What a confusing day today. With the announcement of Telstra’s plans to move heavily towards using open source software, I just don’t know what to believe. On the one hand, Microsoft is evil, but on the other, so is Telstra. ;-)
Telstra has one of Australia’s largest IT budgets so this is a very positive move for open-source software in Australia.
TELSTRA’S Project Firefly open-source software trial will be one of the most closely watched pilots in Australian IT history.
Until now, the great debate as to whether Linux and the open-source applications developed for it are worthy of displacing the Microsoft desktop monopoly mainly has been a war of words, rather than large-scale deployments by highly visible enterprises.
Telstra itself has been talking up open-source software pilots for more than a year. The noise was enough to help lure Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer to these shores last year to see what all the fuss was about.
But with Jeff Smith’s assertion that the telco has 250 desktops in a pilot program running the Microsoft-deadly combination of Linux, Gnome, Mozilla and Star Office, with the trial cranking to 500 by the end of October and the expectation of a “rapid roll-out” post-trial, there’s no doubt Telstra is serious about open source.
More at The Australian IT website.
TELSTRA, Australia’s largest technology company, has nailed its colours firmly to the mast of open source software, creating a potential nightmare for Microsoft and sending shivers through a range of traditional platform providers.
Under Project Firefly, Telstra switched on a desktop trial in March using two flavours of Linux and a Citrix-based Windows system, aimed at shifting up to 85 per cent of its computing desktops to thin-client technology.
Telstra chief information officer Jeff Smith said he was determined to end a history of internal duplication and technology incompatibility by deploying open-source software right across the telecoms giant, which spends $1.5 billion each year on information technology. He aims to slice this cost in half within three years.
“I would see a big movement from Windows and Unix to Linux,” Mr Smith said. “One of the by-products of Linux having its heritage in Unix is that it is a very stable operating system.”
More at The Australian IT website.
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