Customer Solution Case Study
/ / Low-Fare Airline Switches from Linux to Windows, Reduces Recurring Costs 70 Percent
Overview
Country or Region: United States
Industry: Transportation
Customer Profile
Dulles, Virginia–based Independence Air is a new low-fare air carrier. The company has approximately 4,000 employees, operates 70 aircraft, and generates 80 percent of its revenues online.
Business Situation
Independence Air originally implemented its mission-critical e-commerce Web site onLinux, but found that the solution was significantly more expensive to build, morecostly to maintain, and less reliable than expected.
Solution
The airline redeveloped its e-commerce solution on the Microsoft® Windows® platform to decrease its cost of ownership and improve its business agility.
Benefits
n 50 percent lower implementation costs
n 70 percent lower recurring costs
n Easier maintenance and troubleshooting
n 50 percent greater developer productivity
n Strong security and reliability
n Reduced legal risk / “By switching from Linux to Windows, we reduced the cost of maintaining and supporting our e-commerce Web site by approximately $250,000, or more than 70 percent.”
Stephen Shaffer, Director of Software Systems, Independence Air
Four months after launching its e-commerce Web site on Linux and Apache, low-fare airline Independence Air determined that the solution could not deliver the required availability and was too expensive to maintain and enhance. By switching to the Microsoft® Windows® platform, the airline eliminated its reliance on costly consultants, improved reliability, and can now deliver the features required to compete with larger airlines at an accelerated pace. The move to a Windows-based solution, which cost about 50 percent of what it did to build the same system on Linux, reduced overall recurring costs by more than 70 percent. In addition, it is helping the airline get twice as much from its software development dollars and allowing the airline’s small application development group to focus on meeting new business needs instead of supporting a production solution.
Situation
Independence Air is a new low-fare air carrier, with service from Washington Dulles International Airport to more than 40 destinations across the United States. The company has approximately 4,000 employees, operates 12Airbus A319 and 58 CRJ aircraft, and generates 80 percent of its revenues online through its Web site, www.FLYi.com.
The airline is both a new company and a well-established one. It began flying in 1989, operating for years as a regional feeder for United Airlines under the name Atlantic Coast Airlines—known to customers as United Express. When United went into bankruptcy in December 2002, the regional airline decided to venture out on its own instead of accepting a renegotiated contract. Independence Air was born in November 2003 and began service in June 2004.
After deciding to part company with United, Independence Air had to develop a good deal of new business infrastructure—including several new IT systems. As a regional feeder for United, the airline’s focus had been on operations, relying on United to sell tickets and using its reservation system. To move forward, the company had to deploy its own reservation system and sell its own tickets.
Although the vast majority of its business systems were—and still are—based on the Microsoft® Windows® operating system, Independence Air chose to build its new ecommerce Web site on Linux and Apache. Among the reasons for that decision was a belief based on press coverage at that time that an open source solution would be more secure, reliable, and cost-effective.
Higher-Than-Expected Costs
Linux and Apache began to fall short of the airline’s initial expectations while the Web site was still in development, with the first setback being significant unexpected costs. In addition to the seven consultants who were working full-time for eight months at U.S.$115 to $130 per hour, the airline found that it had to acquire a costly BEA WebLogic application server to deliver even simple features other than the drop-in Navitaire reservation system, such as a database-driven flight status page.
“Even our Linux consultants told us that we would be foolish to use open source for functionality like database connectors instead of a real application server that’s supported by a real company,” says Stephen Shaffer, Director of Software Systems at Independence Air.
In May 2004, the airline’s new e-commerce site went live on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1, Apache 2.x, and WebLogic Server 8.1. Costs continued to climb when the airline found that its internal IT staff did not have the skills needed to perform even basic administrative tasks or make simple changes—and that it would need to retain four full-time consultants to maintain and enhance the Web site.
