"Here I was looking for the killer Linux app, and along
comes the killer commercial! In case you haven't tuned into Law and
Order, the US Open, or some other parking place for prime time gray
matter, please click here to download and view "The Heist". As
lights flash and sirens blare, a frantic data manager leads the
cops into a vast, empty data center. Sorry to give the plot away,
but it ends with "The servers, they stole all our servers!" Out of
the cavernous space a techie emerges -- tie askew, Styrofoam cup
and jelly donut in tow -- and gestures toward a refrigerator-sized
box in the far corner: "No, we moved everything onto that one.
Gonna save us a bundle. I sent out an e-mail." The words "Servers
running Linux" flash across the screen.
This 60 second spot is a work of pure, evil genius, with more
subliminal messages than a can of Pringles. But ... is it true? I
mean, you don't simply call up and put a zSeries mainframe on your
credit card, and there still are licensing, maintenance, and who
knows what other costs. Did the techie really save a bundle by
dumping the servers?
To answer this all-important question, ConsultingTimes spoke to
Jimmy Lee, Director of Professional Services for Equant, a global
network service provider which runs the world's largest IP data
communication network. (We'll have more on Equant in a subsequent
article.) Equant was among the first organizations to implement
Linux on the S/390 and z-Series mainframes, and migrate its
customers to open standards, so Jimmy is one person who could fill
in the Big Blue ad with real world numbers."
