Applied industrial technologies inc.. A distributor of fluid-power and engineered products, runs most of its infrastructure on Microsoft windows. But two years ago Applied Industrial began running some Web, file, application, and directory servers on the open-source operating system Red Hat Linux. "Our technicians [were] saying, 'we need to have Linux servers in place—we could pull down costs,'" says IT director Bob Falkowski. "We changed out hardware, introduced new software components. But what we failed to realize is, when you do this type of process there's some added burden. YOU have to fall back on yourself as being the ultimate solution provider when things don't work." Applied Industrial Technologies isn't the only company to be caught short by the effort and expertise required to support an increasing number of open-source projects. Companies often look at the bright side of deploying Linux and other open-source systems—the cost savings, the standardization, the freedom from vendor lock-in—but aren't well- enough prepared for the challenges that come with implementing or expanding the use of technology that's still in the early stages of development.
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