The first time he went with Linux, it was because his hotel management system vendor didn't offer the software on any other system. This time, the vendor offers other operating systems, but Chugg is sticking with his original Linux system from UnitedLinux vendor The SCO Group - by choice.

Get Leverage! Kill Off Your Expensive (Proprietary) Hardware

For years, Josh Levine had to settle for boring meetings with his Unix vendor, Sun Microsystems. Sure, there were some exciting times there at the beginning - back in 1998, when E-Trade was first shopping for Unix computers to run its custom online trading system. Levine could pit Sun against the other Unix vendors like IBM and HP. But once E-Trade decided to go with 60 Sun boxes at $240,000 a pop and a $25,000 yearly maintenance fee on each, the fun - and Levine's leverage - was gone. All Unix vendors have their own versions of Unix designed to run solely on their hardware. "All their strategies are based on proprietary operating systems. Once you buy the hardware, you can't move," Levine says.

Now, when Levine wants to buy some new hardware, he can have a party and invite everybody. That's because he replaced those 60 Sun boxes with 80 $4,000 Intel servers (which became commodities long ago; they're virtually identical no matter who you buy them from) and a commodity operating system, Linux, which is supported by all the major Intel hardware vendors. The Intel boxes are less powerful than their Unix counterparts, so Levine just bought more of them. And since Linux is based on Unix, his support people easily made the transition.

The fun is back in Levine's procurement life.

"We get to manage the vendor as opposed to the vendor managing us," he says. "Now they compete on performance and price; they can't hide behind an operating system. And we've cut out the maintenance fees we had to pay on the Unix machines. That's huge . That's a sea change. "Linux is about leveling the playing field across all the hardware vendors," he says.