Red Hat's Enterprise Linux Solution Provides Cost Savings for Santos

Red Hat (News - Alert), Inc., a provider of open source solutions, announced that Santos, a supplier of oil and gas for Australia and Asia, has reported cost savings of $2.5 million after adopting its Enterprise Linux solution. Santos has also achieved greater stability and faster performance, which has further helped in reducing its global carbon footprint.

Santos, currently employing a 5,000-strong staff, delivers a high-performing business which is supported by strong oil and gas production in the Asia-Pacific region. In 2009, the company was given the task of finding a new application delivery system capable of improving performance and bringing down costs. Functioning in a complex business environment, Santos had to manage an increase in data, take care of mounting licensing costs and address a growing deficiency in support. To help it perform in such a scenario, the company started looking out for a direct replacement for its main proprietary thin client system to help it avoid the license outlay and the cost of replacing its workstations. After careful evaluation, Santos migrated to Red Hat Enterprise Linux and an open source thin client solution.

In a release, Andy Moore, IS Manager of Santos, said that “For what we need, Red Hat Enterprise Linux was always going to be the underlying system for us, both from a development and production environment perspective. Red Hat has been a platform of choice for the oil and gas industry for some time because it’s a preferred development platform for the major geoscience software vendors.”

The utilization of Red Hat technology has enabled Santos’ geoscientists to perform at their jobs more efficiently and be productive as the company works towards expanding its oil and gas reserves. Furthermore, Red Hat Linux has helped the company bring down its power consumption by 300,000 KWh per year. The result has been a reduction in office cooling requirements and a reduced carbon footprint brought about by workstation removal.

Andy Moore further added that “Red Hat has been a refreshing change for Santos because it immediately delivered a faster, cheaper, and more stable platform, but it also offered many other operational benefits that quickly became apparent. Necessity is the mother of invention and we managed to come up with the solution that would simplify administration, boost performance, lower costs, add functionality, improve security, and even save power, all in one open source step — a huge success all around. Introducing Red Hat has really provided us with a win-win situation.”