Line56: The Linux Connection

“Sales representatives are often among the first to know what’s
going on with a customer’s order. That’s true at Marianna
Industries, a manufacturer and distributor of beauty products with
265 employees.

“But, in order to get order information and relay it to
customers, Marianna’s salespeople have been somewhat limited. Mitch
Folkers, IS Manager for Marianna, explains that they’ve had to get
that information through PCs linked to the business applications
Marianna runs on IBM AS/400 machines. Moreover, those PCs and
laptops have to install specific software before any connection can
be made.

“This is naturally a limiting factor for salespeople in the
field, and Marianna recently decided to do something about it. The
solution? Folkers says that Marianna turned to IBM’s Integrated
Platform Express, which runs on the increasingly popular Linux.
Platform Express is a package of WebSphere Express, DB2 Express,
and xSeries servers…”

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