British Government report gives green light to Linux

By Matt Whipp

Posted on 28 Oct 2004 at 12:52

Teh cost benefits were brought home in a case study from Beaumont Hospital, Dublin, Ireland. The hospital measured the TCO for proprietary solutions at 8.7mn. The Open Source equivalent notched up just shy of 210,000. Expertise may be more hard to come by for the time being, but 8mn will buy you an awful lot of that.

Cost-savings came not only from cheaper procurement and licencing costs, but also because Open Source software will run on much older hardware, extending the lifespan by around 50 per cent.

The OGC concludes that Open Source software is now a 'viable and credible alternative to proprietary software for infrastructure implementations, and for meeting the requirements of the majority of desktop users'.

Equally important is its strategic outlook: it's priority is to 'avoid lock-in to proprietary IT products and services,' and maintain `interoperability that support open standards'.

The report is not just a set of recommendations. The OGC was set up to amalgamate government department purchasing to give greater buying power and better value to government purchases. As the departments pass their purchases through the OGC their value for money will be considered against the findings of this report.

You can read the full report at the )OGC website.