The Gap moves from Windows to Red Hat Linux
Retailer Gap Direct moved from Windows to Linux and has seen benefits across its heterogeneous environment.
Red Hat recently posted an interesting case study on how retail giant The Gap moved from a Unix and Windows based e-commerce infrastructure to one based on Red Hat Linux with support for Microsoft's Active Directory via LikeWise, a product that improves the management and interoperability of Windows and Linux systems.
According to the case study, "Gap Inc. Direct needed to revamp its entire end-to-end business technology platform--from the customer-facing front-end system, to the back-end order management application, to the business tools that supported the company's long-term growth strategy."
Platform growth and adding new features were key to the underlying infrastructure and the ability to integrate a heterogeneous environment was the other major hurdle that needed to be addressed. Positive ROI was an added bonus.
"The ROI (return on investment) of the Red Hat-Likewise solution is hundreds of thousands of dollars annually once you add the hardware and software savings to the reduced costs of manually auditing our systems. Likewise Enterprise's compliance enhancements allowed us to expand our use of Red Hat Enterprise Linux," said Jeff Arcuri, senior manager, IT for Gap Inc. Direct.
I'm sure there are many Red Hat Linux wins to be touted, just as Microsoft would happily tell you about their customer successes. What's interesting here is that Red Hat is actively telling a story that includes a diverse environment and not pushing a myopic, single vendor view of the enterprise.
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