Kenwood Likes The Sound Of Linux

Welcome Guest. | Log In| Register | Membership Benefits

November 19, 1999 (2:47 PM EST)

Kenwood makes state of the art home and car audio systems, but its back-office computing system was as obsolete as eight-track tapes.

Until recently, Kenwood Americas, the U.S. subsidiary of Japan's Kenwood, used an ancient McDonnell Douglas mini-computer running the Pick operating system for its order-entry, inventory and control, and general ledger systems. When the dust began getting too thick on that system, the company turned for an alternative to Linux running on a Dell PowerEdge server -- the first of a two-stage migration that will eventually find the company running on a modern ERP system.

"We're not on Linux because we're gung ho for it or because we're revolutionaries," said Gary Calvin, systems integration specialist at Kenwood. "We chose it because it suits our business."

The application, running on Kenwood's Red Hat Linux implementation, is jBASE from jBASE Software, a version of the Pick operating system that runs on top of Unix and Windows NT, designed to help users migrate from Pick.

Kenwood also installed Linux servers at five outlet stores throughout the country, connecting to PC clients by running point-of-sale software from Vigilant. Kenwood chose Linux in those stores because of its manageability: IT managers can connect to the servers over dial-up connections or DSL lines and manage the systems remotely.

Kenwood plans its ERP migration sometime in the next few months and has just begun evaluating the various systems.

"The application software is showing its age," Calvin said. "The core of it was written in the 80s."

Another reason for picking Linux over traditional Unix was because the company was already familiar with Linux, having used it for four years for its DNS and some e-mail. Kenwood was satisfied with Linux and did not wish to take the time to get up to speed on a Unix implementation, according to Calvin.

Linux also was a better choice over Windows NT because Linux requires less-powerful hardware than Windows NT to do the same job, Calvin said.

Kenwood runs its operation on a single-processor Dell PowerEdge Pentium server with 256-Mbyte of memory and a RAID array of disks with about 45 gigabytes of usable storage. The company is now upgrading to a dual-processor Pentium II running at 500 MHz. A Windows machine with similar functionality would probably need to be at least a four-processor system, Calvin said.

Although the McDonnell Douglas-developed Pick server did well for Kenwood Americas for many years, the company finally felt the need to move off it because of its lack of connectivity. The box's only link to the outside world was RS232 ports, which connected to either dumb terminals or hard-wired modems. Moreover, the Pick operating system required eight to 10 hours to migrate data to Windows machines for database integration, or even to simply import the data into a spreadsheet -- operations that are nearly instantaneous running Linux.