Deutsche Bahn dumps Intel, pumps SUSE onto IBM mainframe

Consolidated statement

By Drew Cullen • Get more from this author

Posted in Operating Systems, 31st March 2005 10:22 GMT

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Deutsche Bahn, Europe's biggest railway, is junking 300 Intel servers in favour of an IBM mainframe. But its OS of choice, SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server, has profited from the cull and will run business-critical apps such as Lotus Notes on the new IBM eServer zSeries 990 mainframe.

DB Systems, the captive IT service arm of Deutsche Bahn, anticipates "significant cost savings, more vendor independence and integration advantages throughout the roll-out period and beyond".

The migration has three phases: phase one sees 55,000 Lotus Notes moved over to the mainframe, and a train timetabling system ported from Unix to SUSE Linux. Around half of the servers have been migrated already, Novell says.

Phase two, running now, includes the migration of SAP services to SUSE. Phase three, due for completion by the end of the year, sees the migration of DB Systems Web servers and remaining network infrastructure servers, including database and application servers.

As well as technical considerations, easy access to German-speaking Novell staff - SUSE was founded in Germany, after all - played a key part in DB Systems' selection, Novell says. ®