Sixbell Nekotec Solutions Finds Flexibility With Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Industry: Telecommunications
Geography: Chile, with operations throughout Latin America and offices in Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico
Opportunity: Sixbell looked for a flexible solution that would provide interoperability with a greater number of hardware providers and would encourage the incorporation of innovative technological solutions from different market leaders. The ideal solution would be based on a standard and open operating system and have excellent support.
Solution:
Software: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4
Hardware: HP Proliant DL servers, Intel X86 servers, Sun Galaxy servers

Benefits:

• Heightened flexibility with the ability to offer its solutions through a broader array of technological alternatives.
• Increased cost savings and enhanced performance after migrating from proprietary solutions to Red Hat solutions.
• Fast, reliable support.

Background

Sixbell Nekotec Solutions is a leading Latin American company engaged in the design, development, marketing, and support of integrated telecommunications solutions. With corporate offices in Chile, Mexico, Colombia, and Brazil, it’s been offering comprehensive solutions to enterprises and network operators for 18 years. The company presently has four regional units and two technological development centers that satisfy the telecommunications needs of over 100 million users across Latin America.

Opportunity
Sixbell looked for a flexible solution that would provide interoperability with a greater number of hardware providers. The ideal solution would be based on a standard and open operating system. With an expanded open environment, Sixbell would be able to offer solutions in infrastructure environments to better fit its clients’ needs.

Sixbell searched for a solution that featured a distribution with certification agreements for solutions targeted at the telecommunications market. The solution needed high performance and uptime levels, reliable support, and a strong history of successful migrations from proprietary Unix to Linux.

Solution
Ultimately, after months of analyzing the support, flexibility, and robustness of multiple solutions in mission-critical environments, Sixbell selected Red Hat solutions. The implementation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux began in early 2006 and Sixbell received excellent, timely Red Hat support from the start.

After implementing Red Hat solutions, measurements of Red Hat’s performance in open x86 infrastructures became available. The measurements concluded that Red Hat’s performance was far higher than the alternatives managed with proprietary systems. “We conducted preliminary tests with some solutions based on SIP protocols (convergence solutions) and performance almost doubled. There is a margin that may be related to the implementation and hardware used, but there was a remarkable change shown by the operating system,” said Rodrigo Pérez, Engineering Manager at Sixbell.

The migration to Red Hat solutions was smooth and educational for Pérez, who expressed that Sixbell had initially underestimated the open source migration process. “My chief advice for others looking to migrate to open source solutions is to program everything based on a standard basis,” said Pérez. “When we dealt with new hardware vendors, we had to compile processes and adjust programming practices. It’s also good to avoid using programs that seem to facilitate programming and tie the company to one type of software. With open source, there is more flexibility and choice.”

Benefits
With Red Hat solutions, Sixbell diversified its platforms, mounted applications, and incorporated new hardware vendors. Red Hat’s flexibility in supporting units from vendors including HP, IBM, and Sun was valued most by Sixbell.

“When Sixbell first entered the market, it had multiple proprietary platform workhorses including Sun Solaris and Oracle that gave us enough backup,” said Perez. “Now, Sixbell is recognized in the market and we have been able to further our growth in cooperation with Red Hat. We’ve kept the Sun platform, but now have been able to incorporate HP, IBM, or other varied hardware in our solution.”

Additionally, Sixbell was able to mount its previous Unix platforms on Linux, reducing hardware costs and supporting more hardware alternatives with heightened performance. “After our successful experience with Red Hat, if our client does not impose any infrastructure scheme, we provide Linux,” said Pérez. “This allows us to have a broad array of hardware options, with Intel or AMD processors. We’re convinced that the use of Linux will be only to our advantage. For future implementation, we’re exploring JBoss solutions to continue enhancing our infrastructure.”

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