Ecuador’s Internal Revenue Service Develops a Reliable, Scalable Platform with Red Hat Solutions

RALEIGH, N.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Red Hat (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that Ecuador’s Internal Revenue Service, SRI Ecuador, has developed a stable, secure and affordable platform for its Internet-based tax return project using a combination of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and JBoss Enterprise Application Platform.

“Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations”

SRI supplies economic activity to individual and government taxpayers throughout the country’s 24 provinces. It services over one million customers, maintains a workforce of 2,400 and recorded an annual income of over USD 5 billion in 2007. SRI services include registered tax services, reception of tax returns, authorization of sales receipts, and claim handling for taxpayers. It also conducts tax collection and information supply for the federal government.

SRI first began using Red Hat solutions in 1999 when it implemented Red Hat Linux 6 for a variety of internal projects. It required a reliable and affordable solution, and turned to Red Hat solutions for freedom from licensing costs. In 2002, SRI decided to pilot an Internet-based tax return project aimed to encourage taxpayers to submit their tax returns online instead in-person at an SRI office. To develop the project, SRI needed a technology solution that could offer a stable, secure and affordable platform. After experiencing success with its initial implementation of Red Hat Linux, SRI investigated Red Hat solutions for its tax return project.

After assessing both Novell SUSE and Red Hat solutions, SRI selected Red Hat Linux for cost savings and reliability. When SRI searched for an application server solution, the organization investigated offerings from Oracle, Adobe, BEA and JBoss, but none of the application server solutions could exceed JBoss’ combined offer of cost savings and adherence to standards, and SRI selected JBoss Application Server 2.4 for implementation.

With the combination of Red Hat Linux and JBoss Application Server, SRI’s Internet tax return system was implemented as a pilot project by the end of 2002. The project introduced the Internet as an interaction platform with SRI taxpayers for the first time, and also marked the first open source project to be implemented by the Ecuadorian government.

Since the start of the project, Red Hat has been used as the operating system of choice for the internal application servers and has been updated with the availability of each new version of the solution. Currently, SRI utilizes Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and JBoss Enterprise Application Platform.

Today, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 is used on 90 percent of SRI’s HP Blade servers with dual-core AMD processors and quad-core Intel processors on a 64-bit architecture. It supports over 60 Intranet applications and 16 Internet applications, and approximately 95 percent of SRI’s employees rely on Red Hat solutions daily to execute their job. Utilizing only two administrators, the organization runs 30 applications on JBoss Enterprise Application Platform, with over 80 percent of the applications leveraging the solution’s high-availability features. In comparison to competitive alternatives, the JBoss solution allows for reduced memory footprint and CPU workload.

SRI has achieved the goal it set out to accomplish with its Internet-based tax return project, and today, the number of taxpayers approaching SRI counters to submit their tax returns has dropped remarkably.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and JBoss Enterprise Application Platform have provided SRI with a robust platform for improved Internet services for its taxpaying customers. Its experience with open source has been successful, and it has adopted an efficient, reliable, scalable and affordable platform that it can trust. Having access to Red Hat’s source code has allowed SRI to customize the functionality of the products in terms of the organization’s needs, and the success achieved with Red Hat solutions has encouraged SRI to explore open source solutions for other areas of business.

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