RSPCA: Adopting the penguin
Published: 24 Oct 2003 17:20 BST
Given the association between Linux and penguins, it's quite fitting that an organisation such as the RSPCA is prepared to come out and fight the open-source corner.
The charity -- which campaigns to protect harmless animals from acts of cruelty by the dominant species -- recently became one of few UK organisations to publicly voice intentions to abandon Microsoft and move to Linux on the desktop.
While the RSPCA plans to spend at least a year evaluating the viability of migrating, it has a close relationship with network management specialist Novell, which could make a wholesale transition to Linux a more pain-free option. The networking company has a strong set of management tools for the Linux platform following the recent acquisition of Ximian. These tools -- such as the GNOME graphical user environments, and Mono, which will allow applications written using Microsoft .Net to run on Linux -- add an extra layer of sophistication that could make Linux a more attractive and flexible option for enterprises.
ZDNet UK spoke with the RSPCA's network manager Chris Rolfe about the real costs of going open-source and unexpected attention from Microsoft.
So how serious are your plans to migrate to Linux on the desktop?
We are going to have to evaluate it over at least the the next 12 months because like any other company we have lots of legacy applications which will require a lot of work to migrate. We are very interested in what Novell are doing. As a Novell customer we have a support contract with them anyway and if that is going to encompass all their new Linux based products that obviously gives us an extra power. We use Zenworks today and if they are going to offer a Zen-like product for Linux than it makes it even more attractive for us.
What is the impetus behind this move -- is it just cost reduction?
We do a lot of cost justification through the year. The RSPCA has had quite a tough time in the last six months financially and we are looking to save costs anywhere we can.
But there have been reports claiming that while Linux is certainly a cheaper server OS, savings on the desktop are marginal at best?
At the moment we go through a three-year PC replacement cycle. A PC when it's three years old automatically gets replaced. We see the costs of running a Linux platform as not as high as a Windows platform from a support and processor point of view. So we could potentially extend our replacement cycle to five or seven years using Linux so we get a better total cost of ownership.
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