[linux-government] Norway reports additional benefits from move to Linux
- From: Joachim Bauernberger <joachim.bauernberger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: linux-government@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2004 10:16:41 +0100
http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS7685011135.html
Nov. 14, 2004
In the midst of a migration to Linux, the city of Bergen, Norway has
reportedly expanded its estimates of the cost savings and other benefits it
expects to achieve in switching from Microsoft Windows technologies. In a
report at ZDNet published last week, Bergen CTO Ole-Bjorn Tuftedal says he
expects to save 30 percent on hardware costs alone thanks to the efficiency
of Linux -- this, in addition to cost savings associated with licensing fees
and other economic benefits he had expected prior to testing open source for
city-wide deployment.
When beginning the city's evaluation of open source in June, Tuftedal expected
to save 40 to 50 percent on licensing and support costs by upgrading 100
Windows NT servers to 20 IBM Blades running Linux for Bergen's schools. The
CTO also said he expected increased stability and greater manageability using
Linux. He told ZDNet UK that he expects 85 percent of all schools to be moved
to the new platform by year's end.
Tuftedal's team is also reportedly in the midst of evaluating a second project
for Bergen that will move 20 HP-UX and 10 Microsoft servers running Oracle
databases to 10 HP Integrity Itanium 64-bit servers running SuSE Linux
Enterprise. Oracle connects the city's social services, document services,
and other key functions.
At a conference in September, Tuftedal identified security costs as a key
reason to move to Linux, estimating that those costs add between 10 and 20
percent to what organizations are already paying in Microsoft in licensing
fees.
Tip of an iceberg
Bergen is just one city at the leading edge of a worldwide trend of
governments evaluating Linux and open source for lowered IT costs. Linux won
a spot on 14,000 municipal desktops in Munich, Germany, after a year-long
decision process that saw Microsoft reduce its pricing, and even merited a
visit from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. Munich's 82-member city council
officially approved a measure to switch to open source. The Ministry of
Defense in Singapore, too, has publicly installed OpenOffice.org on 5,000 PCs
and is planning to deploy it on a further 15,000 systems.
The governments of Brazil, Australia, Japan, China, India and Taiwan are among
countries launching programs to evaluate and deploy Linux over the next
several months.
UK's Office of Government Commerce (OGC) published a report urging governments
to consider open source when implementing new systems or refreshing hardware
following a year-long pilot program to study the viability of using Open
Source Software across central government departments and the public sector
last month.
For more details about the benefits that Norway has recognized during its
migration planning, read the full ZDNet story here.
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URL: http://www.bauernberger.org/
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