Italian Food Distributor Cuts Costs with IBM

IBM is helping Gruppo Amadori, an Italian wholesale distributor of quality food products to sustain in the current economic downturn. The distributor is rolling out Linux-based desktops running IBM (News - Alert) email, word processing, spreadsheet and presentation software to select employees. The migration will translate into benefits like lower acquisition and operational costs for Gruppo Amadori.

 

Currently about 1,000 of Gruppo Amadori’s 6,000 employees use PCs for various tasks such as managing the production, processing, and delivery logistics of its poultry products for customers.

 

The company is now migrating some of these employees to a Red Hat (News - Alert) Enterprise Linux Desktop client operating system and IBM Lotus Symphony, open standards-based word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations.

 

Gruppo Amadori will also move from Microsoft (News - Alert) Exchange to an IBM Lotus Notes and Domino environment hosted on Red Hat Enterprise Linux for its collaboration services. The change has already begun and the first users have moved to Lotus Domino. The solution will be gradually rolled out to the entire company throughout the year.

 

Commenting on the announcement, Gianluca Giovannetti, CIO and director of Organization, Gruppo Amadori, said that they aim to focus on Linux because for them, the Linux environment is the right choice for very focused applications and is more cost effective than Microsoft.

 

“Linux on the Desktop is providing great value and cost reductions to companies at a time when they need it the most,” said Bob Sutor, VP of Linux and open source, IBM Software Group.

 

IBM Lotus Symphony software is designed to handle the majority of office productivity tasks that workers typically perform. The solution supports Linux, Macintosh and Windows desktops and multiple file formats, including Open Document Format (ODF) and Microsoft Office. Moreover, it can also output content in PDF format.

 

IBM has also announced partnership with finance management software vendor Intuit (News - Alert) to launch a new appliance in the United States. The new device has been designed to ease the business operation of small and medium-sized enterprises.