While TRW had run DNS, file, print and e-mail applications on Linux, the company had never run a mission-critical application like ERP on the open-source software.

"I kind of threw the challenge out to the team and said, 'Before we go out and do the same old thing -- go out and buy another big proprietary Unix environment -- tell me why we couldn't do this on Linux with our standard Dell platform,' " Drouin said.

His team researched the issue, determined that a switch to Dell and Linux would work and set out to build a model environment.

"In the end, it was a really successful project for us, and we ended up deploying it into production -- a high-availability cluster of Dell servers with Red Hat Linux -- and we saved a bunch of money doing it that way," Drouin said. "We got a lot of flexibility out of having a cluster of basically high-end Intel servers versus the big, expensive footprint of Unix machines."

So, Drouin said, TRW is now driving that model deeper into the data center and looking for other areas where the company can migrate off proprietary Unix and into the Dell/Linux environment.