Novell announced that Western & Southern Life has implemented SUSE Linux Enterprise Server from Novell in each of its branch offices for 25 percent of the cost of an equivalent proprietary solution. With a flexible platform, the company can take advantage of open source applications to reduce software costs, such as proxy software which has increased caching speed by 50 percent. The company is also using Xen virtualization in SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and plans to migrate many of its Sun Solaris applications to Linux.

"SUSE Linux Enterprise Server comes with a lot of tools out of the box and gives us a platform to try out new open source applications without requiring a huge financial investment," said Sean Keplinger, technical analyst at Western & Southern Financial Group. "Xen virtualization is helping us dramatically consolidate servers. For instance, our annuity system will now require one server instead of five. Virtualization also makes it easier to provision new applications for our users, without the prohibitive costs of new hardware."

With Novell ZENworks Linux Management, Western & Southern Life administers more than 180 branch servers running SUSE Linux Enterprise Server from a central location, in addition to the 40 servers with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server in its corporate offices running a variety of mission-critical applications. Western & Southern provides life insurance, annuities, mutual funds and investment management through one or more of its member companies. The company is one of the 10 highest-rated life insurance groups in the world according to Standard & Poor's, and it has assets owned, managed and under care in excess of $48 billion.

Roger Levy, Novell senior vice president and general manager of Open Platform Solutions, said, "The demands placed on technology in the financial services industry are extremely high. The reliability and flexibility of SUSE Linux Enterprise and open source software let Western & Southern and other customers do more for their users with fewer resources and less cost, while serving their own customers more efficiently."