Poor Reliability
The solution also failed to deliver the requiredreliability. Configuration issues caused several incidents of unplanned downtime or limited Web site availability, resulting in 12 hours of time over the first six months during which the airline lost revenues. “On the first day that we sold tickets online, the site got clobbered and started refusing connections,” says Shaffer. “It took a month of trial and error to configure everything correctly. As Web site traffic and online sales grew, we had to go through that same exercise a second time.”
When reliability issues arose, developer-level skill was required to even begin diagnosing problems. The only people who could perform such troubleshooting were the consultants, which left the airline helpless outside standard office hours. “If something went wrong in the middle of the night, there was no way to gather enough information to even get a trouble ticket started,” says Shaffer.
Even with such highly paid talent, Shaffer paid to have the same problems fixed twice on more than one occasion. “We were told by one consultant that a memory leak was fixed, but had to pay for the same issue to be fixed again after that person left the team,” says Shaffer. “Linux consultants tend to solve problems on their own, which is something that we found out the hard way. And unlike with Windows, it’s not easy to find the correct software updates for Linux.”
Speed of development was another sore point. Even with four consultants, Shaffer’s team could not keep up with requests for new features from the airline’s marketing department. “After lost revenues and customer satisfaction, the biggest pain felt by marketing was that we couldn’t deliver as quickly as they needed,” says Shaffer. “We had to keep telling them ‘we can’t do that with what we have today.’”
Solution
In September 2004, just a few months after Independence Air went live on Linux and Apache, the airline made the decision to switch to the Microsoft Windows platform. “When I met with my peer in the marketing group, we both agreed that Linux wasn’t working for us and that we had to do something different,” says Shaffer. “We assembled a transition plan and presented it to executive management, and they approved the move to Windows in that same meeting.”
In justifying why Microsoft software was the right choice, Shaffer cited several big companies that were running mission-critical Web sites on Windows, including Dell, Intel, JetBlue, and Nasdaq. He also noted the security and reliability improvements provided by the Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003 operating system with Internet Information Services (IIS) version 6.0, pointing to the airline’s own experience in upgrading other systems to Windows Server 2003 over the past months. RDA—a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner with whom the airline already had a relationship—assisted with gathering that evidence and helped to build the new solution.
“We took a factual approach to supporting our recommendation to use Windows,” says Shaffer. “We already had upgraded our intranet and extranet Web sites to Windows Server 2003 with IIS 6.0, which was delivering great stability, performance, and security. Unlike with Linux, we knew that we could do it right the first time with Windows.”
Integrated Application Hosting Environment
Windows Server 2003, which is the foundation of Microsoft Windows Server System™ integrated server software, gives the airline an integrated application hosting environment that includes both a Web server and anapplication server. Technologies in Windows Server 2003 that provide those capabilities include:
n Internet Information Services 6.0. IIS 6.0, the Web server in Windows Server 2003, is based on a completely different design than IIS 5.0, its predecessor in Windows 2000 Server. It combines a cache-enabled, kernel-mode Web driver with a fault-tolerant process model to deliver significant improvements in security, manageability, scalability, and performance. In addition, IIS 6.0 is integrated with and optimized for Windows Server 2003, which helps alleviate the configuration and tuning issues that the airline faced with Linux and Apache. Furthermore, IIS 6.0 is locked down by default to help limit potential security risks.
n The Microsoft .NET Framework. The .NET Framework is an integral component of the Windows operating system that provides a programming model and runtime for Web services, Web applications, and smart client applications. It consists of two parts. The first is a common language runtime that handles issues such as security enforcement; exception handling; and memory, process, and thread management. The second is a unified set of class libraries for functionality such as input/output, string manipulation, networking, security management, thread management, and user interfaces. This extensive prebuilt “plumbing” reduces the amount of code that developers have to write so that they can more quickly meet new business needs.
“Windows Server 2003 includes a built-in Web server and application server, whicheliminates the need to buy those partsseparately and ensures that all components will work together ‘out of the box,’” says Shaffer.
