DeoDeo
Turbolinux Server

Turbolinux lights up leading online mall
CyberCity exec cheers Turbolinux Server's stability, interactivity

Challenge: DeoDeo, one of Japan's largest consumer electronics appliance retailers with more than 350 stores nationwide, wanted a flexible Web e-commerce solution that was robust enough to host an Oracle 8 database with 13 million customer records and more than 3.3 million product SKUs.

Solution: A major systems integration company in Japan, DreamArts, recommended a Turbolinux and Java solution that cost DeoDeo a fifth of a proprietary UNIX-based solution. DeoDeo runs its Web commerce site on a group of five IBM NetFinity 5000 servers and a sixth NetFinity 5000 for systems administration located off-site. DreamArts selected Turbolinux Server for its stability and flexibility and Turbolinux for their support system and e-commerce experience. The site hosts DeoDeo's CyberCity virtual shopping mall that went live on December 20, 1999 (http://dcc.deodeo.co.jp/).

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First Credit Bank of Los Angeles
Turbolinux Server

Leading Los Angeles-based lending institution banks on Turbolinux for ease of administration

Challenge: The First Credit Bank of Los Angeles -- one of California's most profitable lending institutions -- needed a reliable, yet secure, alternative to Windows NT to ease remote administration of production servers at two local branches. The machines, 600-MHz Pentium Pro Unisys servers, provide file-and-print services, application serving and e-mail for a total of 40 workstations.

Solution: Despite having paid more than $10,000 in NT license fees in the late 1990s, Kourosh Ghassemieh, First Credit's information systems director, said he was switching the production servers over to Turbolinux Server. "Administration of the NT system is a huge hassle because I really can't do anything remotely," Ghassemieh said. "That means I have to drive between branches regularly, which takes me out of commission for most of the day -- which means I have lots less time for other IT-related tasks at the bank."

Ghassemieh said Turbolinux Server's "superior remote administration capabilities," along with its ironclad security features, made it the obvious choice. A successful pilot program -- launched at the request of the bank's officers -- convinced everyone at First Credit of Turbolinux's award-winning performance. "Everyone here at First Credit Bank is extremely happy with Turbolinux," Ghassemieh said. "The products and the excellent customer support make all difference. I never saw that from any of the other Linux companies."

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Fujisoft ABC Inc.
Turbolinux Server

Leading Japanese SI Builds ERP Payroll System on Turbolinux, Oracle and Compaq

Challenge: Fujisoft ABC Inc., a leading Japanese systems integrator, faced something of an ironic problem. Here it was helping major Japanese corporations with their most sophisticated computing needs, yet the company depended on a non-scalable PC-based salary accounting system that it had outgrown years before. It really needed an ERP-class payroll system.

Solution: Fujisoft ABC had traditionally worked with UNIX and Windows NT for software development, networking and for running ERP applications, but since its customers were increasingly asking about Linux-based solutions, the company decided to get some first-hand experience. Fujisoft ABC selected Turbolinux Server based on its b reputation as an enterprise-class solution and because it enabled the company to use its existing Compaq Proliant servers, which come configured with RAID 5 -- the redundant data backup technology that it wanted to incorporate into the new payroll system. Fujisoft ABC chose the accounting package ProActiveGV-Salary from Sumisho Computer Systems Corp. for the application. Oracle Workgroup Server for Linux, version 8.0.5, was selected for the database and Windows 98 for the clients.

The Turbolinux-based system calculated Fujisoft ABC's employee salary payments 40 percent faster than the PC-based predecessor, said Fujisoft ABC section manager Tetsuo Harada. The new accounting system was also easier to use, thus reducing hands-on user operation time. In addition to being highly reliable and customizable, Harada said the new system could "easily scale to handle the salaries of 12,000 employees" without the need of any hardware or software upgrades. The Turbolinux-based solution it created was so successful, Fujisoft ABC is now reselling it to its customers.

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MIT
Turbolinux Server

Turbolinux meets the challenge for MIT fund-raiser

Challenge: The organizers of the MIT Sloan Challenge, an annual fund-raiser sponsored by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management, were frustrated by the performance of the aging Macintosh server that hosted their event's Web site -- along with the Web sites of several other student-run activities operating out of the MIT Entrepreneurship Center. They needed their own server. Problem was, every dollar they spent on a new system meant one less dollar for City Year Boston, an AmeriCorps program focused on youth leadership building and community service.

Solution: Justin Martinez-Sowers, the MIT Sloan Challenge's lead technology organizer, had an extremely cost-effective idea for the new system's hardware and its operating system. He built a server from scratch using decommissioned MIT parts, but the Pentium I MMX 133 with 32-MG of RAM and a 2-GIG hard disk needed a "light-and-lean" operating system. "Linux was my first choice because I knew we needed something that wasn't going to take up a lot of resources on this poor machine if I expected it to be our Web server," he said.

"I went with Turbolinux Server because of all the leading distributions, I found that it was the easiest to install, was solid and stable, and was the distribution I had to fuss the least with once it was up and running," Martinez-Sowers said. The rest of his team was impressed that Microsoft FrontPage -- used to build and administer the site -- interoperated with Turbolinux, whereas the file permissions on the old server were "always a little off," he added. "Another thing that impressed me was that Turbolinux flawlessly handled two 100-Megabit Ethernet cards, which I understand has been a problem with some of the other Linux distributions."

