Acxiom selects Red Hat Enterprise Linux

RALEIGH, USA: Red Hat, provider of open source solutions has announced that Acxiom Corporation has selected Red Hat Enterprise Linux as the standard operating system for its high-performance, cost-saving grid processing environment.

Acxiom is recognized throughout the marketing industry for its ability to successfully utilize advanced technology to meet clients’ marketing demands. Its competencies include customer data integration (CDI) and technology, data, databases, digital marketing services, consulting and analytics, privacy leadership and IT outsourcing. Acxiom advises its clients on the integration and development of multi-channel marketing campaigns spanning digital, Internet, email, mobile and direct mail channels.

When Acxiom introduced a breakthrough technology that delivered entity resolution and customer recognition capabilities, it quickly became vital to the company’s business proposition. Before long, Acxiom discovered scalability and affordability challenges because the application was built on large SMP boxes running UNIX.

“We needed a reliable, stable and supported version of Linux that was tested and production-ready to support millions and now billions of records per day through our application. Red Hat was that solution,” said Terry Talley, chief technology officer at Acxiom. “Red Hat was sensitive to our unique support needs. Although we had thousands of machines, we had few distinct instances. Red Hat was very flexible in engaging with us, and as a result we are able to build stronger and smarter systems with our customers in mind.”

Acxiom’s grid infrastructure is designed to improve efficiency, maintain consistency across its systems and logically partition resources to meet its clients’ increasing demands. With a broad ecosystem of certified hardware and software solutions, Red Hat Enterprise Linux enabled Acxiom to make hardware choices independent of the operating system.

“Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the standard operating system for Acxiom's grid computing environment that amounts to over 6,000 machines today, translating to 12,000 sockets,” said Talley. “It is the foundation for all of Acxiom's scalable marketing business applications and bulk processing applications.”

Additionally, Acxiom utilizes Red Hat Network for management and procurement of the various instances of Red Hat Enterprise Linux in its grid computing environment. Acxiom has also utilized a Red Hat Technical Account Manager to assist in managing its Red Hat Enterprise Linux-based systems and for expert advice and hands-on training during new implementations.