HP, Dell, Intel and AMD, Enterprise Application Software (EAS) vendors Oracle and SAP and Linux vendors Red Hat and SUSE (Novell). The number of ISVs (certified for Red Hat) has doubled to 950. These vendors are porting applications onto Red Hat Linux driving Linux adoption.”

The commitment from Oracle has been good for Linux as the database giant fixes kernel-level problems. L Gopalakrishnan, director-Platform Technologies Group, Oracle India, says, “We take the ownership to fix kernel-based problems. We have our own internal team that works on the kernel to improve the overall performance of Oracle applications. This along with certification helps win the customer’s confidence.” Oracle has suggested 50 different changes in Red Hat 3.0 including asynchronous I/O, virtual memory management and inter-process management.

Shailender Kumar, country head-BEA Systems India says, “BEA does not provide direct support for Linux. But we provide support for our own products—WebLogic and Portal Service and partner with Linux support providers such as Red Hat, SUSE and HP to ensure a seamless support experience for our customers.”

Kumar says, “We are seeing most of EAI (Enterprise Application Integration) and portal deployment happening on Linux in India.” The key verticals driving Linux adoption are BFSI, telcos and manufacturing. BEA’s experience with customers deploying on Linux indicate that the primary benefits are cost and flexibility. Linux on Intel offers arguably the best TCO alternative for enterprise infrastructure with cost benefits in hardware, software, and operations. Gopalakrishnan says, “One gets locked with proprietary systems and then there are security concerns, maintenance and upgrades that help Linux score points.”

Up next, core banking

A Core Banking Solution (CBS) on Linux is unheard of today. Sharma makes an important point, “Not all banks in India can afford a CBS because of the expensive IT infrastructure required to run it. Additionally banks end up getting locked into vendors. Since smaller banks have low transaction volumes, a CBS on Linux brings excellent value to them to help them lower their TCO.”

Though no overnight boom is expected for CBS on Linux, i-flex already has a client. Rakesh Khanna, head-Product Marketing, i-flex Solutions says, “We are ahead of the curve and we see a demand for our Core Banking Solution (CBS), FLEXCUBE, on Linux (RHEL) in the next two to three quarters. We anticipated eight months back that a CBS on Linux would be a big value proposition for small banks and corporation banks in the country and have ported FLEXCUBE onto Red Hat Enterprise Linux.”

i-flex has tested FLEXCUBE to run in a mission critical environment. “CIOs of small banks are concerned about the initial capital expenditure required to run a CBS on Unix. FLEXCUBE on Linux will give them an alternative to expensive Unix systems. There is an inherent TCO attached to Linux in terms of licensing costs and the fact that no hardware upgrades are required.”

Banking customers will take small steps starting with databases on Linux and then use the OS to run their CBS, much like how customers began testing Linux on the edge and then moved to the core. i-flex has built the entire security on the applications, which has made FLEXCUBE OS agnostic. Khanna adds “Linux is much like a Tsunami—it’s unstoppable.”

Linux allows customers to virtualise their storage, memory and even CPU. This trend could trigger server consolidation. The next big trend will be Linux adoption by SMBs investing in integrated ‘in a box’ solutions (integrated EAS, hardware, database, and OS) priced under Rs 22 lakh.

akhtar@expresscomputeronline.com