The FAA Saves $15 Million by Migrating to Linux 191
Neopallium writes "Red Hat has announced that the U.S. Department of Transportation's Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) saved the federal government more than $15 million in datacenter operating and upgrading costs by migrating to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The FAA executed a major systems migration to Red Hat Enterprise Linux in one-third of the original scheduled time and with 30 percent more operational efficiency than the previous system."
careful of the source (Score:5, Interesting)
Disclaimer: I love Linux (and Un*x), and I hope someday Linux (and Un*x) becomes a majority player in the computing world. But, ...
The article paints a rosy success story, but consider the source. This is a Red Hat press release. While it all may be completely true with no misdirection, I put little stock in self-congratulation, especially after an amazing experience with a similar Microsoft claim.
I worked for a major Telcom years ago and we merged with a smaller firm... Shortly after the merger, Microsoft put a full page ad in Time magazine describing an enourmous success story of how our new company now comprised of two previous companies combined the two companies' IT systems and integrated them seamlessly with Micosoft's then new .NET
platform.
This would have been an amazing success story except for the fact that:
For those who doubt, I can provide the digital photograph of the ad, I was so amazed I actually took a picture of it (I will have to dig it out, but I know I have it.)
I know many would not be surprised by a bogus claim from a Microsoft, but I don't trust that any company providing a press release to be providing real news (or trustworthy, or balanced, etc.).
This whole "press release" presented as "news" would be more honest if they placed the disclaimer information up front. (If you don't read all the way to the VERY LAST LINE of the article, you won't know the source is Red Hat.
Re:careful of the source - The Real Question Here (Score:4, Interesting)
2. noone in our IT knew of this stunning success effort
3. our "integrated" systems weren't
The real question here, at least to me: Was Microsoft ever punished by your company for running this false ad?
Or did Microsoft pay for the privilege by giving you discounted software or something else of value. Something else, besides a nice lunch for the VP of MIS, I mean.
FAA Windows Machine "Nearly Perfect" (Score:2, Interesting)
Submitted by doc on Wed, 09/22/2004 - 19:02.
On Tuesday, September 14, something went wrong at the FAA's regional center that controls high altitude air traffic over Southern California and much of the southwest U.S. Two days later, this Associated Press story (carried here on MSNBC) summarized the problem in its opening sentence: "Failure to perform a routine maintenance check caused the shutdown of an air traffic communications system serving a large swath of the West, resulting in several close calls in the skies, the FAA and a union official said Wednesday." That same day, the Los Angeles Times ran a story titled "Human Factors Silenced Airports". Then, on September 21, TechWorld ran a story titled "Microsoft server crash nearly causes 800-plane pile-up: Failure to restart system caused data overload". It begins, "A major breakdown in Southern California's air traffic control system last week was partly due to a 'design anomaly' in the way Microsoft Windows servers were integrated into the system, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times. Here's what the Times story said....
Officials from Professional Airways Systems Specialists, the union that represents FAA technicians, acknowledged Wednesday that an improperly trained employee failed to reset the Palmdale radio system.
But they said the quirk in the system, known as Voice Switching and Control System, is a "design anomaly" that should have been corrected after it was discovered last year in Atlanta.
As originally designed, the VSCS system used computers that ran on an operating system known as Unix, said Ray Baggett, vice president for the union's western region.
The VSCS system was built for the FAA by Harris Corp. of Melbourne, Fla., at a cost of more than $1.5 billion.
When the system was upgraded about a year ago, the original computers were replaced by Dell computers using Microsoft software. Baggett said the Microsoft software contained an internal clock designed to shut the system down after 49.7 days to prevent it from becoming overloaded with data.
Software analysts say a shutdown mechanism is preferable to allowing an overloaded system to keep running and potentially give controllers wrong information about flights.
Richard Riggs, an advisor to the technicians union, said the FAA had been planning to fix the program for some time. "They should have done it before they fielded the system," he said.
To prevent a reoccurrence of the problem before the software glitch is fixed, Laura Brown, an FAA spokeswoman, said the agency plans to install a system that would issue a warning well before shutdown.
Martin, the chief FAA spokesman in Washington, said the failure was not an indication of the reliability of the radio communications system itself, which he described as "nearly perfect."
Re:careful of the source (Score:4, Interesting)
Thanks for the info, I did not know everything from Business Wire was a press release. However, my first guess as to what a publication "Business Wire" would represent would be news about business, not press releases. When I think of Wall Street Journal, I think of articles about business and Wall Street.
As for everything about it "shouting" press release, I'm only giving my opinion, and I don't think it "shouts" press release.
I also have no problems with Red Hat or any other business issuing press releases, they SHOULD. As for whether it is something that should be on slashdot, I refer to the slogan "News that Matters". It's only my opinion, but I don't think press releases fall into that category. (I would have no problem with slashdot creating a category "press releases".)
As in my original post, I have high hopes for Linux, I just prescribe caution to readers who don't know Business Wire is a press-release publication (I didn't). And, as in the anecdotal case I cited, sometimes the press release (or ad) is not only misleading, it is completely false. (The ad I mentioned even had testimonials from Microsoft and "our company" employees... statements and testimonials which COULDN'T have been true.)
And, for the record, I hold Red Hat in high regard for their contributions to the Linux movement.