When we started ZOOM back in 1999, Linux as the Operating System was for us a clear choice. We were all excited about this OS and all other Free Software that came with it because we were able to build our applications on top right away without paying any 3rd party fees when delivering the whole solution to customers. As a start-up with a few people, we were originally targeting smaller customers and if we would have to charge for OS and database our profit wouldn’t cover the costs.
As a startup working with Linux, we were logically attracting other Linux people (both developers and admins) so our competency in that field kept growing and even if customers asked about it every now and on, we couldn’t deliver anything on Windows. We didn’t have Windows knowledge and we didn’t know how to support it (you can do a lot of things by clicking, right, but we didn’t have any idea what to do when the server is overloaded, crashing or throwing unknown errors).
Cisco UC Manager (previously Call Manager) was always a Windows application. It was back in 2002 and when we heard about that for the first time, we were really laughing to the idea of building a PBX (that is supposed to run no matter what) on top of Windows. It proved to work over time, also because practically any installation was sold as a cluster of minimum 2 servers and redundancy worked really well. One of the Cisco’s arguments at that time was that PBX now becomes part of your IT. It will not be anymore this black box that only few people understand. All you will need is a web browser and that is how you configure even the most complex settings. Sounds pretty compelling, right?
Our customer #3 was Czech Insurance (Česká Pojišťovna), local market leader in insurance business. They had some kind of policy that every Windows server needed to be connected to a monitoring platform a special client for that purpose had to be installed on the server. And here came also the first bigger problem. UC Manager did run on Windows 2000 Server but you were not really allowed to install there any other SW otherwise the installation would not be supported by Cisco.
So here is a story, how your PBX runs on standard Windows Server but you cannot really install and configure there what you want, only what the vendor allows (which is nothing). And it is fully understandable. If you would install there some application that would reduce the performance, negatively influence some installed libraries, maybe require other Java version runtime it would be real hell for Cisco to support it.
Our approach was a bit different. We were supporting CallREC on one Linux distribution – CentOS. What really helps is that CentOS comes out of RedHat, only there is no official support from the vendor. And RedHat is a know name. We always had the installation of the OS and CallREC together and you didn’t have to make any choices about which OS packages to install and which services to enable. It was our problem, to make sure that just enough is running to make sure CallREC works.
Then Cisco released their UC Manager version 5 on Linux. It was an appliance approach since the installation of UC Manager and the OS was one and the same thing, you couldn’t separate it. And the OS is CentOS as well (I believe they call it Cisco Unified Communications Operating System). The story was at that time that now there is only Linux version and in the future there will available both – Windows and Linux. Then came version 6, Linux only again and when version 7 came out last year it was clear there will be no more Windows version.
And it was a good decision from Cisco. If you have an application that you can fully manage from web-based GUI including all the system parameters, why do you care what what OS it runs on? You are not allowed to install to the same HW other applications anyway and your admin can find another hobby then “tune the OS”.
I read a very interesting blog post, which is dated back to summer 2007 from Srinivas Krishnamurti, Director of Product Management and Market Development at VMware called Get Juiced! Srinivas is describing the concept of JeOS (Just Enough OS) where the operating system is super tailored to the application. So instead of multipurpose, large and open OS the vendor “packages” the OS together with the application tuned up for maximum performance and security.
Cisco helped us in a great way. ZOOM always had some challenges explaining its customers why our call recording runs on Linux only. It was for them a black box, they didn’t have Linux admins and sometimes were saying “we are a pure MS shop”. Then Cisco came with CUCM 5 and we could say “CallREC is running the same OS as Cisco UC Manager, they actually chose the same distribution!” Suddenly, customers were OK with Linux and since about 2 years ago it is never a topic.
And it has benefit for everybody. We do not spend redundant time on testing our product on 2 very different platforms and can invest the manpower into new features, easier administration and implementing some OS specific enhancements that make our application on “our” operating system super fast. And now we have CallREC as a VMware Virtual Appliance too so it’s really easy to download it and give it a test ride.
