French Government Chooses Mozilla To Replace IBM and Microsoft For 130,000 Desktop PC's
The French Government's public finance department will switch 130,000 desktop PC's to Mozilla's email and calendar applications. Mozilla's Thunderbird email service, Lightning Calendar and an open-source groupware will replace IBM Lotus Notes and Microsoft Office.
The move signals how more government agencies from around the world are dropping enterprise accounts with major vendors to cut down on costs and get better license agreements.They are turning to open-source providers and companies like Google that can offer email and services such as Google Docs.
01net, a French IT news site, originally broke the news about the Mozilla win. The decision to go with Mozilla came after the Directorate General of Public Finance (DGPF) merged with the Directorate General of Taxes (DGI) and the Directorate General of Public Accountancy (DGCP). Each has their own email and licenses for Lotus Notes and Microsoft Outlook.
The merger provided the opportunity to save money and better manage the licenses.
OBM is the other player in this story. Linagora makes the open-source groupware that will be used by DGPF.The tax authority is one of several French agencies using OBM. More than 600,000 French employees use the application.
The French Government's decision to go open-source follows the city of Los Angeles decision this week to adopt Google Apps over Microsoft. Again, the win has almost everything to do with cost. The city will pay $7.25 million for the service.
About 30,000 city employees will use Gmail and have access to Google Docs.
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i use FF as my first browser,congratulations Mozilla
I wonder how they came to this decision. It smells suspiciously like the guys writing the checks doing the research instead of the IT Engineers. Kerio is only $20/user/year, runs great on Linux, and it is fully compatible with Outlook & Calendaring, should you want to subject yourself to outrageous MS license costs. (I personally know of one Fortune 500 company that uses Kerio for over 5000 users in many different countries.) ThunderBird email client is as good or better than Outlook Express, it's free, and it runs on Linux as well as Windows. Seriously, folks, let your technology gurus be the ones making your technology decisions. When you let the pencil-pushing finance people make the decisions, you will ultimately end up with the same fate as all the failed American auto companies. (You don't see Toyota, Nissan, or any other foreign auto companies needing bailout money, do you? That's because their engineers run the company, not finance!) Finance people know the cost of everything without using any extra cash, but the value of nothing.
"The French Government's decision to go open-source follows the city of Los Angeles" : Well, considering the strong commitment of Europe and France to be more specific in favour of open source (OK, for the reasons we all know!), I am not sure it is so relevant to quote that the city of Los Angeles has adopted open source before the French government... As far as I know open source both in the US and in Europe, it is obvious that the adoption of open source by the public administration rather started in Europe and is now spreading in the US... Check this map:
http://ostatic.com/blog/where-in-the-world-is-open-source-software
Tristan
Congrats to mozilla. I am using mozill FF as my web bowser since i bought my pc. It is superb. Great news!! Thanks for update.
@DemetriusW Are you just copy and pasting that comment? I read the exact same comment over at LA Times on the Google Apps deal (posted by 'Shocked').
Who uses Kerio when there are far more solid open source solutions out there. OBM, as mentioned in the article, is fully open source and relies on Cyrus and Postfix for the email part.
'That's because their engineers run the company, not finance' -- Ok, so perhaps that argument against Exchange or Notes, but definitely not here!
Mozilla Firefox is great. I love their add on.
Before anyone starts popping corks on champagne bottles, it's important to note that none of these organizations are throwing out IBM or Microsoft. Rather, they are opting to de-invest in future licenses and use a portion of those savings towards alternate platforms.
Not to take away the win, but it's relatively low risk for organizations to hold off on renewing licenses (to get access to latest product) and use a portion of that savings to try out something else. The story will be what their deployment and usage is a year from now - I'm willing to bet that not much will change in terms of usage by the majority of users, particularly those whose work product relies on enterprise-ready applications and services. Still, the cost savings for the (typical) 10-20% of 'task workers' may be substantial enough to make the open source bet, until they realize their training and migration costs are going to go through the roof.
To summarize, the deal broadens the choices available and decreases their near-term IT expenditures. But end users will still have access to Microsoft Office and Lotus Notes.
I'm a huge fan of Firefox. Kuddos to Mozilla!
Congrats Mozilla! I love Firefox, been using them for over 2 years and love 'em. If you are still on IE, I would highly recommend switching to mozilla :D
Strange that they took OBM - compared with other solutions it is quite buggy and does not scale very well.
Myself prefers Open-Xchange for big groupware installation, there are installations up to several million users in the wild, the mobility solution is really great and it is the fastest app I have ever seen.
Daniel
Business owners have embraced open source software since the first time they were introduced into this information age. The economic downturn forces government to reduce spending. I am doubtful if they will continue to do so when the economic condition has returned to normal. Many government works are not efficient. They spend tax payers' money without feeling guilty.
I just found out that it was the same company called Linagora (www.linagora.com) that already did the same kind of project with the French Assembly
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/21/french-lawmakers-hope-to-inspire-linux-revolution/#more-2321
Mozilla Firefox is great no doubt about it I am using this web browser for more than one year and satisfied by its rich features. But can anyone make me understand Why French Govt. make this transformation?
What an surprising news to know!....and a very sad thing for Microsoft.Now what will Microsoft do????
a different system, please respect the labor thanx.
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