SH: Can you begin by telling us a little about the Kerr Group?

Backus: The Kerr Group manufactures specialty plastic closures and containers to the pharmaceutical, healthcare and food and beverage industries. Our headquarters is in Lancaster, PA. We have eight manufacturing plants and six warehouse facilities. I work out of our plant in Sarasota Florida. Kerr has a 95-year history of developing and commercializing packaging solutions. In 1971 we produced the first child-resistant plastic closure for the pharmaceutical industry, marking our successful evolution from a respected manufacture of home canning jars to a leading innovator in the specialty plastics closures business. Kerr has built on this foundation to earn premier status in the food, beverage and pharmaceutical industries. Today with many new products and an expanded market focus, Kerr maintains strong relations with companies as Abbott Labs, American Home Products, Bayer, CVS, Hunt-Wesson, Merck, Pfizer, RJR Nabisco, Seagrams, and Warner Lambert.

SH: Where do you see the need to deploy the Xandros Desktop OS?

Backus: Our current plan is to prove the technology on the plant floor. We chose the manufacturing floor for our Linux rollout because of its low-use users who do a lot of AS400 stuff. We already know that the IBM Linux client access works great. Plant users do the occasional Microsoft Word or Excel spreadsheet open and print and StarOffice works great for this task.

SH: What benefits do you expect to see?

Backus: Linux is a lot more secure than Windows. At this point in time I don't have to worry about a lot of Linux patches and viruses and people walking up to the machine and trying to log on, or, like in Windows 95, bypassing the logon completely and gaining full access to the machine. We've had a lot of incidents in the past where guys on the plant floor would bring, say, a music CD from home and put it in the drive and then it would automatically start playing. And, of course, they will also bring programs from home. "Oh, I need to make signs so I'm going to bring Printshop from home.” With Linux I can lock out the CD-ROM from individual users plus they can't get into the machine if they don't log in, whereas with Windows 95 they can still log into the machine and mess it up.

SH: Where does xDMS come in?

Backus: xDMS allows me to deploy the machines very, very quickly and if something breaks I can deploy them again very, very quickly. Whereas now, if a machine breaks, I have to either physically overnight a new piece of hardware or I have to send a technician out there, because not all of our plants have in-house IS people, and those plants that do only have one.

SH: So basically you're using Xandros and xDMS to drastically reduce your security headaches and administrative overhead?

Backus: That's exactly right.

SH: Can you describe the plant floor and how you are set up across the organization?

Backus: We are deploying Linux at all of our plants. I'm doing a lot of the legwork here in Florida because I happen to be in a working plant, so it's real easy for me to look at all areas of the operation. Xandros already did a HR project for me during the xDMS beta where we deployed kiosk machines in 11 cafeterias in Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, California, and other locations.

SH: So basically you've already used xDMS to deploy the Xandros desktop?

Backus: Yes, I've already deployed it with xDMS for that HR project. The HR project had a deadline, and our beta tests were so successful that we went ahead and used xDMS.

SH: What are the HR machines used for?

Backus: They are kiosks where users can log on to Fidelity's 401k.com web site and check the status of their accounts, inquire about loans and so on without any intervention from the HR department.

SH: So that's an external web site and you've set up the kiosks to go directly there?

Backus: All of the machines have a common logon of which our employees are aware. As soon as they login the web site comes up and they just go through it. They don't have the option to type in the url for another site, and as soon as they close down Mozilla it turns the computer off. The Xandros guys did a great job for me. When I need to get into a machine I login as administrator to obtain full desktop access.

SH: So you deployed this kiosk system via xDMS?

Backus: Yes, I have one xDMS server here in Florida. I had to schedule a trip out to California in the middle of all this so I figured that I would deploy the first unit there, with a set of floppy disks. Everything was great. I packed those floppy disks in my carry-on luggage and promptly went through the airport x-ray where they deleted the disks.When I got to California I instead connected to the server in Sarasota, Florida, booted from a CD, and then came back two hours later and the installation was done.

SH: Can you describe how you did this?

Backus: I scheduled the server and basically said "If you get a request from this particular subset of addresses, this is the software I want you to load; this is the configuration I want you to load." So then I took that CD that I had made with the server, threw it into the computer in California, and it automatically got on the network, sent the signal to the server in Sarasota, and said "Hey, I want to do an install of Xandros with some configuration. What do I need?" The server knew from the address I was coming from what it needed to do. So it pushed all the software, loaded the files, loaded the user, loaded all the special configuration stuff I had done, and then turned off the computer. I came back two hours later, turned on the computer, logged in and saw that it was done.

SH: You set up an open-ended schedule for the xDMS job?

