“…My employer, Company X, decided to incorporate a series of
site enhancements based on customer suggestions that would enable
us to secure our position as a leading online marketplace for cargo
negotiation services. The existing site had been constructed as a
proprietary Java application running on Sun Solaris servers and an
Oracle database. We were already sold on the portability merits of
Java, but wanted to re-write our application using standards-based
Java code that included our new functionality. Furthermore, we
needed to convert the existing site to a transactional-based
website that integrated with Verisign payment libraries.”
“Therefore, our reliance on Java and Oracle led to the natural
assumption that Sun hardware would fulfill our needs. We purchased
an expensive Sun Enterprise 250 server and I assumed the role of
system administrator. Our environment consisted of the Apache web
server for normal page requests, and the Tomcat servlet engine to
serve the JSP / Servlet pages.”
“…Actual performance of the environment was disappointing,
given the cost of the hardware, and despite existing time allocated
towards the Sun equipment, the decision was made to migrate the
application to the Linux platform and to return the Sun box. Pricey
tech support calls and unforgiving Sparc hardware further
contributed to the transition. We selected Red Hat as our
distribution based on its support options, acceptance in the
enterprise, and its familiarity by most of the techs that we were
working with.”