Datamation looks at how Linux is being deployed in the lucrative
ERP field — one of mainstays of enterprise computing. Despite some
impressive case studies, it appears that the leading ERP vendors —
like SAP and PeopleSoft — offer lukewarm support for Linux.
“BJ Havlik is not afraid of being on the bleeding edge. Two
months ago, Havlik, the IT manager of Menasha Corp., a $1 billion
packaging and forest products company in Neenah, Wisc., swapped his
company’s SAP applications from Hewlett-Packard servers using a
Unix operating system and onto Dell servers running Linux.”“Havlik’s motivation was simple: he figures moving to Linux has
saved his company about $700,000. It has also propelled Menasha
into the brave new world of enterprise resource planning on Linux,
a world that, so far, only a handful of companies have ventured to
explore….”“Siemens, which hosts SAP applications for clients, has recently
suggested to a couple of clients that they consider shifting to
Linux, says David Paish, a team leader at the Toronto data center.
While Paish isn’t convinced that Linux is ready yet for a
high-volume application such as SAP Retail, he believes Linux is
well suited to hosting R/3 systems for small to mid-sized
businesses. For a company with under 500 users, ‘running SAP on an
Intel platform is cheaper,’ he says.”