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The Chosen One Although it still lags on the desktop, Linux got a boost recently when the Israeli governement joined the growing list of organizations that have stopped buying Microsoft Office and started working with IBM and Sun Microsystems to improve OpenOffice. |
Mail-server deployment may sound at first like an anomaly. After all, most organizations require the functionality of a full-featured groupware server; and the choices for such applications on Linux is severely limited, with offerings from only a few vendors, such as Novell (SuSE) and IBM (Domino).
Where Linux finds its niche in the mail-server market is serving as an internal routing department, sorting mail for various subdomains and directing messages to the appropriate groupware server within the organization, and as a proxy of sorts--a frontline filter for more sensitive, less flexible systems, such as Exchange. This works because many Linux systems can be easily extended through configurable rules and filters that take advantage of pattern matching and regular expressions. This isn't true of systems like Exchange, which can be extended only through development of code or installation of third-party products. Sendmail, the best-known Linux-based messaging product, has been deployed for both its filtering capabilities and its scalability, serving such large organizations as Pfizer and Harvard University.
Nearly 37 percent of those responding to our e-mail poll run databases on Linux. Only Web, file and mail servers rank higher in the list (at 51, 39 and 37 percent, respectively). Most relational databases, such as Oracle, DB2 and Sybase, are run only on heavy-duty Unix operating systems, such as Sun Solaris and IBM AIX. The cores of these databases are optimized to run in Unix environments, and Linux fits that bill perfectly. Indeed, Oracle's latest relational database, 10G, was introduced and marketed with a focus on Linux, not Solaris. Microsoft Windows wasn't even mentioned as an option.
When the Ellis Island Foundation had problems with the performance and availability of its site, it turned to Linux. Traffic, already numbering millions of hits per month, increased by an estimated 40,000 hits per hour, thanks to a link letting thousands of genealogy buffs search the foundation's more than 25 million records, including photographs and ship manifests. The solution was an Oracle9i RAC (Real Application Clusters) Red Hat Linux system running on Hewlett-Packard hardware, deployed with no additional staff requirements. The system in vastly improved availability, with search times cut from 15 seconds to 5 seconds.
Bob Friday, Chief AI Officer for Juniper Networks, explains how the advanced technology is transforming operations.
Contact center leaders from 8x8, Awaken Intelligence, and 360insight discuss the importance of agent experience.
AI may force enterprises to rewire parts of their data centers so they are fully optimized to run such workloads. The question is do you use Ethernet or InfiniBand?
