“Our company, First Business Systems Ltd., focuses on supplying
database and accounting solutions. As many of our clients are small
businesses, we are always on the lookout for hardware and software
that can save them capital-the less they spend on capital assets,
the more they can spend on support services. This philosophy led us
to Linux.”
“In our business, the sale and installation of LANs are a
necessary evil, not a main source of income. We had been a reseller
of Bay Networks’ [now a Nortel business based in Santa Clara,
Calif.] PowerLan NOS for years as it offered a low-maintenance,
easy-to-install, dedicated 32-bit file server and Windows
workstation client that performed very nicely in LANs of fewer than
10 workstations. With PowerLan we had been able to hook up three to
five workstations to a dedicated server for less than $2,000, plus
hardware, of course.”