Global Linux: Australia

Computerworld - Although some technology industry insiders say there seems to be a little bit of Linux just about everywhere in the corporate IT shops of Australia. But it can sometimes be difficult to quantify exactly where and how much.

Gordon Hubbard, treasurer of the Australian Unix Users Group and managing director of Sydney-based Custom Technology Australia Pty., says he finds companies there are less willing to pay for enterprise Linux than companies in the U.S. are, perhaps because they tend to be smaller in scale.

Steve McWhirter, vice president at Red Hat Inc. in the Asia-Pacific region, estimates that Red Hat has at least 1,200 customers in Australia. "But quite often, we get shocked when a customer tells us they have 60 servers, a lot sitting on the edge of the network, and they don't need to have maintenance contracts," he says.

The majority of companies outside the financial services industry in Australia use Linux to run their server systems, according to IDC. The public sector is also encouraging the use of open-source software, and a number of government departments have adopted it. But deployments tend to be smaller in Australia, and some users have taken their time in moving to supported versions of Linux.

Going It Alone

OPSM Group Ltd., a popular retail eyewear chain in Sydney, Australia, is a case in point. OPSM, which was acquired this year by Milan, Italy-based Luxottica Group SpA, shifted the mission-critical Legacy Support System in its data center to Red Hat's free distribution more than three years ago.

"We researched it thoroughly beforehand and knew what we were getting into," says Alex Chisholm, OPSM Group IT manager. "We are largely a Unix-skilled operation, and we see Linux as another variation of Unix. It would have been more challenging if we had been running Microsoft operating systems before deciding to go to Linux."

Chisholm says that while IT staffers had to be proactive about downloading and testing upgrades and patches, they never encountered a problem for which they couldn't find a ready fix. "If a problem arises, one of our staffers posts a query, and answers come in from around the world almost overnight," he says.

OPSM's data center experience was so successful that it has since rolled out Red Hat Linux servers for point-of-sale systems in each of the chain's 540 retail outlets.

Late last year, OPSM moved to secure a Linux support contract, which includes upgrade packages and indemnity protection measures. The company opted for Novell Inc.'s SUSE Linux because it owns other Novell products and wants to reduce the number of suppliers it deals with.