From: "Joe Barr" 

http://searchenterpriselinux.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid39_gci9
05078,00.html

 By Amy Kucharik, SearchEnterpriseLinux.com Assistant Editor
06 Jun 2003, SearchEnterpriseLinux.com

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.

Soon, the company began to experience stability issues with Windows 98 and
inherent problems with Sageline 50, because its access database wasn't
robust enough. The growing number of users was causing multiple file locks.
In addition, Timmis said, the NT file server was struggling, despite being
reasonably reliable. "You only need one hole in the system for
everything you're doing to fall over," he said.

About a year before the company's Linux migration, Timmis replaced the NT 4
Application Server with Windows 2000 Advanced Server. Still, Timmis said,
the Windows network was unreliable. "The terminal server began
revoking licenses that we'd purchased for clients to use it." Next,
the Windows 2000 server "began to fail and give stability problems as
well."

Timmis' plan was to pull out everything proprietary and give Super Tramp
greater stability with a Linux-based network. "There certainly was
some obvious concern," he said, because he needed to be certain all
the necessary applications would be available on Linux. Timmis embarked on
a three-month research project.

--- BBBS/NT v4.01 Flag-4