University of Stirling Graduates to Red Hat Enterprise Linux; Deploys Red Hat Enterprise Linux to Run Its HR Function and Payroll Applications Delivering Increased Performance and Cost Savings

Business Wire, Oct 5, 2005

LONDON -- Red Hat, Inc. (NASDAQ: RHAT), the world's leading provider of open source to the enterprise, today announced that University of Stirling in Scotland has migrated its SAP application servers, that manage the Human Resources and Payroll functions, to run on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The migration has resulted in a three fold improvement in performance and in lower project costs.

The SAP HR and Payroll environment which supports approximately 2000 staff members at Stirling University was showing worsening performance after application upgrades. Stirling turned to its preferred IT partner, Abtech Computer Services UK, who is a Red Hat Advanced Partner as well as an HP Linux Elite Partner, for services.

The University of Stirling decided to migrate to a two tier system running the SAP application tier on HP Proliant Servers (HP Proliant DL380) running Red Hat Enterprise Linux. "We went with Red Hat because it offers a high level of support and stability for critical applications such as SAP." said Martyn Peggie, HR Information System Manager at Stirling University.

The database tier was migrated to HP Integrity Servers (rx4640 and rx2600) based on Intel's 1.3GHz Itanium(R) 2 processors. "The Integity systems offered better price/performance than comparable RISC-based systems, with the added bonus that we will maintain flexibility in choosing any operating system in the future. We can choose HP-UX, Red Hat Enterprise Linux or Windows. This will allow us to adapt to changing requirements over the years to come," said Martyn Peggie, HR Information System Manager at Stirling University. " We believe with the current configuration of the IT systems, the servers will pay for themselves over the next three years just by savings in support costs."

After the migration the Payroll run time was reduced from 80 minutes to 12 minutes, with users still being able to work normally during the run. In addition, the use of commodity application servers means the project costs are much lower.

"We have seen a growing demand for enterprise-ready open source solutions especially within the Life Science, Oil & Gas, Healthcare and, of course, Education sectors, commented Werner Knoblich, VP EMEA. "We believe that the road to most of these markets in Europe is through our Advanced Partners, such as Abtech. They play a vital role in delivering enterprise class open source solutions and support to customers which accounts for 60% of our business. As a public sector customer, Stirling is a fine example of how Linux can be used in a strategic enterprise environment where easy management, increased performance and cost savings are very important. "

To learn more about Red Hat Partner Programmes please visit http://www.europe.redhat.com/partners/

For more information on Abtech Computer Services UK please visit http://www.abtech-uk.com/index.html.> For more information on Stirling University please visit http://www.external.stir.ac.uk/

About Red Hat, Inc.

Red Hat, the world's leading open source and Linux provider, is headquartered in Raleigh, NC with satellite offices spanning the globe. Red Hat is leading Linux and open source solutions into the mainstream by making high quality, low cost technology accessible. Red Hat provides operating system software along with middleware, applications, and management solutions. Red Hat also offers support, training and consulting services to its customers worldwide and through top-tier partnerships. Red Hat's Open Source strategy offers customers a long-term plan for building infrastructures that are based on and leverage open source technologies with focus on security and ease of management. Learn more: http://www.europe.redhat.com

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