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The surest way to beat the competition is to start fast and stay ahead. That strategy made Taleo a 2006 Enterprise All-Star Award winner for the virtualized application infrastructure it completed in June 2005.

IT executives at the San Francisco human resources firm bet on Linux (ditching Unix) when they were planning the new system in 2002. "At the time, Linux was being looked at as a way to save money at the Web tier, not something that you would run mission-critical applications on across all tiers," recalls Brad Benson, CTO at Taleo.

IT executives were challenged to find ways to increase business while keeping IT costs low and performance high. Taleo offers on-demand, hosted applications for a range of job-recruiting needs. Of its roughly 500 employees, nearly half are in IT-related roles.

By 2004, Taleo had rolled out Linux on its Web and application servers and in 2005 tackled the difficult database layer. The database project focused on PolyServe's Database Utility for Oracle, which clusters databases on low-cost x86 servers running Linux and a storage-area network (SAN). "PolyServe helped us solve device-driver issues and other roadblocks," Benson says.

"Hopefully, when people look at this [Linux application infrastructure project], they'll see there's certainly a benefit to betting early."
- brad benson, cto, taleo