SCO Openserver Support and Virtualisation

I’ve used SCO Unix (now known as Xinuos Sco Openserver 5) for around 20 years and helped many customers support and maintain their systems. In many cases we have worked together to significantly enhance the existing functionality and breathe new life into the system.

SCO Openserver Support Services

General Technical Support.
Disaster recovery during an emergency failure.
Shell scripting and automation (ksh, bash, perl, python).
Printer configuration and setup (sysv and cups).
Integration with cloud services to enhance existing applications.

SCO Openserver Virtualization

I have performed over over 50 Physical to Virtual SCO Openserver migrations. Some systems are straightforward to virtualize, while others can be quite difficult. But I’ve always found a way to give every customer a good result and successfully port to a VMWare Virtual Machine.

On some occasions, this has been done when the system has already failed. If possible please get in touch before that happens!

SCO Openserver Backup Enhancement

Many SCO Systems that I see are backing up vital application data to a tape drive and do not have a backup of the operating system at all. If you are still backing up your SCO System to tape then I highly recommend that you improve the backup procedure. Here is how I can help:

Remove the need for a tape backup:
- Backup to a network server.
- Backup to the cloud.
Provide hosted remote backups.
Create a full and regular operating system backup.
Provide disaster recovery as a service.
Provide a fully hosted SCO Unix Environment.
Migrate your application to a modern Linux environment (not always possible).

SCO Openserver PDF Generation

If your SCO Unix System is running a legacy business application or database, you may have limited printing options. I have had great success helping customers enhance their system by capturing print jobs and producing PDF documents. This creates a saving in time and postage costs, and improves customer and supplier communications.

Here is an example invoice that was produced on a standard dot matrix printer, but now generates a PDF file. The invoices are then automatically emailed to customers.

Example of an invoice produced from SCO Unix before being transformed to PDF — Original Print to Dot Matrix Printer

PDF produced by SCO Unix Legacy system — PDF Representation of the same Document

SCO Unix Database Maintenance and Enhancement

Many legacy applications running on SCO Openserver are developed using 4GL languages. I can help develop and maintain these database platforms:

SCO Unix Reporting and Dashboards

By extracting your business data from the database on your SCO Server, I can create advanced dashboards using modern tools such as Excel and Microsoft PowerBI. This greatly enhances the visibility of sales, stock and other vital information:

Automated extraction of data from SCO Openserver system.
Import of data from SCO into Microsoft SQL Server.
Production of a data model to allow easy and simple reporting.
Report authoring and bespoke customisation.

Image of an Example Dashboard Created in Power BI from data held in an Informix database on SCO Openserver — Example Sales by Category

Enhance and Protect your SCO Openserver System

If you have a SCO Openserver system and would like to discuss exploiting the potential of it, please get in touch by filling in the form below. Switching to a new system is expensive and complicated and you may be able to get additional value from your existing investment.