Feature

Enterprise applications on Linux

With porting of enterprise applications onto Linux revving up, companies are confident that their critical applications can run on Linux. By Abhinav Singh.

When an enterprise application goes down even if it’s only for a few minutes losses mount alarmingly. The underlying platform for an enterprise application has to be reliable and scalable. In the past that meant Unix. In the last few years, both Windows Server and Linux have begun to be considered as suitable platforms to run core applications. A number of enterprise application vendors offer full fledged support for Linux as a platform to run their enterprise applications. Bharti Telesoft, Bharat Aluminium, Venus Jewels, Aviva Life Insurance, Star Paper Mills, Precot Mills, Glass Equipment India and Jayant Agro Organics, ACPL Exports, Café Coffee Day, DCM Engineering, Lanco and Asian Paints are some of the companies that run their enterprise applications on Linux.

Linux has become an enterprise server OS today with most hardware OEMs supplying servers and PCs pre-loaded with it on request. IBM and Oracle’s databases are compatible with Linux.

Linux has traditionally been popular at the edge of the network. Today it is moving towards the database and application tiers. The low cost of acquisition and investment protection on hardware are strong reasons for enterprises to run their core applications on Linux. If hardware and software costs are critical factors, Linux on x86 offers attractive price points, particularly when compared to the RISC-Unix system configurations. As per IDC, organisations having strong Unix expertise will be comfortable with Linux and find the cost of ongoing support to be similar to or less than that of a Unix platform. However, organisations with deep experience in a Windows environment may not be as comfortable with Linux and may face a steep learning curve.

Lower TCO

"An Open Source operating system such as Linux can help a business break free from costly purchase and maintenance commitments sometimes associated with proprietary platforms" - Nagaraj Bhargava Vice President, Marketing & Sales Operations SAP India

Lower total cost of ownership (TCO) is a plus for Linux as enterprise applications can be deployed on low-cost Intel hardware. Organisations can scale up without making big investments for purchasing hardware. Hemanth K Kalikiri, deputy general manager eServer pSeries Enterprise Solutions, IBM Global Services India Ltd says, “Confidence is building around Linux as there are no issues in case a company wants to migrate from Unix or Windows to Linux. Earlier if a customer wanted to migrate to Linux there were doubts regarding who will take care of database migration and the OS changeover. We have a proof of concept centre where customers can evaluate whether a Linux migration is feasible for them and they also experience minimal downtime in case they migrate.”

"The running cost of an application is lower in a Linux environment as there are multiple vendors providing support for Linux and it translates into better support at a lower cost" - Raghuram D Vice President, Technology Ramco Systems Ltd

Linux does not escalate TCO in the long run. It is being believed by many enterprises that the amount of administrative effort which goes into maintaining an ERP solution on an Open Source platform is lower compared to running proprietary software and Linux also gives the flexibility to keep on adding users without altering the OS; upgrading on Linux is easy.

Nagaraj Bhargava, vice president, Marketing & Sales Operations, SAP India, says, “In many environments, an Open Source operating system such as Linux has demonstrated that it can help a business break free from costly purchase and maintenance commitments sometimes associated with other proprietary platforms, giving you flexibility and independence in the construction of your IT infrastructure. TCO is lower for enterprises running their core enterprise applications on an open source platform.” Since Linux runs on multiple hardware architectures, one can enjoy the advantages of supporting one operating system across the entire enterprise helping mitigate future investments in hardware. Companies report that cost savings on hardware let them reallocate IT budgets to other, more productive uses.

Raghuram D, vice president, Technology, Ramco Systems Ltd says, “The running cost of an application is lower in a Linux environment as there are multiple vendors providing support for Linux and it translates into better support at a lower cost. Linux also supports a larger number of users at marginal costs.” It is also a fact that the cost of a Linux-based server is around 50 percent lower than that of a Unix-based server.

Mohamed Ali, president and chief executive officer, CRM24X7, says, “Open Source platforms help our customers deploy solutions across the enterprise without worrying about the licensing issues associated with traditional platforms or getting tied down with a proprietary system. The support concerns associated with Open Source products are no longer valid as there are several independent organisations that provide exceptional support for open source products.”

Core functionalities are available

Porting an enterprise application has become easy for enterprises because the same core infrastructure technologies that helped Unix expand its market share in the enterprise are now available on Linux. These capabilities include virtual access software, virtual processing software, shared file systems, storage virtualisation and sharing technology, scalable hardware architectures and database technology. As a result, customers now have more choices and attractive options for system deployment. Linux also offers a neutral platform and virtually removes the tight coupling between applications and the platform upon which they are deployed. Kalikiri says, “Unix-like features on Linux have instilled customer confidence and they are willing to migrate to Linux.” Scalability on a Linux platform is easy as many enterprises are discouraged by factors such as the cost of licensing (OS, databases, application servers and reporting tools), and since Open Source safeguards against having to invest in hardware in the future, they prefer to go in for Open Source platforms.

