By Tom S. Noda
December 1, 2007

The Philippines’ number one fast food chain, Jollibee Foods Corp. (JFC), has bared witness to how valuable free and open source software (FOSS) technology is to business—claiming it to be “effective, powerful, and free.”

Luisito Paulino, IM infrastructure manager of JFC, reveals this fact during the recent Computerworld Philippines Executive Briefing on “Deploying Open-Source Software” held on Sept. 14.

Paulino informed forum participants, who mostly came from small- to medium-size enterprises (SME), about the benefits of FOSS in contrast to using proprietary software that have expensive license fees.

Paulino claims that by using FOSS, he was able to save about 88% of JFC’s IT budget. “My budget is actually around P80 million but I only used some P10 million.”

During his presentation, Paulino unveiled the FOSS technologies it deployed in its enterprise system.

“I only have one email system for Jollibee, Chowking, Delifrance, Red Ribbon (Bakeshop) and Greenwhich (Pizza),” Paulino says, as he introduced the Postfix MX SMTP and POP email system that helped JFC use a virtualized domain.

Another productivity tool JFC uses is the TikiWiki, an open source content management system that allows business people to upgrade their company’s Web sites. “The Jollibee site is being updated by marketing and not by IT.”

One of the tools Paulino described as “powerful” was the phpCollab, an open source collaboration system that could track instant messages. “This is very new and very powerful. You can see communications outside like YM (yahoo messenger) and also monitor the files you want to send in Java.”

Paulino disclosed the other productivity tools JFC uses are the PostFix Mail Proc for email size management; IP messenger and Jabber for instant messaging; Samba server for file server; and the Scan Mail, Spam Assassin, Posfix domain verification and Postfix gray listing for its anti-spam system.

Voice Network
Meanwhile, open source helped the company save a lot in terms of telecommunications. Paulino says Jollibee uses the new trend in IP telephony called ATA to Open SIP, and the old Asterisk IP PBX for integration of Asterisk H.323 with Siemens and Asterisk with VoIP (voice over Internet protocol).

He illustrates his company saves around 70% monthly with its VoIP infrastructure. He explains that with the new ATA to Open SIP, ATA switches serve as analog voice switching and the SIP as call processor. In the old Asterisk, users must make sure that they are secured while the new technology is an appliance-based system that users can encode into a memory card and put in the appliance seat.

“This (ATA to Open SIP) is best for remote offices and requires less maintenance,” he says, adding that Jollibee is using it to expand the voice perspective of the company’s network.

Paulino adds the technology is applied to JFC’s new 8-7000 delivery call service, where customers could call wherever they are, adding that ATA to Open SIP is actually integrable to ATA-based URP.

FOSS in Enterprise Sys
For JFC’s FOSS usage in the enterprise systems, Paulino says the company uses Red Hat for its operating system (OS). On top of the Red Hat platform runs enterprise license systems such as the Oracle ERP/HRMS and SAP supply relationship management (SRM).

“Basically our ERP and HRMS are Oracle-based, and Oracle is a licensed system, but for our OS (platform) we use Red Hat,” Paulino says. “The things that give value to Red Hat are: you can develop your kernel, secure it, and put signature on what type of OS that you want Red Hat to be.” For the SRM OS, Jollibee uses the Fast 64 Bit OS Red Hat Linux

Paulino discloses he even made his own OS out of Red Hat, which he called Elf Mode Version 1 and uses it at home as a server.

He says Jollibee also uses other Red Hat tools like the Journal Class File System (JCFS) to optimize partitioning. It allows JFC to have a common file system as well as achieve
disk space efficiency.

FOSS in Data Network
With regards to using FOSS in JFC’s data network, Paulino says they have the BGP Router using Viyatta and Zebra. The Viyatta is an open source router that can be used when integrating Internet systems.

He says JFC also has the Open LDAP, an open source implementation of the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP).

Also included in JFC’s FOSS-based data network are: Radius Authentication Server, Clustering of Regus Server, Open VPN, Firewall, Snort in-line and the Squid Proxy with Authentication.

For its network management, JFC’s open source technologies are: Nagios for its network management system; AWStats for email and spam monitoring system; Nagios, Cacti, and Open Grapher for capacity management; Oracle APEX for problem management; and the Snort and Ethereal for the network analyzer.

Paulino reveals that Jollibee will continue to immerse open source in the enterprise system. He says they plan to implement an open source email attachment server; Xen for open source virtualization software; Amanda for easy backup; and Farcry for content management. Other open source applications will continue to be integrated in the company’s telecommunications systems, particularly for PABX monitoring, call handling, capacity monitoring, and Internet load balancing and failover. The company is also looking into an enterprise backup system based on open source.

“The main idea of open source is source. You will need access to programs in order to get the functionality comparable to the commercial thing,” Paulino says. “So that’s why majority of my implementations were server-based because of the source.”

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