grack.com

Since Scoble has been pushing Morton Thiokol stories over the last few days, I thought I would counter with a Linux success story from this article (first page here). 

“Sabre Holdings Corp., based in Southlake, Texas, is a $2.1 billion holding company with four technology-based travel business units: the Travelocity online travel site; the Sabre Travel Network, which operates the Sabre reservations system for travel agents, suppliers and travelers; GetThere, a Web-based corporate travel service; and Sabre Airline Solutions, which provides software and consulting services to airlines.”

Here’s the great quote: “We’ve got to get faster, better, cheaper solutions into our infrastructure, and Linux lets us get there”. 

Sabre Holdings Corp. isn’t designing the space shuttle engines, sure, but the next time you book your Travelocity holiday online, picture all of that open-source, finely-tuned machinery ticking away in the background.  And they can scale up any part of their system for the cost of the new hardware.  No Microsoft Licensing 6.0 yearly payments and no random license audits from the BSA.  Just re-image the new machine and add it to the cluster!  Like the Murphy, the CTO, says:

“Your cost at the scaling point, after the initial implementation, is essentially zero, and you’re getting a robust environment that delivers the intangible benefit that your technicians love to work on Linux.”

I imagine that seeing all of these Linux stories in the trade press is making Microsoft’s star evangelist a little jealous.  I’m happy to see all of the attention that open-source products have been getting lately.