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The Inquirer is talking about the New Zealand government’s deal with Microsoft and how the government is wondering if it can achieve similar results or enhanced value from open source. Certainly using open source software can help reduce your licensing costs and be a more efficient way of providing the IT services you need in your business. My only hesitation with this is the support model, by that I mean, if you’re buying Microsoft Office for example in bulk with Windows desktop, the actual licensing costs can be relatively affordable, and there are many that can support Office and the Windows desktop. I can sense so many comments saying but Linux or Mac just works, that you can use Open Office and indeed you can, it’s all about getting the balance right.

We need to invest in the right way, obtain the maximum benefit of switching to open source not do switch for the sake of switching.

For me, the core things in an organization I would look at are:

• Open Office instead of Word/Excel where appropriate
  • Users applications supplied on demand via Citrix or the equivalent
  • You only get the applications you’ve requested or need
• MySQL for the databases – is there a reason we use SQL/Oracle or Ingres?
• Dare I write this – googlemail? For the SME it’s much easier and cheaper than having a firewall, email server and guys looking after it – buy it in.

At the same time we need to think of the billing, the cost of conversion and the marginal cost in migrating the user from the desktop. By that I mean if I can buy a users’ pc function and support of that user for a fixed cost, is that not cheaper than putting everything in Citrix, of virtualizing the applications, of setting up active directory and everything else. In essence is it not billing and cross charging that’s the problem, when I know it’s a fixed cost for the desktop, why invest in moving the user to the server, the data center?

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