GSK approached a few multinational companies to find a solution to the problem at hand. They ran into obstacles at different points, and finally contacted Integra, which is an exclusively enterprise opensource solution provider to see if any possible solutions could be designed.
We sensed an opportunity immediately, as this was right in our area of expertise. GSK signed up for a pilot project, with a timeframe of just under a month to provide a tangible Proof of Concept to the problem at hand.
We scouted for a hardware that was not manufactured in nor based on an US patented architecture. We found a solution in a Chinese Academy of Sciences Labs development, and was able to source a laptop built on the processor. Having an 800 MHz processor with 1 GB of RAM and an 8.9" LCD screen, the laptop was air-shipped to our Head Office for evaluation.
Now that we had the hardware, the software was the next big step. The base architecture on which the processor was built had a version of the Linux Kernel ported to it. However, since the US embargo extends to the encryption algorithms, we had to build the kernel from scratch, and Gentoo Linux became an obvious choice, since everything is built by compilation and the code could be modified quite easily.
Once the kernel was compiled and installed, the next big task was to select applications. GSK wanted an Office suite, a PDF reader, a web browser and an email client. Naturally, all of these packages needed to have all encryption code removed.
A lot of packages were evaluated and the capabilities were matched with the requirements put forward by GSK, and a suite of products was selected and compiled for the platform. |
