Linux a BIG hit in India

Posted by salparadise on Apr 8, 2006 5:42 AM EDT
Rediff; By Leslie D'Monte
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It has been over a year since UTI Bank set up its call center that handles over 7,000 calls per day. The bank was looking for a robust platform that could guarantee it "high availability of services and uninterrupted call traffic". It had options but finally decided on Linux for its core business applications. "Today, we are really happy with Linux that has delivered 99.99 per cent uptime so far," says Pritesh Thaker, AVP, IT, UTI Bank. The bank, in fact, is now planning to base its credit card-based system on Linux too.

UTI is not the lone player to swear by Linux. Eveready, a leading manufacturer of dry cell batteries and flashlights in India, has built a mission-critical resource system to automate all functionalities of its daily business using the Oracle e-business suite running on a Linux platform. Central Bank of India has implemented Linux in nearly 3000 branches.


The Penguin (official mascot of Linux), it appears, has finally marched into enterprises like IDBI Bank, Canara Bank, New India Assurance, LIC, BSNL, IRCTC, ABN Amro, Airtel and even the governments of Maharashtra and West Bengal. The list, of course, is not exhaustive.
In most cases, though, the implementation of Linux in Indian enterprises is by Red Hat (primarily since Red Hat Linux has been popularised by the media and offers support for Linux which, being open source, can be downloaded for free and has no upfront licensing fee).
Otherwise, one can choose from the hundreds of other Linux distributions - Mandriva, Debian, Suse, PCLinuxOS, Knoppix and Ubuntu to name a few - for desktops and enterprises.
"All verticals are ready for Linux adoption today. However the banking, financial and insurance services (BFSI) and government markets have been pioneers of sorts in adopting Linux. The retail segment is also gaining ground quickly, along with verticals ranging from telecommunications to media and entertainment.

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