[+PLUS] TN may shut door on Microsoft

[Santhosh Thottingal]

News from Deccan Chronicle dated Monday, January 01, 2007



TN may shut door on Microsoft   *Chennai, Dec. 31:*

 The Tamil Nadu government, which is on a fast-track pushing the state to
the top in the Indian IT sector, has almost shut its door on the software
giant, Microsoft, preferring the Open Source Systems (OSS) for reasons of
costs and easy migrating capabilities.

"Initially, 99 per cent of government systems have been running on Microsoft
systems but then 2007 will be a watershed year for the state IT sector. We
are fast migrating to Linux operating systems which are so much cheaper and
can be operated at low cost, besides offering continuous updates and freedom
from viruses," says Mr C. Umashankar, managing director of state-owned
ELCOT, vested with the responsibility of overseeing such ambitious
government projects as e-governance, enumerating the beneficiaries of the
free TV scheme, family ration cards and the free sari-dhoti distribution.

"We have already dispatched 6,500 Linux systems to village panchayats and
another 6,100 Acer desktop systems with Suse Linux operating systems are on
their way. We are procuring 20,000 desktop systems for schools, which will
run only on Suse Linux. Remaining 30 desktop systems will also migrate as
and when the new machines arrive," Mr Umashankar told this newspaper.
He said all the ELCOT servers were on Redhat Linus and the government IT
company's 28-seater software development wing was fully on Suse Linux.

"We will train over 30,000 government officials in Linux Operating Systems
and Open Office. A contract has been already finalised with the government
departments and we have set up a Linux support centre with two
Linux-certified professionals to assist the state officers. This number will
go up to ten or more in 2007, which will be a path-breaking year for
government on migration to Linux Operating System,"  Mr Umashankar said.  "
India can live without Microsoft packages and even progress but Microsoft
will find it tough without a huge country like India buying their software
packages," he said.

He said a top official from Microsoft India had met him twice to convince
him to continue with MS products. The official offered the XP operating
system for about Rs.7000 while he quoted Rs.500. "I explained to her that
for a mere Rs.300, I could get the entire operating system, office
productivity software and a wide range of utility tools, such as DVD/CD
writing software, database software, multimedia editing software, vector
map-drawing software plus a whole range of software development tools. Also,
I have the option of downloading this entire package in DVD media and not
even pay that Rs.300, which is the media cost and not the software charges,"
said the ELCOT chief, an IT expert himself besides being a senior IAS
bureaucrat.

He said he had also pointed out to the Microsoft official that MS Office did
not allow saving of documents in open document format. While it was possible
to open all MS Office files using Openoffice.org, the vice versa cannot be
done. "I asked her why ELCOT should buy such an inferior product when
 Openoffice.org is available free of cost for Windows as well as Linux.

She said Microsoft are working on open XML format," he added. Mr Umashankar
said he had written to state finance secretary enumerating the "huge
financial and working advantages" of shifting to Open Source Environment in
all government departments. "I have been receiving great support from all
the senior IAS officers here, from the chief secretary downwards. It is very
encouraging.

ELCOT is not the loser when Microsoft did not accept our price of Rs.500; on
the other hand, Microsoft loses out due to our big volumes involved," he
said.
"There is a gross misconception among the governments and officials that if
they migrate to Open Source platform, Microsoft would get angry and the
entire software industry could come to a grinding halt. This is totally
misplaced fear," Mr Umashankar said.

"Within the next five years, it is going to be the IT services which would
dominate the revenue share of the IT companies, because more and more users,
governments and the corporate sector have started migrating to OS software,
thus removing the scope for more revenues from products. It is time that the
users understood this scenario and start saving their precious revenues," Mr
Umashankar said.

Talking of the changes happening in this direction, he said he had ordered
43 rack servers for ELCOT to host various government applications. "All the
applications are to run under OS software. I would have paid Rs.20 lakh per
server if I had adopted proprietary software but now I have saved over
Rs.8crore from this one transaction.

We intend to procure 1000 servers in the next two years. Imagine the amount
of savings we are getting out of this," the ELCOT chief said. "In my view, a
state government of TN magnitude would be able to save Rs 200-500 crores
every year, when the National e-governance action plan gets implemented," he
said, adding that school children too could get the benefit of "more robust,
secure and economical Open Source software for their work," he added.
"Today, there is more demand for OSS trained engineers. I require at least
500 trainers to train 30,000 state officials across Tamil Nadu in the next
six months.

-santhosh
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