Success Story
Enterprise Linux Servers
Sesame Workshop
Sesame Workshop is an educational television studio
that produces Sesame Street. With a small IT staff and
limited budget, Sesame Workshop needed innovative
ways to manage its growing IT environment. The
company implemented Novell® ZENworks® Asset
Management to reduce inventory administration time
by 70 percent and leveraged SUSE® Linux Enterprise
Server to consolidate web servers by 80 percent.
Overview
Sesame Workshop is the nonprofit edu­
ca­tional organization that changed tele­
vision forever with the legendary Sesame
Street. As the single largest informal edu­
cator of young children, local Sesame Street
programs are produced in countries as
diverse as South Africa, Bangladesh and
India, and are making a difference in over
120 nations.
Challenge
As a nonprofit organization, Sesame Work­
shop leases most of its desktops, laptops
and servers. Manually tracking its hardware
and software inventory was time-consum­
ing for a small IT staff. Sesame Workshop
wanted to streamline inventory and asset
management to free up its IT staff and
properly manage its leasing contracts.
“Just as Sesame Workshop
innovates in media and
entertainment, we try to innovate
in IT. SUSE gives us the tools
to compete with our bigger
competitors, but without the
huge price tag.”
NOAH BROADWATER
Vice President of Information Services
Sesame Workshop
Sesame Workshop hosts nearly 50 con­
sumer websites, many with large volumes
of media content, thousands of concurrent
users and more than one million unique
visitors per month. Facing increasing hard­
ware and software licensing costs with
Sun Solaris and Microsoft Windows, the
company evaluated a move to Linux.
Sesame Workshop at a glance:
A nonprofit educational television organization
Solution
Sesame Workshop selected Novell ZEN­
works Asset Management to streamline
its inventory processes and SUSE Linux
Enterprise Server as the open platform
for its web architecture.
“Novell ZENworks Asset Management is a
good fit for us because it works across our
multiple platforms including UNIX, Win­
dows, Linux and Macintosh,” said Noah
Broadwater, vice president of Information
Services at Sesame Workshop. “We tested
several solutions and found that Novell ZEN­
works Asset Management doesn’t place a
big burden on our network like other so­lu­
tions. We are getting great performance.”
The IT staff used Novell ZENworks to install
software based on the user’s identity and
role within the organization. Novell ZEN­
works Asset Management then tracks the
software on each machine and alerts the
IT staff if users try to install unauthorized
software.
Industry and Location
Entertainment, United States
Product and Services
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Novell ZENworks Asset Management
NetIQ Access Manager
NetIQ Identity Manager
Results
+Reduced inventory administration time by
70 percent
+ Moved to an open web infrastructure that costs
85 percent less than a proprietary solution
+ Consolidated web servers by 80 percent with
Xen virtualization
+ Reduced hardware costs by 30 percent
“Moving to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server gives
us the same reliability and performance as UNIX,
as well as the option to run whatever open source
tools best fit our business. The cost savings from
Linux are incredible.”
NOAH BROADWATER
Vice President of Information Services
Sesame Workshop
www.suse.com
“With ZENworks Asset Management, we
know exactly what is installed and where,”
said Broadwater. “Having a real-time in­
ventory makes it easy for us to comply
with software licensing requirements, as
well as our leasing schedules.”
Sesame Workshop is currently relaunch­
ing many of its websites and is replacing
its Sun Solaris, Microsoft Windows and
Debian servers with SUSE Linux Enter­prise
Server. The company has already seen dra­
matic improvement in its web performance
as its home page load time decreased by
130 percent.
“Instead of paying for proprietary hardware
with UNIX, we can now get compe­titive pri­
cing from all the major x86 hard­ware ven­
dors,” said Broadwater. “Mov­ing to SUSE
Linux Enterprise Server gives us the same
reliability and performance as UNIX, as well
as the option to run whatever open source
tools best fit our business. The cost sav­
ings from Linux are incredible.”
With an open platform, Sesame Workshop
is taking advantage of a host of open
source software. Using SUSE Linux En­
ter­­prise Server with built-in Xen virtual­
ization, the company can easily configure
virtual web servers to run multiple web­
sites and no longer requires several physi­
cal servers per website.
“We estimate that we are doing with 12
servers what most companies do with 100,”
said Broadwater. “We are huge advocates
of open source which defies the industry
adage that you can never get cheap, fast
and good. As a nonprofit organization, we
have to be innovative with a limited budget.”
Sesame Workshop also uses Novell iden­tity
and security management solutions to
pro­vide its 10,000 users with personal­
ized access to its intranet. NetIQ® Access
Manager™ authenticates employees and
part­­ners to its portal, based on user infor­
mation stored in NetIQ eDirectory™. NetIQ
Identity Manager automatically synchro­
nizes user information across disparate
applications so users have single sign-on
access to everything in the portal.
Results
By implementing Novell ZENworks Asset
Management, Sesame Workshop reduced
inventory administration time by 70 per­
cent and can better comply with auditing
requests and leasing contracts.
The company moved its web infrastructure
to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for a cost
85 percent less than that of a proprie­tary
UNIX and Windows solution. Con­soli­dat­
ing web servers by 80 percent with Xen
virtualization has reduced hardware costs
by 30 percent. By leveraging open source
software, the company has dramatically
reduced its software costs, contributing to
an overall IT budget reduction of 18 percent.
“Without Novell solutions, we would need
to increase our IT budget every year by at
least $1 million,” said Broadwater. “Just as
Sesame Workshop innovates in media and
entertainment, we try to innovate in IT.
SUSE gives us the tools to compete with
our bigger competitors, but without the
huge price tag.”
268-001225-001 | 02/13 | © 2013 SUSE LLC. All rights reserved. SUSE and the SUSE logo are registered trademarks of SUSE LLC in the
United States and other countries. NetIQ is a registered trademark and eDirectory and Access Manager are trademarks of NetIQ Corporation
in the United States and other countries. Novell and ZENworks are registered trademarks of Novell, Inc. in the United States and other countries.
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