Crumbs
Rich T finds some tasty titbits you might have missed in the week's news
Wednesday 3 January 2007, 2:58 PM
Indian state may shut out Microsoft
After all the various European Linux pilots and U-turns, it appears India is about to teach us a lesson.
While numerous city councils in Europe play with open source in small quantities (including Amsterdam's pilot, Munich's pilot and Birmingham's termination of its project), one Indian state is pressing ahead full steam.
The state of Tamil Nadu, home to a population the size of the UK, is in the process of deploying 32,600 Linux desktop systems and training 30,000 government officials. Forty-three open source-based servers are also on the way to support key Government applications.
The ambitious project is being overseen by a state-owned IT services company, Elcot, which is led by Mr Umashankar, a key figure in the Government Administration, the IAS.
2007 is due to be a "watershed year" for government IT, as "we are fast migrating to Linux operating systems", says Umashankar, who is convinced of the cost and security benefits of open source software.
Umashankar, it seems, has had a rather brief meeting with Microsoft in which the software giant came nowhere near meeting his price demands.
Not that it bothers him. "India can live without Microsoft packages, and even progress" he said. "But Microsoft will find it tough without a huge country like India buying their software packages."
Unlike European governments such as Birmingham and Newham, Microsoft's deals are not cutting any ice on the Subcontinent.
PreviousComments on this post
Kudos and God speed to Mr. Umashankar. The long suffering common people of Tamil Nadu will be the beneficiaries.
There is an adage, "...You cannot fool all the people all the time" Hindus Invented the numbering systems including zeros, that is mistakenly called arabic numerals in the west but in arabic itself called Hindu system.
Linux Open systems are superior, so cost effective, flexible and robust, why would you waste crores of rupees on Microsofts inferior(virus prone) product that makes you dumb and keeps you chained for life.
I only hope other states (Kerala,WB, Andhra, etc) jump in on the train and start a OS Tsunami in 07.
This is a great news ! I only hope the trend catches on and Ms is kicked out of India. Yes ! we can live without Microsoft. Many countries in Europe are doing it and why not India ?
Linux supports localaisation and hence very relevant for multi-language set up like India.
Mr. Umashankar is certainly on the right track. Linux is a good start. If he wishes to reduce his IT costs even further, he could look into stateless thin clients. These units are about the size of a paperback book, have no moving parts, make no noise, and use very little electricity. As there is no operating system, volatile storage of any kind, or anything that causes a unit to become obsolete contained within, Mr. Umashankar could expect a life span of multiple PC replacement cycles for these desktop units.
If Mr. Umashankar utilizes Debian or Ubuntu, LTSP is already integrated into it. If he uses any other distro, a simple boot appliance can create sessions with the servers and provide PXE boot capability to the stateless desktop units.
By utilizing stateless thin clients, all desktop administration is consolidated to the server/servers. There is never a need for any technician to ever attend to a user's unit.
This is exciting news, I personally believe that this is going to be the choice of many other organizations/individuals in the near future.
I for one am tired of watching people remain looped into Microsoft's advertising gimmicks. OS WARZ!
How can we find out what packages they are using for accounting? Is it SQL Ledger or something else?
