La Curacao is a Los Angeles-based chain of Hispanic-focused electronics stores. Its locations are decorated with symbols of ancient Mayan and Aztec civilizations: the chain's motto, "Un Poco De Su Pais," translates to "a little bit of your country."

While La Curacao enjoys strong levels of customer loyalty, its previous operating system sometimes left both customers and sales associates frustrated. Transactions could take a long time to complete, which prompted some sales associates to abort the process and start over.

The problems became more acute during the holidays or other busy periods, when sales volume could jump by several hundred percent. In addition, the system would occasionally crash and remain down for 15 or 20 minutes — usually during the company's busiest sales periods.

To alleviate these problems and better position the firm for growth, software development manager Eryk Szachniewicz worked with Novacoast, an IT professional services firm headquartered in Santa Barbara, Calif. Together, they transitioned La Curacao to a Linux-based operating system in late 2007.

Now, Szachniewicz says, "95 percent of our business runs in this environment," including POS, accounting, inventory and price checking, and the performance and speed of these applications have improved dramatically. In fact, the retailer hasn't experienced any downtime since the Linux operating system has been implemented. "All the day-to-day transactions go smoothly," he says.

La Curacao's previous operating system, Novell Netware, presented several challenges. For starters, Novell had dropped its support for the version of Netware that La Curacao was using. In addition, the architecture wasn't scalable, making it difficult to ensure the system's reliability as La Curacao added stores.

At the same time, La Curacao wanted a more robust platform, as well as a failover solution if a server went down (at the time, all applications were supported by a single server).

Szachniewicz admits to a bit of initial skepticism about the Linux platform, given that it's developed through an open-source process. He wondered how well it would work and hold up, given that no single company stands behind it.

But open-source software actually can outperform software that's developed in a proprietary manner, even though that may sound counter-intuitive at first, says Dan Elder, Linux services manager at Novacoast. For starters, the software is "incredibly reliable," he says. With so many developers working on and scrutinizing the code, any shortcomings or flaws are quickly identified and corrected.

What's more, a growing number of enterprise IT providers like Novell, HP and IBM are investing significant capital to support and leverage Linux software. "Today, it's very much a proven, established platform in data centers and the store environment," says Michael Applebaum, Novell's senior product marketing manager for SUSE Linux Enterprise. A number of large retailers, including those with international and online operations, have implemented Linux, he says.

Side-by-side comparison
To begin the shift within La Curacao, Novacoast tested the retailer's applications using SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, a Linux operating system designed for server use. The test period lasted several months, during which time La Curacao also ran its existing operating system so as to be able to compare performance.

The implementation was made easier by the fact that La Curacao didn't need to rewrite its POS and other applications to become compatible with the Linux software. Instead, it could just point these applications to the Linux operating system, rather than to Netware. "When we tested, we just disconnected the cable, and the whole thing worked," Szachniewicz says. As a result, the sales associates in the stores didn't need to learn any new software applications.

The Linux system runs on a half-dozen HP Proliant servers in an "active/passive" configuration, which helps reduce performance and memory issues: If a problem develops with one server, the applications can move to another.

And the servers are scalable: As La Curacao adds stores and grows its online presence, it can beef up existing servers by adding more processing power and memory or simply add more servers.

As La Curacao began working with SUSE Linux, Szachniewicz found its performance "pretty amazing." For starters, it was stable and processed transactions quickly enough that users no longer were tempted to stop and re-start transactions. And downtime essentially disappeared. "We started the servers and haven't stopped them since," he says.

La Curacao installed a storage-attached network (SAN) from EMC as part of the implementation. The SAN provides rapid retrieval of stored information, and makes that data available to multiple systems at the same time. If an application on one server is running slowly because of a bottleneck, the SAN can distribute it among other servers and boost its speed.

Regular data snapshots
La Curacao's system includes other open-source components, as well, including a logical volume manager, which aids the system administrator as he allocates storage resources to different applications and users. The company also is using Heartbeat software, which provides communication between different applications to help ensure that system resources are used most efficiently. Finally, La Curacao is using Linux tools to take snapshots of its data on a regular basis for back-up purposes.

With implementation fees and moderately priced server hardware, the cost of La Curacao's new operating system came to less than $100,000, Szachniewicz says. While that's a significant investment, it's far less than some other solutions would have cost, he says (users do pay for ongoing support of the Linux operating system).

In addition to being affordable, La Curacao now has an IT environment that is largely hands-off and maintenance-free. "It all works the way it's supposed to," Elder says. As a result, the time spent administering the system has dropped by about 50 percent, leaving IT employees more time to focus on other projects.