Here is an update of the training program given by ELCOT to Village Panchayat officers. The training of officers need volunteers. Currently the local Linux User Group CHENNAILUG providing full support to this new initiative.
Recently the Tamil Nadu Government with guidance from ELCOT decided to go opensource way for supporting their total IT infrastructure. Mr.Umashankar of ELCOT is leading this effort.
Hope more positive FLOSS initiatives will come out this year.
Thursday, January 04, 2007
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
Tamil Nadu (India) may shut door on Microsoft
Source: www.deccan.com .
Note: 1 Crore = 10 million, 10 lakh = 1 million, 1$ = Rs.45(approx)
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.8 crore 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.
Note: 1 Crore = 10 million, 10 lakh = 1 million, 1$ = Rs.45(approx)
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.8 crore 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.
Tuesday, November 29, 2005
Roundcube Webmail
RoundCube Webmail is a browser-based multilingual IMAP client with an application-like user interface. It provides full functionality you expect from an e-mail client, including MIME support, address book, folder manipulation and message filters. RoundCube Webmail is written in PHP and requires the MySQL database. The user interface is fully skinnable using XHTML and CSS 2.
Sunday, July 31, 2005
Wednesday, July 06, 2005
The Simple Economics of Open Source
What motivates thousands of computer programmers-and even the companies that employ them-to share their code with the world? The growing use of so-called "open source" software may not seem, at first glance, to make much economic sense. But according to research by HBS Professor Josh Lerner and his colleague Jean Tirole, economics may actually help explain why open source works as well as it does.
The Secret of How Microsoft Stays on Top
Critics say Microsoft's incredible two-decade run at the top of the computer industry has less to do with innovation than it does with bully tactics. But new research from Harvard Business School professors Marco Iansiti and Alan MacCormack suggest a different reason: the company's ability to spot technological trends and exploit key software technologies.
The Organizational Model for Open Source
A surprising entity has emerged to protect the interests of open source software developers: the non-profit foundation. HBS professor Siobhán O'Mahony discusses this emerging organizational model.
Tuesday, July 05, 2005
Want to use two internet connections at the same time?
Redundant Internet Connections Using Linux
With the advent of high-speed Internet links from Internet Service Providers (ISPs), it’s easier for users to host services on their home computers. But what happens when your ISP connection goes down? An obvious solution is to have a redundant Internet connection from another ISP. To help set up a Linux host with redundant Internet connections, this article covers the following essentials:
- Configuring the host to properly handle inbound network connections from multiple ISPs
- Load-balancing outbound network connections
- Configuring various services to enable redundancy
- Configuring firewall protection using ipchains or iptable
Monday, July 04, 2005
LTSP Success Stories
LTSP is in use all over the world, and this site has some success stories from people who have deployed solutions based on it.
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
Theory and Practice
Yet another joke which poke fun at Microsoft.
Theory is when everything is known and nothing works. Practice is when everything works and nobody knows why. At Microsoft, theory and practice are united: nothing works and nobody knows why.
Friday, May 13, 2005
Check your browser
To check if your browser has the basic support for HTML4, CSS1, PNG, and Data URLs, goto webstandards.org/act/acid2/test.html
For more information on ACID2 test for web browsers goto webstandards.org/act/acid2/guide.html
For more information on ACID2 test for web browsers goto webstandards.org/act/acid2/guide.html
Windows Red screen of death
Are you bored an irritated by BSOD in windows? Wait until longhorn arrives. Microsoft will be introducing a very brand new feature called RSOD. Want to see the RSOD (Red screen of death).
Tuesday, May 10, 2005
The assault on software giant Microsoft
"Microsoft is in its most vulnerable moment in history, just like IBM in the 1990s,"
"China, South Korea and Japan, meanwhile, have joined forces to develop an Asian flavour of Linux, to ensure they are not in thrall to Microsoft."
"I played around with it a bit, but it's just another browser, and IE [Microsoft's Internet Explorer] is better," Mr Gates told me"
"Microsoft is not an innovator or transformer right now,"..
more...
Firefox coins celebrate success
"Although Firefox has been downloaded 50 million times, this does not necessarily mean it has the same number of individual users."more...
"But Firefox has clearly gained ground on IE. It has so far not had as many security problems as IE, and when there has been a problem, it has taken less time to fix because it is an open source piece of software."
Saturday, April 30, 2005
My guess worked
Firefox cruises in Europe
Firefox crosses 50 million
Today firefox crossed 50 million downloads, that i believe has captured around 10 percent of browser market. If it grows at this rate, i think in another year or so it will have a humble 20 percent market share.
Monday, April 11, 2005
Small-business forms using Scribus and PDF
A small business owner explains why he is using linux for document processing.
Linux+Solaris HOWTO
This document describes how to use Linux (x86) and Solaris (x86) together on one machine.
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