“In this analysis, I examined the business impact of integrating
Smallco’s network of PCs connected to a Red Hat Linux 6.2 server
into Bigcorp, an existing enterprise environment. Smallco is a
start-up company with a simple infrastructure.”
“I was pleased to find that no expensive third-party tools
were needed to integrate Red Hat Linux with the enterprise network,
nor did the IT staff at Bigcorp have to make changes to the
infrastructure to accommodate Linux. Free tools were available
for easily integrating Red Hat Linux into the existing LDAP/Novell
NetWare/Lotus Domino environment of Bigcorp. Because Red Hat can
fully utilize the LDAP server, no major changes were required by
the Bigcorp IT staff. These factors led me to award Red Hat Linux
an interoperability score of Very Good.”
“In spite of this good news, however, there was a
significant impact on IT resources. The support staff at
Bigcorp needed to be trained and needed to spend extra time working
on the Red Hat server. Although user account data could easily be
synchronized using the LDAP server, changes to other services in
Red Hat, such as the Samba file-sharing system, required hands-on
work.”