At Orbitz, Linux Delivers Double the Performance At One-Tenth the Cost

While controversy surrounding Linux has left some companies skittish, online travel agency Orbitz Inc. is more committed than ever to the open-source operating system that powers the company's search engine for low-priced airline tickets.

Privately held Chicago-based Orbitz uses more than 750 Linux-on-Intel Compaq computers in its data center to download fares, service search requests and run the company's booking engine. In the fall, Orbitz migrated its web applications running on Sun Microsystems' Enterprise 4500 servers to Compaq machines. The migration meant moving the software from Solaris running on 168 Sparc processors to Linux running on 100 Intel chips.

Dumping the leased Sun machines brought double the performance at a tenth of the cost, said Leon Chism, chief Internet architect for Orbitz.

"Our leases were coming up for the E4500s and we were looking at an ungodly amount of money to renew those leases," Chism said. "You have to look for every opportunity you can find to squeeze out inefficiencies and reduce your costs."

Indeed, Orbitz, Expedia Inc., Travelocity and others are competing in an industry where price is everything. Consumers look for the lowest cost for airline tickets -- period. There's little, if any, brand loyalty, analysts say.Also, in financial documents filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission last year to go public, Orbitz revealed its contracts with the company's five founding airlines call for per-ticket commission rates the airlines pay Orbitz to fall 15 percent to 30 percent annually through 2007. Orbitz has yet to launch its initial public offering.

Bill Moffitt, Solaris group marketing manager for Sun, said he's not surprised the E4500 servers were more than Orbitz wanted to pay. He said the systems probably delivered more horsepower than the travel agency needed. While unavailable last fall, Sun now sells the Sun Fire V60 and V65 servers that can run either Solaris- or Linux-on-Intel.

"They're going to do fine (with Linux) and they're going to get low cost. But Solaris would have delivered better total cost of ownership through the life of the machine," he asserted. Orbitz had no TCO numbers for Linux vs. Solaris.

The biggest controversy surrounding Linux today involves licensing. Unix seller The SCO Group claims Linux contains source code it owns, and therefore violates its intellectual property rights. Earlier this year, SCO issued a letter to 1,500 of the world's largest corporations, warning that they may be liable for IP violations in Linux. SCO has also filed a $1 billion lawsuit against IBM for its use of Linux.

"As a company that either has been or potentially threatened by SCO, I don't think it would be wise for me to comment on the case," Chism said.Orbitz has no maintenance or service contracts with any companies for Linux, preferring instead to handle everything in-house. Orbitz's IT organization is in constant contact with the open source community for Linux patches and upgrades, and for application development tools.