Feds Could Save Billions with Open Source
by Colin Dodd
Via YAHOO.
The U.S. government could save billions of dollars by moving to more open-source software, cloud computing and virtualization, a recent study suggests.
Over three years, the potential savings would be US$3.7 billion for using open-source software; $13.3 billion for using virtualization technologies; and $6.6 billion from cloud computing or software-as-a-service, the study said. It was published by MeriTalk, an online community about IT and public policy; Red Hat, an open-source software vendor; and DLT Solutions, a value-added reseller of Red Hat and other IT products.
“After years of boosted funding, federal IT managers are facing a new challenge — the budget crunch,” the study says. “With a grave economic outlook and a new administration in office, federal agencies will be forced to do more with less.”
December 5th, 2009 at 4:55 pm
More open source software should be used by governments, not just in the USA but over here in the UK and other countries. Open source software should be used more in schools over the world as well, I am not saying we should stop using Windows on the desktop and force everyone to use Open Office and Linux desktops. But for the backend & servers we could be making use of open source software like Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP etc and use more open source virtualization to save money on costs.
Schools / Governments all seem very keen to use Exchange Server for their email servers often as they can’t support Linux & open source software with their existing IT departments and think that paying a Linux Consultant or using Outsourced IT will cost them more than the licensing costs for Microsoft products.