French police save miliions by switching from Windows to Linux!
Another success story of a large scale Linux migration that is leading to massive cost savings emerge this week. The French police force, know as the the Gendarmerie, began its move to Linux in 2005. Like most organisations the Gendarmerie took a gradual approach to its Linux and Open source software roll-out, allowing time for users to adapt to the new software.
Successful Linux Migration Strategies involve a phased approach
The first steps they took was to migrate users as follows:
- Microsoft Office to Open Office,
- Internet Explorer to Firefox, and
- Outlook to Thunderbird
So the first phase was leaving users on Windows and migrating their applications to those that they would use once the operating system was migrated to Linux. This allowed user to get used to the application they would be using on Linux gradually and prevented overwhelming users with too many changes at once.
In 2006 they began to phase out windows and the desktop and move toward Linux, in particular the Ubuntu distribution. Currently they have deployed Ubuntu onto 5000 desktops and plan to roll it out to 15 000 more. By 2015 they plan to have their entire organisation running Ubuntu. Thats a total of 90 000 desktops! More information can be found here
More Linux Migration Success Stories
Just in case you think that this is an isolated incidence there:
First National Bank (South Africa) -http://www.tectonic.co.za/?p=1562
Metropolitan Bank Group - http://www.linux.com/feature/127173
