Red Hat Drives Desktop Cost Savings for Europcar

Fast Facts: Europecar

Industry: Transport

Geography: Australia

Business Challenge: To support Europcar’s focus on customer service by delivering a desktop solution that could affordably meet a range of user requirements

Migration Path: Windows to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Desktop

Software: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Desktop, customised TelNet booking application

Benefits: Experienced decreased TCO and increased ROI, performance, flexibility, and ease of management

“Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Desktop immediately solved our licensing issues and certainly decreased our licensing costs. It also met 100 percent of our users’ needs. In fact, the Red Hat desktop solution has enabled us to adopt a new hardware policy that ensures that we maximise our hardware ROI.”

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BACKGROUND

As one of the world’s leading car rental companies, Europcar has a network of over 2,600 branches across 118 countries, including 110 offices around Australia. It operates a large fleet of quality vehicles and continues to grow as new locations and regional franchises open regularly.

The company relies heavily on its technology infrastructure to power its car-rental reservation systems. Its IT department is divided into three teams, including Help Desk, Infrastructure, and Business Systems. Together, these teams provide internal 24/7 support for Europcar’s server platforms and applications and allows for the expanding functionality of its systems. Europcar is committed to establishing technology systems that deliver high levels of customer service delivered through cost-effective solutions.

BUSINESS CHALLENGE

Europcar faced the challenge of discovering a cost-effective internal desktop solution that could offer ease of management for its geographically diverse locations and varied users. Previous solutions had caused complications with licensing and second-hand hardware, and deploying technology solutions across more than 110 geographically diverse locations is challenging.

“We were particularly focused on enabling more effective and efficient use of our booking application, an open source TelNet program,” said Scott Allen, CIO at Europcar Asia Pacific. “These branch and call-centre users are incredibly important to the business because they have the customer contact and are the ones managing the fleet and vehicle availability.”

SOLUTION

To address its desktop challenges, Europcar turned to open source solutions. “Europcar’s policy is to always consider open source when investing in new technology because we know it’s the best way to minimise costs and do more with the budgets that we’re allocated every year,” said Allen.

Europcar first trialled Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Desktop in its call centre, installing it on a segmented number of PCs with the TelNet-hosted booking application. The Red Hat desktop solution’s interface was well-suited for both the users working with the booking application and for the users still needing access to Microsoft applications.

“We started the trial in our call centre and the feedback was fantastic. We then extended it into our finance department with some fairly high-end users, so that we could road test Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Desktop running some of the applications we would need to provide through the Citrix environment. Those results were also extremely positive and we had no hesitations about moving forward,” said Allen.

After the completion of these successful trials with Red Hat solutions, Europcar selected Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Desktop as part of its strategy to bring in low-cost hardware components and eliminate excessive licensing charges. The Red Hat desktop solution was deployed internally across the entire organization and has allowed Europcar to simplify its end-user experience, reducing the need for re-training as a part of the move away from its previous Windows platform.

“Given that customer service is so important to us, we knew that Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Desktop was a reliable selection. Red Hat took an open source product and turned it into an industrial-strength solution that was completely enterprise-ready,” said Allen.

BENEFITS

Since migrating to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Desktop, Europcar has benefited from flexibility, cost savings, increased ROI, and scalability for its internal desktop deployment.

“Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Desktop immediately solved our licensing issues and certainly decreased our licensing costs. It also met 100 percent of our users’ needs,” said Allen. “In fact, the Red Hat desktop solution has enabled us to adopt a new hardware policy that ensures that we maximise our hardware ROI.”

Europcar is also pleased with its success in making a mixed environment, running both open source and Microsoft applications, work to meet a range of user requirements. “A percentage of our users still ocassionally access Microsoft applications, and even with open source, they are doing it without any constraints. The fact is that today we have a very flexible environment that we can tailor for individual users – and that’s thanks to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Desktop.”

For the future, Europcar faces significant growth opportunities that involve geographical expansion and plans to grow its fanchise network. Already, countries including India and Thailand are being serviced through Europcar’s central booking application running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Desktop. With the company’s growth will come expanded use of Red Hat solutions.

“During our evaluation process for a new solution, we had to ensure that our Red Hat platform could grow with the business. The work we’ve done to date has proven Red Hat has the scalability to support our future plans for growth,” said Allen.

For further information about Europcar’s use of Red Hat Enterprise Linux in its server environment, please see the customer reference:

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