Development Process and Architecture
The migration to Windows began at the end of December 2004, with the project team consisting of one RDA developer and one Independence Air developer. The company
completed the transition in mid-March 2005, on time and on budget, at which time it eliminated Linux and Apache from its IT infrastructure entirely. During the development of its Windows-based solution, the airline ceased all new development on Linux and Apache, reducing the number of full-time Linux consultants from four to two—as required to keep its Linux/Apache solution running until the new one based on Windows was ready.
The airline’s new e-commerce Web site was developed using the Microsoft Visual Studio® .NET 2003 development system and the Microsoft Visual Basic® .NET 2003 development system—an easy transition because Independence Air developers already were familiar with Microsoft Visual Basic version 6.0. There are 20 to 40 “coded” Web pages in addition to those with static content, with both types of pages running in the Microsoft ASP.NET environment—the technologies in the .NET Framework for the development of rich Web-based solutions. Developers made extensive use of ASP.NET user controls—reusable page components that can be manipulated using the drag-and-drop Web Forms Designer in Visual Studio .NET.
The Web tier of the airline’s new e-commerce solution resides on eight two-processor Dell server computers that run the Windows Server 2003 operating system. The database tier, which did not change, resides on a four-processor Dell server computer running Microsoft SQL Server™ 2000—also part ofWindows Server System—on Windows Server 2003.
Benefits
With its new Windows-based e-commerce solution, Independence Air is benefiting from reduced costs; greater developer productivity; and improved supportability, maintainability, and reliability. Taken together, those benefits are helping the company react to change and meet new business needs significantly faster and more cost-effectively than in the past—a critical success factor for a “new” airline that must compete with larger and more established players like Delta and American.
“We can maneuver faster in a Microsoft .NET world than in a Java Server Pages world,” says Shaffer. “With Linux and Java, it’s hard to even evaluate what’s possible. With Windows, we have not only the resources to execute, but also the experience and context to make better decisions. We’re now faster and more flexible in meeting the needs of our marketing group.”
Lower Implementation Costs
Independence Air learned through firsthand experience that, contrary to what it had been led to believe, solutions based on Linux are far from free. Reimplementing the solution onWindows cost about 50 percent of what the airline paid to deploy the Linux solution inthe first place. That cost is broken down asfollows:
n Licensing. Licensing costs for the Windows-based solution were less than $4,000—a small fraction of the $79,000 that the airline paid to acquire an application server for Linux and a corresponding support agreement. “The Linux kernel may be free,but we found out the hard way that complete solutions based on it rarely are free—especially at the application layer,” says Shaffer.
n Development. The effort to rebuild the solution on Windows was approximately 25 percent of what it took to build on Linux. With Microsoft software, development required two developers (one staff member and one consultant) for four months, at a total cost of $133,000. On Linux, building the same functionality required four developers for seven months (the other three consultants included two business analysts and a project manager), at a total cost of $624,000.
“Development costs for Windows were 75 percent less than what we paid to build the same thing on Linux,” says Shaffer. “The work took 1,400 developer-hours instead of the 4,800 it took with Linux, and we can supplement our internal development resources with outside expertise instead of having to rely on consultants entirely.”
Reduced Recurring Costs
Moving to Windows decreased the airline’s recurring costs by more than 70percent—from roughly $350,000 per year to about $100,000. Components of the costs include:
n Staffing. Shaffer calculates that, had Independence Air stayed with Linux, hewould have had to pay close to $300,000 in annual staffing costs: $194,000 in yearly consulting fees plus one full-time Linux resource at a cost of about $100,000. With Windows, the airline canget the same job done with one full-time resource.
n Software maintenance and support. Independence Air had to pay $999 per year for maintenance and support of Linux and $41,000 per year for the WebLogic application server. In contrast, software updates for Windows are available at no charge, and the airline can purchase support for Windows on a per-incident basis at a few hundred dollars per call.