From: Pawel Moszumanski <Pawel.Moszumanski@sobieski.com.pl>
To: editor@lwn.net
Subject: Something interesting from Poland.
Date: Fri, 30 Apr 1999 11:07:38 +0200

>From Polish eddition of Computerworld from 24.04.1999

Linux at Sobieski Hotel

The Red Hat Linux operating system and the StarOffice office suite make
up the backbone of the Jan III Sobieski Hotel computer system.
By Michał Pik

Polish edition of COMPUTERWORLD 25.04.99

Jan III Sobieski Hotel in Warsaw is one of the few Polish companies
that have decided to base their computer systems on the free Linux
platform. Servers and workstations alike run on Red Hat Linux. They
have replaced HP-UX (on the server) and Novell with Windows 3.1 (on
workstations).

“The first Linux was set up in the hotel about 18 months ago. It is
still handling the e-mail router and server. Recently we decided to
move our hotel and restaurant application over to the system as well,”
said PaweB MoszumaDski, Senior Computer System Specialist at Jan III
Sobieski


First Came Linux

>From day one all of the hotels critical applications ran under HP-UX on
a HP F/20 series 800 server. Until recently the old applications 
Hogatex for hotel management and Micros 4700 for restaurant management 
worked without a hitch. It turned out that the hotel application would
not stand up to Y2K, while Micros 4700 stopped meeting our needs, said
Moszumański.


As a result, the hotel decided to replace the applications. It began by
considering whether or not to replace them with new versions of the
same software. However it turned out that the new version of the hotel
application, supplied by a German vendor, would not work on the Polish
market. The new restaurant application with customer service components
was also not all that interesting. The hotel was also looking for a
less expensive alternative to the HP-UX system. That is when Sobieski
began to consider running the new applications under Windows NT,
NetWare, or Linux.

“We did not want to install any Windows NT applications because of the
costs associated with purchasing and administering them. On the other
hand we would have to spend too much on workstation if we went with
NetWare in order to provide access to hotel applications on servers,
said MoszumaDski.


In the end Linux was chosen, as it was the least expensive of the three
options. Another reason for choosing the system was the fact that HS
Partner, a company that maintained earlier version of the restaurant
application at the hotel and maintained a similar hotel application in
similar companies promised to develop a parallel system for Linux.


Linux in a Restaurant


The system was installed on a dual processor server equipped with 2
Pentium II 350 MHz processors (the server will run both critical
applications – hotel and restaurant). One hundred workstations will be
connected to it. Most of them (POS) are terminals without a hard disk.
They have a touch screen, a Pentium 233 MMX processor and 32M RAM (the
manufacturer only supplies POS with Intel processors). The system boots
the operating system straight of the server (bootp, nfsroot). All of
the new stations are made up of AMD K6-2 computers that run very well
under Linux. System users can access the restaurant and hotel
applications in order to manage all customer-service activities,
organize banquets, print orders, print bills, etc. The applications
service 410 guestrooms, the hotel staff, three restaurants, two bars, a
guarage, a business center, and banquet rooms.

“We took a risk and made Linux our main platform. If something goes
awry HS Partners software can be quickly recompiled for the HP-UX
platform and installed on the old HP server, which now runs our
bookkeeping software  making the stations just Linux terminals said
Moszumański.

The system administrator can control applications running on the server
and workstations from any location without the use of any specialized
administrative tools. We really dont have to come to work because we
can remotely administer the whole system says MoszumaDski with pride.
He adds: A similar Windows NT application would cost a lot and would
give us less flexibility.

Whats Next?

The hotel wants to install its hotel application. We did not want to
start by installing the two most critical applications at once. If
there were any problems we would not be able to service our guests
properly and we simply cant have that, says Moszumański

Because Sobieski converted to Linux it is not running Microsoft Office
as its main office suite any more. The hotel now uses a much less
expensive package – StarOffice – offered by German Star Division. “We
paid around 14,000 USD for a 75-user license, implementation, and
employee training. We would have had to pay around 6 times that for
Microsoft. Its only drawback is that it boots up too slowly, which is
quite nerve racking when working over an nfs but is acceptable when
working off a local hard drive. There is still no Polish-language
version but our employees do not have a problem with that. We also
wanted everything to run on one platform, says PaweB Moszumański.

On the other hand StarOffice has its advantages, like the fact that it
runs in a more integrated environment than Microsoft Office does. The
individual user version is also free-of-charge. Therefore every
employee can install it at home without breaking the law.

“As of May all key hotel applications will run on Linux. We’ll only
leave Windows NT in the electronic services center for our clients, but
we also intend to install Linux machines running StarOffice there as
well” says Moszumański

The Project:

Implementation: Installing Linux as the main system platform at the Jan
III Sobieski Hotel in Warsaw
Goal: Transfer the hotel and restaurant applications over to Linux and
install an inexpensive office suite on workstations
Technology: Hotel and restaurant applications by HS partner ;
StarOffice by Star Division; Linux Red Hat 5.2
Labor: HS Partner, PBiWH Next  , and Polskie Konsorcjum Firm
Linuxowych.
Timeframe: 6 months Supervisor: Paweł Moszumański, Senior
Computer System Specialist at Jan III Sobieski

--
Pawel Moszumanski
Pawel.Moszumanski@sobieski.com.pl

http://www.sobieski.com.pl

Hotel Jan III Sobieski
Pl. Artura Zawiszy 1
02-025 W-wa
tel. +48 22 6584444 ext 2301