Backus: Yes. I scheduled the job to end on September 15. If they weren't all done by then I would have extended the schedule another week or two. The nice thing is that if one of those machines gets screwed up I can go back in and reactivate that job. I'll then have the person on the other end throw the boot disk into the machine, turn it on, and come back two hours later after it's fixed. The benefit for me is now I no longer need an IT person at the other end to fix the computer. I can simply leave a set of disks at each location instead of repair disks so that if a particular workstation happens to die I can say "OK, throw in the first disk, turn the computer on, wait five minutes, put the second disk in" and in two hours, depending on how much software needs to be reloaded, it's all done, automatically. I don't have to walk them through anything on the phone; I don't have to give away any passwords over the phone. This is really going to be a benefit to us, especially because I don't have IS people in every location. xDMS going to save a lot of overhead and a lot of time. Time is really the issue for me because we are a 24/7 operation. Things need to work in a timely manner. Obviously, the HR 401k kiosk is not a sensitive issue, but the second phase project which will take place on the plant floor will be. Those are full 24/7 machines they need to work and do their job 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I don't have IS people in some locations and some of my IS people are between six and eight hours away from a facility. So it is a lot easier if an application for some reason were to get deleted I could simply push that down through the server, or if I need to completely reload the operating system all I have to do is have someone get out a disk, throw it in, and then turn the computer back on and let it run itself.

SH: Will you follow the same procedure for Xandros updates?

Backus: Yes, except if I'm doing an update I don't need the disk. I will simply push the update at any time. And the nice thing is that I can schedule that time. Let's say I have to update a bunch of computers tonight. I can simply instruct the users to leave those computers on and I can schedule the update to automatically happen at 2 am or 3 am. I can schedule it for a month out if I want. That simple and silent, and it all happens in the background. There is absolutely no user intervention. An icon appears on the desktop and the update is ready to go.

SH: So once xDMS is released you'll be deploying Xandros on the shop floor?

Backus: Right. We're going to wait for the full release but that is not stopping me from testing the different pieces of software that were going to deploy.

SH: Will you be able to use Xandros with custom software you are already using by adding it through the xDMS repository?

Backus: That's right. For the plant floor PCs that we have targeted that's about 98 percent of their function -- AS400 mainframe work. Green screen type stuff with the occasional checklist in Excel that a supervisor might open up and print out, or a Word document attachment. The other thing that is going to have to go on these machines is Lotus Notes through CodeWeavers CrossOver Office.

SH: Have you tried that with the new [3.0.1] version of CodeWeavers?

Backus: Yes, the laptop that I use on a daily basis runs Xandros. I made the commitment back in February to switch over completely on my laptop. Any issues that came up on a daily basis I would just force myself to solve instead of going back to the Windows crutch. I'm using Xandros version 2.5 and can do all of my job functions. My computer runs everything that I'm going to be running on the next couple of projects. I know that Lotus Notes works. In fact, the e-mails that I send all come from the Windows client of Lotus Notes through CodeWeavers.

SH: How many Windows machines on the shop floor are you talking about eventually replacing with Xandros?

Backus: When everything is done I think we're looking at somewhere near a hundred.

SH: Are there any other requirements for the production rollout?

Backus: A good portion of our machines use production monitoring software. We have sensors on every machine that send signals to an input device that sends data to the server. The server interpolates how many pieces of the product are coming out of the machine and there are additional sensors along the assembly line to track them. For example, when we need to kick out a part for a defect the server takes that count out of inventory. Three of the facilities use production monitoring software produced by a company called Mattec. It runs on a UNIX-based server and, oddly enough, they had required all of their clients to be Windows 95 PCs with a piece of terminal software on top called Hummingbird Exceed. They are production machines and it just is ludicrous to me to ever run those machines on Windows. It's one of the things that has driven me crazy about that system for a couple of years.

SH: Were you able resolve this issue?

Backus: Yes. The Mattec client now runs on Xandros so that we no longer have any obstacles to the Xandros replacement, even in those three plants.

SH: You also have Windows servers?

Backus: Yes, all of my authentication servers, all my file and print services, SQL databases, remote access, all run Windows. The only other server I have is the AS400. That is why the Active Directory authentication in Xandros is crucial, at least at this point of the game -- two years from now who knows, I'm hoping that I can scrap all my Windows licenses.

SH: Meanwhile you want to have a reasonable transition?

Backus: Yes, and it's clean. The one thing that drew me to actually buy a copy of Xandros was the interface -- it's just clean. I could sit a user down and they could navigate and do everything and not know that they're using Linux. It is fantastic. I've looked at every distribution you can think of. I used Linux probably since 1999.I even have the original Corel Linux manuals on the bookshelf across from my desk and I've even got the inflatable penguin! Did I tell you I like your product? I bought the licensing figuring I would need the occasional help from somebody over the phone, and I got a call from your product manager Erich Forler one day and he goes "Hey, I've got the entire team here let's talk about your project." As it turned out they went over and above to get what I needed done. We had special cases where we had to go to a particular web site that needed certain security settings. It was just different enough from the everyday issues that it kind of threw everybody. And they were happy to work on the problem because they said that it was a learning experience. They had tried to conceive of every possible situation to make their product better and I threw them a curve ball -- so they were eating it up.

SH: That's a nice note to end on. Thanks so much for speaking with me and good luck with your deployment.

Backus: It's been a pleasure.