French Police save with Ubuntu
June 2nd, 2009
Here is a great article describing how the French Police saved money with Ubuntu. It starts out by saying
“France’s Gendarmerie Nationale, the country’s national police force, says it has saved millions of dollars by migrating its desktop software infrastructure away from Microsoft Windows and replacing it with the Ubuntu Linux distribution.”
“…has saved up to €50 million on licensing and maintenance costs as a result of the migration strategy”
“The Gendarmerie migration also demonstrates the significant cost savings that governments can get from adopting open source software. As the global financial downturn continues to put pressure on budgets, governments are going to increasingly look to open source software as a way to cut IT costs. We have recently seen moves in this direction from Canada and the UK.”
I found it interesting that they state the biggest difference between Ubuntu and Windows, from their point of view, was the icons
“Moving from XP to Ubuntu, however, proved very easy. The two biggest differences are the icons and the games. Games are not our priority.”
I am also very encouraged that they’re concerned about open standards. I wish more businesses and institutions though this way and I hope the Gendarmerie’s example promulgate open standards.
“[The Gendarmerie] has found that open source software is better at handling open standards.”
