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Company Profile
Busy, internationally recognized airport servicing 80,000 to 100,000 passengers per day, and experiencing passenger growth of 15.4 percent over the past two years.

Business Situation
As one of the busiest airports in the U.S., our client is unique in that they own all of the gates in the airport, which are typically owned and operated by the individual airlines. This situation allows for greater flexibility and efficiency in meeting business demands, but also means that our client is responsible for maintaining the IT infrastructure and data management system used by each individual airline. Since the airport isn't able to expand its footprint, the only way for the airport to grow and handle increased business is to enhance efficiency.

Our client was running several mission-critical applications using an Oracle database running on a variety of platforms and servers, including UNIX, Windows clusters and Windows servers. Due to the diversity of systems, their maintenance costs were very high. Migrating to Linux would allow them to use off-the-shelf hardware and reduce their overall support costs - while offering them the same security and performance advantages. The client initially considered tackling the project in-house. However, because of their small staff and the scope of the project, the airport required extra manpower to maintain the day-to-day business activities, while ensuring maximum uptime.

Project Scope
A Robert Half Technology consultant with strong knowledge of Oracle applications, transaction processing and databases was called in to conduct an initial assessment of the company's systems. Once the assessment was completed and it was determined that a migration to Linux would greatly improve system efficiency, Robert Half Technology was asked to undertake the project. The client was running several real-time, missioncritical applications for gate and flight status, call logging, parking ramp metering, GIS (Geographical Information System) and emergency call logs. The Robert Half Technology consultant began with performance tuning (an area where the client lacked expertise) and then migrated and consolidated all of the applications onto one platform, while adding disaster recovery and continuous backup features.

In order to ensure zero disruptions to the airport's business schedule, the system could only be down for two hours at a time. The project was broken into three main phases of Linux migrations, with the Robert Half Technology consultant working within our client's schedule - migrating approximately 12 applications at different two-hour phases. The consultant would come in to complete a phase of the project, then leave our client to their day-to-day operations without operational impact. The process was repeated for each phase until the project was completed and all applications were successfully running on one Linux platform.

Client's Return on Investment
Robert Half Technology helped our client build an efficient and cost-effective Linux platform that enabled them to significantly reduce maintenance costs, diminish licensing fees, decrease the number of technical problems and gain a disaster recovery system. Specifically, the work completed by Robert Half Technology reduced four server instances to one, decreasing costs so much that our client was able to purchase a Dell Server to run the new system. Additionally, the new system is now only using 15% of capacity, giving the client room to grow their business.

By engaging the Robert Half Technology consultant, our client was able to free their staff to focus on their daily responsibilities. The Robert Half Technology consultant worked with the client to ensure the staff understood the project every step of the way and left them with custom tuning reports and scripts for the ongoing maintenance of the system. Because the Robert Half Technology consultant worked faster than anticipated, the project was completed ahead of schedule and under budget. This allowed our client to keep the consultant on to complete additional projects, including installing an Oracle 10G Application Server.