Case Studies
UK Finance group migrates mission critical email and fileserver systems to Linux, for reduced TCO and increased IT capacity
Migrating to Linux was an important decision for the business. Reducing our TCO was the key issue, but in addition it was critical that we maintained business operations throughout. The availability of 24x7 support was therefore a key factor in our choice of IT specialists.The reputation of Linux as secure and stable has certainly been borne out by our experience, with 100% uptime since 2001.
License fee savings, improved efficiency through conversion to paperless systems, increased IT capacity for less money and increased staff confidence in IT infrastructure have all made an impact on profitability and morale. In addition we have found that the flexibility and scalability of the implementation has significantly helped the growth of our organisation.
Katie Souter Director GHW Group plc
Business Need:
To lower total cost of IT ownership and gain the flexibility to expand its systems as needed. The secondary aims were to enable all three offices to work seamlessly, improve process efficiencies and maximise uptime.
Solution:
Although a lifelong customer of Microsoft products, it became clear that Linux in combination with open source remote access technology was a compelling value proposition.
The Windows NT4 file servers and the Exchange 5.5 email server needed to be upgraded. The 3aIT team advised implementing Samba as the file server and Exim with IMAP for e-mail on a Linux O/S.
Additional open source applications would also be implemented, including the migration of 70% of desktops from Microsoft Office to Open Office.
Benefits of the Solution:
GHW now has a corporate level IT infrastructure and benefits from the ability of employees to work from anywhere in the world. The system has 100% uptime and supports around 80 users with many gigabytes of data transfer per day. The Linux based Firewalls and VPNs have saved £1000s in licence fees and virus and worm attacks have ceased to be an issue.
The Linux email system has expanded incrementally with no added costs and now manages five domain names and several mailing lists.
Thanks to Linux, GHW now needs less servers, even though they have more users and vastly more data since moving to a paperless pdf office.
License fee savings, improved efficiency through conversion to paperless systems, increased IT capacity for less money and increased staff confidence in IT infrastructure have all made an impact on profitability and morale. In addition we have found that the flexibility and scalability of the implementation has significantly helped the growth of our organisation.
Katie Souter Director GHW Group plc
Business Need:
To lower total cost of IT ownership and gain the flexibility to expand its systems as needed. The secondary aims were to enable all three offices to work seamlessly, improve process efficiencies and maximise uptime.
Solution:
Although a lifelong customer of Microsoft products, it became clear that Linux in combination with open source remote access technology was a compelling value proposition.
The Windows NT4 file servers and the Exchange 5.5 email server needed to be upgraded. The 3aIT team advised implementing Samba as the file server and Exim with IMAP for e-mail on a Linux O/S.
Additional open source applications would also be implemented, including the migration of 70% of desktops from Microsoft Office to Open Office.
Benefits of the Solution:
GHW now has a corporate level IT infrastructure and benefits from the ability of employees to work from anywhere in the world. The system has 100% uptime and supports around 80 users with many gigabytes of data transfer per day. The Linux based Firewalls and VPNs have saved £1000s in licence fees and virus and worm attacks have ceased to be an issue.
The Linux email system has expanded incrementally with no added costs and now manages five domain names and several mailing lists.
Thanks to Linux, GHW now needs less servers, even though they have more users and vastly more data since moving to a paperless pdf office.