TurboLinux Announces World's Largest Commercial Linux Deal; Sanyo Electric Co. to Deploy 20,000 TurboLinux Workstation Packages in Japan - Company Business and Marketing

Edge: Work-Group Computing Report, Oct 18, 1999

TurboLinux, the leader in high-performance Linux, announced Tuesday the world's largest ever commercial Linux deployment with Sanyo Electric Co. in Japan. Sanyo, a $17 billion consumer electronics manufacturer, will be using TurboLinux as the base operating system in 20,000 Newve medical workstation products it expects to ship over the next four years.

"Sanyo Electronics chose TurboLinux because of its strong Linux development team in Japan," said Hideo Hayashi, director of the Medicom Business Department. "And TurboLinux has the expertise to provide us the solid support that we require."

The Sanyo medical workstations, called Newve, are priced at around $20,000 each and comprised of an Intel architecture computer based on the 433 MHz Celeron processor plus a monitor, printer and a specialized medical software application. Hospitals and medical clinics use the workstations and software to keep track of patient medical records.

"TurboLinux is dedicated to delivering robust, enterprise solutions on Linux for major corporations," said Cliff Miller, CEO of TurboLinux. "Sanyo is joining many other Global 1000 companies in recognizing that Linux is ready for prime time in mission critical enterprise applications."

Under the terms of the deal, TurboLinux will provide ongoing technical services and support for Sanyo. TurboLinux engineers worked with Sanyo for almost a year in porting and testing the medical software application to optimize its performance on Linux. The workstations replace PA-RISC Hewlett-Packard workstations running HP (UX).

Analysts believe the Sanyo deal is the largest Linux enterprise sale ever. "This announcement is proof that Linux is beginning to replace other operating environments within the enterprise. While IDC's demand-side research shows that organizations are planning to implement Linux, no organization has committed to this level of new Linux installs," said Bill Peterson, Research Manager at International Data Corporation (IDC). "IDC believes that this TurboLinux sale is the largest of its kind in the world. IDC fully expects to see more examples of this level of Linux installations over the course of the next few years."

TurboLinux, formerly Pacific HiTech, was founded in 1992 and has emerged as the world's fastest growing Linux company. Since 1998, TurboLinux has shipped more than three million units of Linux globally and is the Pacific Rim's dominant supplier with a market share of more than 50 percent, according to Business Computer News, a Japan-based market research company. TurboLinux offers the only version of Linux designed for the "double byte" character sets of the Japanese and Chinese alphabets as well as European languages. The company's high-performance consumer and business Linux products are designed for Intel workstation and server platforms and supported globally by IBM and Hewlett-Packard. Headquartered in San Francisco, TurboLinux has offices in Tokyo, Beijing and Sydney. The company's home page is located on the Internet at www.turbolinux.com or, in Japanese, at www.turbolinux.com.