ConsultingTimes.com: The Truth Behind the Great Server Heist

"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."

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