Enterprise open source Toolkit

Linux gets thumbs-up down under

Steven Deare ZDNet Australia

Published: 07 Sep 2005 08:45 BST

An Australian government procurement official in has publicly endorsed Linux, telling agencies the open source operating system has "no downsides".

In an address to delegates at a New South Wales Department of Commerce exhibition on Wednesday, official Cameron Parle touted the benefits of open source to state departments and agencies, at one stage referring to wearing his own metaphorical "red hat", a reference to the Linux vendor of the same name.

"There's no doubt you can deploy Linux in any situation, it's truly robust and flexible," he said.

"It has the potential to save huge sums of money.

"You get it all with Linux, there's no downsides."

Parle's speech covered the NSW government's recently-created procurement panel for open source enterprise software and services. The 11-vendor panel, which Parle helped create, was designed to cut the time and money agencies would otherwise spend issuing their own tenders for open-source software.

"We want to be able to consider open source and feel confident about it," Parle told attendees.

The professional services vendors included in the panel could demonstrate the total cost of ownership savings of adopting Linux to an interested agency's particular infrastructure, according to Parle.

"You don't get companies like IBM, Red Hat, Novell, committing to Linux if there's no money in it," he said.

Vendors on the panel include CSC, Dell, Fujitsu, HP, IBM, Novell, Red Hat, Sol1, Starcom, Sun and System Integration Services.

Steven Deare reported from Sydney for ZDNet Australia. For more ZDNet Australia stories, click here.