14 DAY TRIAL // Locatrix Communications, awarded with the Finalist in the Mobile Monday Global Peer Awards 2007 title, has recently announced a change of plans regarding their current operating system used for mission-critical workloads. So far, Locatrix Communications, known as a large developer of presence and location information applications (which can be used by mobile phones over GSM networks), has been relying on Red Hat's Enterprise distribution.
However, it seems that the company has found a better (also cheaper) alternative to the RHEL. According to Mark White, Locatrix founder and CEO, the famous Ubuntu distribution suits better the company's needs. Mark said that initially they thought of trying out Sun's Solaris version, but gave up this option as Red Hat came with the Intel servers the company acquired. But after seeing Ubuntu in action, starting with the installation and the good management of packages through the apt-get tool, the company's developers knew this distro was the perfect choice for them. The eight months during which they used Ubuntu on the Intel systems proved to be exactly as expected and the company proudly announces that during all this time not even a second of downtime was registered.
"One developer was enthusiastic about Ubuntu and we liked the installation and the apt-get packaging tool is very cool ? I can't give user numbers because of the contract, but there are thousands of simultaneous sessions. We interface with carrier-grade equipment and are under SLAs that require 99.999% uptime, and we are achieving that comfortably".
White has also mentioned that the price has nothing to do with the movement from Red Hat to Ubuntu (while Red Hat's Enterprise version is proprietary Ubuntu is completely free) and that Locatrix still runs some of Red Hat for front-end workloads. It was more about Ubuntu's ability to install new software seamlessly that convinced him to make the switch.
White said he thinks Red Hat's business model is also a good one as it provides paid-for support available for Linux. However, he said Locatrix is a "very engineering oriented shop so they are much better qualified for self support."