UNE EPM Telecommunications, a publicly owned company focused on providing information technology and communication services to customers throughout Colombia, was named the Red Hat Innovator of the Year on Thursday night at the Red Hat Summit. A Red Hat customer since 2010, UNE was faced with migrating to a platform that could handle its growing need for bandwidth while drastically reducing licensing, hardware, and maintenance costs. Choosing a combination of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat Training, and Red Hat Directory Server, UNE successfully cut its licensing and support costs almost in half compared to the cost to purchase licenses for and support its previous proprietary solution.

With an expanding service portfolio, the company was faced with finding a replacement for its previous platform that could withstand UNE’s growing need for bandwidth, could drastically cut down on licensing, hardware, and maintenance costs, and could migrate information from the previous platform in a way that appeared seamless to the end user. "In view of these costs and risks, migrating our critical platform became a top-priority project," said Julián Andrés Vélez Muñóz, IDC, Applications and Convergent Services, UNE.

Even before the migration to Red Hat Directory Server was complete, it became apparent to UNE that the new platform was more flexible, streamlined, and cost-effective. With an initial anticipation of slightly reducing costs, the telecommunications company expects its licensing and support savings to reach almost 50%. Since implementing its Red Hat solutions, UNE EPM Telecommunications has experienced disaster recovery times that are  95% lower on average than that of its previous solution.

UNE EPM Telecommunications enlisted Red Hat Training to aid and prepare its employees for a  smooth transition to the technology platform. "At the beginning of the project, we needed comprehensive training to understand the platform operation and expansion processes. The official Red Hat courses we took not only met but surpassed those requirements...it was extremely beneficial that Red Hat Training courses were structured to allow attendees to work in controlled scenarios that mirror reality and day-to-day use of the platform for both operation and expansion," Velez said.

To learn more about UNE EPM Telecommunications, visit: http://www.une.com.co/hogares.
To read the full case study, visit: http://www.redhat.com/resourcelibrary/case-studies/une-epm-cuts-costs-in-half-with-red-hat.
To learn more about the Red Hat Innovation Awards, visit http://www.redhat.com/summit/awards/.