* America First Credit installs SuSE Linux-based ATM network
Novell has recently published a case study that you might find interesting. America First Credit Union is a longtime Novell customer, whose enterprise network is solidly grounded on NetWare. It recently installed a brand new ATM (Automatic Teller Machine – “cash point” to you Brits) system for its 65 locations running on top of a SuSE Linux platform. Tying it all together is Novell’s eDirectory and Identity Manager, which help the credit union manage digital identities and provide secure access to applications. There’s also ZENworks for desktop management and GroupWise for e-mail and collaboration. That’s about as “NetWare stalwart” as you can get.
Sure, the case study is basically a marketing document – but it’s a marketing document you can use within your own organization when some brain-washed senior exec spouts off about how prevalent Microsoft networking products are. Or, worse, about how good Windows servers are.
For example, by moving the ATM system from mainframe-based to virtual server based (which uses only one of the two mainframes the old system did) the credit union has gone from taking three seconds to process a transaction to being able to process 85 transactions every second.
America First is so impressed with the new ATM system, in fact, that it’s now planning to move its older NetWare servers to an Open Enterprise Server platform (using a mix of both NetWare and Linux kernels) just as quickly as possible. You can read the whole case study yourself in just a few moments, but you might also want to print it out to pass around the executive office suite.
Another quick read was recently posted by Avanti Technology CEO Steve Meyer. You’ll remember that Meyer claimed to have a NetWare 6 server that had been up for more than 7 years (see “Novell financials mind the GAAP”). We were skeptical and evidently Meyer’s guilty conscience has been keeping him awake. He recently posted an “Apology to Dave Kearns”, in which he apologizes for not revealing the real truth about his server’s uptime. I’m beginning to worry about Meyer’s grasp on reality.
