[ Thanks to Michael
S. Mimoso for this link. ]
“Three years ago, U.K.-based Super Tramp Trampolines bought a
proprietary application and chose to run it on Microsoft Windows NT
4.0. Both the application and the platform quickly maxed out. So
the company took a ‘safe’ route by upgrading to Windows 2000
Server. Soon, the truth hit home: Super Tramp had made the wrong
choice, twice.“Super Tramp manufactures water- and UV-resistant outdoor
trampolines that are designed to endure many years of use. The
company needs an IT network as stable as its products, said Rick
Timmis, IT director at Jardine Prentis (UK) Ltd., Super Tramp’s
parent company. Playing it safe with Microsoft hadn’t worked, so
Timmis made a ‘leap of faith’ and decided to migrate all Super
Tramp’s systems and data to open-source.“Super Tramp had been using NT 4, running Microsoft’s Exchange
Server for three years prior to the migration. At the time, Timmis
served as the company’s Windows administrator. The firm used
Sageline 50 for accounting and Windows 98 on the desktop, served by
an NT file server. They implemented a fat client network that had
evolved with the business, expanding about 30% annually…”