"'Not to be overly critical of Microsoft, but because
of the way they produce things, you need to apply patches regularly
or you are at risk. What was driving me was to stop adding bodies
to my staff and to stem the use of Microsoft server software,
because it is just too expensive to upgrade every two years,'
Roberts says.
To solve his problem, Roberts went back to the future, blending
relatively new OS technology, Linux, with an almost ancient OS,
namely an adapted version of IBM's VM, first introduced in 1964.
Earlier this year Roberts bought an IBM z900 Model 102 mainframe,
using VM with Linux running underneath. This lets Boscov's, from
one location, host more than 100 virtual Linux servers, which will
gradually replace the NT servers over the next year.
...His decision to go with Linux was not a case of love at first
sight. Roberts first looked into Linux a little more than a year
ago, but he was not convinced the technology was robust enough to
solve his problem or to save the company money.
'I now have much more confidence in Linux as a platform. I see
the [z900 with Linux] as a 4-or 5-year computing platform for us,'
he says."