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NTT/Info-carry
Turbolinux Server

Japan's largest car.com opens door to 4 million NTT i-mode customers

Challenge: Japan's largest online automobile auction site wanted to expand its reach beyond the desktop by tapping the nearly 4 million Japanese who access the Internet via "i-mode" wireless Net phones from telecommunications giant NTT DoCoMo. The project required building a specially formatted e-commerce site to accommodate the small LCD screens of the i-mode phones.

Solution: Info-carry Corp. hired a Tokyo-based Web production company familiar with Turbolinux that promised to do the job faster than UNIX or NT alternatives and at half the cost. Cool-site, which builds Web sites for some of the largest companies in Japan, already ran Turbolinux at other customer sites, including the Mainichi newspaper. For the i-mode project, Cool-site loaded Turbolinux onto Dell servers with an Oracle 8 database as the backend.

"We not only succeeded in getting the job done faster than the competition, we didn't break Info-carry's budget," said Hodaka Kitahara, Cool-site's president. "Turbolinux gave us the flexibility needed to build an i-mode site, which is a challenge in itself." With Turbolinux, Cool-site avoided time-consuming CGI scripts in favor of the open source development language PHP Version 3.0. Turbolinux and PHP3, a server-side HTML-embedded scripting language, allowed Cool-site to quickly and easily build the fast-loading database-enabled Web pages required by i-mode phones.

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Sacramento State University
Turbolinux Server

Sacramento State University Gives Turbolinux an 'A+'

Challenge: Sacramento State University's computer science department needed a hardware and software solution for a Web-based course, "Introduction to Systems Programming," that was versatile and robust enough to meet the demands of one of their most popular upper division classes with more than 130 students. They were looking for a Linux solution because the class students worked primarily on Linux.

Solution: After reviewing many platforms Sacramento State University decided to go with a Turbolinux - IBM solution.

"The decision to choose IBM's sServer xSeries Platform running Turbolinux Server 6.0 was an easy one," said Professor Busovaca. "Turbolinux offers the most robust and user-friendly server solution and there is no better platform to run it on than IBM's.

All of the course work in the "Introduction to Systems programming," is uploaded onto an IBM sServer xSeries running the Turbolinux Server operating system. Students access a password-protected Web page on the school's intranet, download assignments and then send back the work via e-mail. Once graded, each student's results are available for their review on the site, stored in a database located on the same IBM sServer.

"I'd give Turbolinux Server and IBM's sServer xSeries Platform an 'A+' in terms of performance and reliability," Professor Busovaca said. "The system is an invaluable part of my computer science class here at Sacramento State."

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San Francisco State University
Turbolinux Server and Turbolinux Workstation

Turbolinux steps up to the podium at San Francisco State University

Challenge: San Francisco State University's computer science lab needed an affordable yet manageable operating system capable of integrating a mixed environment of Unix, Windows NT and the Macintosh OS for development and systems administration. There was also a growing call from students for Linux machines.

Solution: Because Sun Microsystems' flavor of Unix, Solaris, was the OS of choice for development at the university, and since Linux is extremely compatible with Unix and has a host of powerful development tools, Unix administrator Paul McAvoy proposed a Linux installation. The OS, he argued, was an order of magnitude less expensive than Unix. And because Linux's source code was open, it was also highly customizable. "The two operating systems make for a perfect fit -- and an extremely economical one," he added.

McAvoy installed Turbolinux Server onto an old Pentium 66-MHz computer, connected it to a small group of PCs running Turbolinux Workstation and showed the faculty that Linux could easily run the lab's existing functions such as NIS (Network Information Services) and NFS (Network File System). McAvoy then used Samba for file-and-print services and loaded Turbolinux Workstation onto 20 of the department's 150 computers to drive his case home. "In addition to its dependability and workhorse abilities, Linux is absolutely outstanding for educational institutions because its flexibility affords nearly limitless opportunities to explore and learn in areas like application development, systems administration and networking technologies -- unlike closed proprietary operating systems like Windows."

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Yamaguchi University
Turbolinux Server

Japan's top medical school gives Turbolinux server solution excellent prognosis for success
Yamaguchi University School of Medicine

Challenge: One of Japan's leading medical universities wanted to consolidate business information from a legacy database on UNIX to a new database that could also house research, including data and images. Problem was, only 2 million yen (U.S.$18,000) had been allocated for the entire project.

Solution: The Yamaguchi University School of Medicine built the new system with an Oracle 8i Workgroup Server running Turbolinux Server. Microsoft Visual Basic was selected as the application development tool and FileMaker Pro was used for database management. Turbolinux slashed development time and eliminated expensive client-access license costs associated with UNIX and Windows NT. Most important of all, Turbolinux provided the high level of security the job demanded.

"We went with Turbolinux for a number of reasons, namely security. Since our patients' private information is at stake, security was a very important issue to consider," said Dr. Hiroaki Fujisawa. "We were particularly impressed with Turbolinux because services such as Telnet and rlogin, unnecessary for a database server and which cause security issues, are not set to start up by default."

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