Revathi Kasturi, managing director-West Asia, Novell, says, “The availability of trained manpower is lower for a Linux environment in comparison to that for a proprietary environment due to the fact that the technology is in a nascent stage when compared to Windows or Unix. Novell is holding training programmes to help administrators develop the necessary skill-sets. We are also working with all major enterprise software vendors such as SAP and Oracle to help them certify their solutions on SuSE Linux so that customers can avail of the advantages of running these solutions on Linux.”

The number of users and CPUs does not affect an Open Source platform, but in the case of proprietary systems the licensing cost depends on the number of users and CPUs. Customers are willing to invest, but they do not want to get locked into proprietary technology. Besides this, the systems overheads are also low in the case of an open platform. Many vendors also say that Linux brings with it innovation and flexibility. With open source, one has the transparency and one can have the right to use this source code to solve their problems.

Clover Technologies specialises in Oracle and Open Source consulting. Chief executive officer, Javed Tapia says, “If Google can achieve scalability by running on Linux then small and medium enterprises in India can achieve great success with Linux.” As far as skill-sets on Linux are concerned they are scarce when compared to proprietary environments but they are developing. “We expect to see widespread adoption of enterprise software on Linux as the technology has been around for some time. The cost factor, robustness and scalability of the platform are strong attributes in Linux’s favour,” says Tapia.

Venus Jewel is getting five times more performance when compared to the Unix-based server as its users are able to access and view around 100 item listings (listings present in a page) per second on a Linux-based server. On a Unix server it was getting only 20-30 listings per second. The company has now migrated its Oracle 9i database from a Unix box to a Linux server. Similarly many SME customers are showing interest in EWA on Open Source because there is a desire to customise these applications to their specific industry, and reduce overall maintenance commitments and involvement in a user group within the same industry. They feel that this may be cheaper in the long run. Some vendors believe that open source software allows them to compete for support contracts based on quality of service and price. Access to the source code also lets customers take advantage of self-support, which is practicable and desirable.

Banks such as Central Bank of India, IDBI Bank and KSCB (Kerala State Co-operative Bank) are running Linux. IDBI Bank has been running Oracle Financials and HRMS on Linux. The scope of the HRMS expanded with the number of users climbing from 400 to over 3,000. The bank did this without investing in any extra hardware. Sanjay Sharma, managing director and chief executive officer, IDBI Intech Ltd says, “Oracle Financials is running on Linux and we have had no problems with the system. All the payments are processed through the system which happens to be centralised. The Linux system is also scalable going by the fact that we had no problems in scaling our HRMS on Linux.” More importantly, IDBI has been able to get 99.9 percent uptime on these two applications. Additionally IDBI is running its e-mail server, which has around 5,000 users on Linux. The bank did not require any additional licenses to run its e-mail server and it has not made any additional investment for supporting an increasing number of users. Sharma adds, “In the near future we plan to go in for Linux servers at the branch level and then push it to the desktop.”

Similarly UTI Bank is running its call centre on Linux and it has deployed Linux for its credit card applications as well. UTI Bank achieved 99.99 percent uptime at their call centre on Linux and is running Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat Cluster Suite. Its servers handle approx 7,000 calls a day without any disruption in service and it expects call volumes to rise by 200 percent within the next few months. Customer service quality has shown substantial improvement with enterprise Linux driving its infrastructure. UTI Bank can dynamically scale up resources as Red Hat Cluster Suite ensures seamless transfer of services from one server to another. As a result, the possibility of an abnormal termination has been completely eliminated. The fail over configuration allows the call centre agent to have an always connected view of the database. The bank has not had a single instance of failure.

i-flex has deployed its Core Banking Solution, FLEXCUBE, on Linux at KSCB. Meanwhile, Infosys has run a Proof-of-Concept on Linux, with plans of porting its CBS, Finacle, on to Linux.

Kasturi says, “A lot of core banking initiatives are coming up on Linux and Novell is working closely with a lot of CBS solution providers. Many banks want to achieve a thin client environment on SuSE Linux and this, in turn, helps ensure greater manageability.”

From the enterprise perspective, the fact that you have to pay a license and maintenance fee for your platform is significant. Although organisations are willing to invest on applications, some are questioning why they should invest on the underlying platform as well. From a public sector perspective, the issue is privacy. Governments are saying they do not want proprietary platforms. They want to own the code of the platform and they want to control it. There can be different reasons for desiring open source, like greater control, lower cost and greater ownership.

That said, issue remain. Some feel that the availability of support is lesser than what’s available for Windows Server. Moreover, in comparison to Unix, Linux still doesn’t scale as well for large SMP configurations.