When you call a Domino's pizza store in Euless, Texas, and order a large pepperoni and mushroom pie, the phone doesn't ring in your neighborhood restaurant. It rings in a centralized call center, where a customer service rep takes the order, keys it into an expanded Wombat POS keyboard from Key Source International, and routes it via data lines to a computer in a nearby Domino's.
Operating on inexpensive but reliable Intel-based PCs, the call-center solution was developed by OneSystem of Santa Barbara, Calif. The system eliminates lost orders and automatically tracks coupons and discount specials. Stan McCabe, CEO of OneSystem, says it can improve sales in a franchise group by as much as 15 percent to 20 percent over an operation that runs individual stores on an automated or handwritten system. OneSystem's secret? The integrator runs Linux as the core platform of its solution, working with partner Jones Business Systems of Stafford, Texas, which supplies hardware to develop what McCabe says is the only call center and point-of-sale system yet developed for the Linux environment.
"We were very early into the Linux world," says McCabe. Although the company now uses Red Hat Inc.-certified Linux, when OneSystem began, company CTO Gerald Lindenbach was downloading the open-source operating system from the Internet.
Red Hat charges for documentation, media and support, but the source code is free. McCabe likes Linux because the code is open, allowing Lindenbach's developers to tinker with it and develop solutions, and then pass them back to the Linux community.
