Anyon ever hear of a company called Unisys? What do they do?

[webcabbie]

So this is a bit off topic but trust me it is for the greater good.

Like most towns in America the town I live in is broke. Like most towns every couple of years they buy 100's of new computers. Since I know what you do I want them to know that Windows on a pc adds 75-150 to the cost of every new computer and Ubuntu is a superior product.

I have been through my towns projected budget for next year and all I can find for computers is a contract with a company called Unisys. So.. anyone know what the hell Unisys is and what they do?

[Tom Collier]

http://www.unisys.com/unisys/

Amazing what you can do with Google.....

[Dave_L]

Company history:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unisys

[Swagman]

I think they also invented .gif

[sea_dawg]

As someone who has been on both sides of the fence with respect to government body oversight by interested members of the public I caution you to think carefully before you criticize and or offer solutions.

Your intentions are excellent, controlling govt costs. But raising your concerns may actually have the opposite effect.

First, any examination by your town govt of their policies takes resources, read time and money.

Second, the reality that this is for the time being not a Ubuntu / Linux world. We Ubuntu users are a very small percentage, anyone being forced to switch will face a steep and time consuming learning curve. Especially the less skilled computer users who will require considerable time and help to get up to speed.

Third, any networked (I'm assuming your town has their offices and PCs networked) requires administration, maintenance and oversight. This is true for Linux/Unix, Window and Mac. Small organizations cannot afford the internal overhead to have dedicated staff for that purpose so look to outside contractors to fill that role.

The cost savings of Ubuntu over Windows per box is easy to examine.

Assume:
City administrator salary $65K. Approx $32.50 / hr.
Uses one desktop and one laptop, Windows license fees $150 / box. $300 total savings switching to Ubuntu.

$300 / $32.50 = 9.2 hrs.

If your administrator can get fully up to speed on Ubuntu in 9.2 hrs or less, you as a taxpayer win. If not, then not. The ratio can get even worse. Consider a maintenance crew of 6 supported by one desktop.

This guesstimate does not even begin to take into account IT support during the change over.

Before you raise an issue, make sure the cost benefit ratio will be positive. You could wind up catching your town govt's interest in changing to Ubutnu only to find costs, when fully accounted, go up.

What I would question is your town govt's use of Unisys. There must be local businesses that can provide excellent support at competitive prices. Plus, you would be keeping the money in the local economy.

I would also question the need to buy computers every 2 yrs. I have 6+yr old machines at work running Win XP.

Don't get me wrong, I am not promoting Windows. I'm saying be careful what you ask for, you just might get it.

[jeffathehutt]

Your intentions are excellent, controlling govt costs. But raising your concerns may actually have the opposite effect.

I agree with this...

While linux itself may be cheaper than Windows, switching to linux is probably not cheaper than sticking to Windows, especially with hundreds of computers, which implies hundreds of employees that would have to be retrained. ;)

[webcabbie]

Ok.

I understand what you guys are saying.

It may cost so much money to get everyone up to speed on Ubuntu the first year no savings would be realized for a few years right?

I went through the appendix on the deal with Unisys and it seems a large portion of their business is providing software licenses for stuff like Microsoft office?

Should we at least be looking to switch to a Google apps lic in the short term before moving to linux in the long term?

[Tom Collier]

For what it's worth, there is a track record of government offices moving from Window to Linux.

Both the French National Assembly and the Gendarmiere (National Police) switched from Windows to Ubuntu...not just to Linux...but to Ubuntu. It was gradual and done in phases rather than all at once. There are other European agencies that have made the switch, too. (Key words: France open source on any of the search engines.)

I'm sure there are studies, analyses and evaluations, most likely in French, that can be used instructively if your town actually contemplated such a move.

That said, sea_dawg is absolutely correct...the human/worker/training component of such a switch is going to be the most expensive part of it.

[silvate99]

From the old times:

Unisys is the Burroughs® company with a new and wiped name, that in the past use to be a IBM competitor...
...for some reason, Burroughs® becomes Unisys and their light start to turned off in some places...
...about the question Win/Linux, thinking Linux in long term is the solution...

[velle frak]

For what it's worth, there is a track record of government offices moving from Window to Linux.

Both the French National Assembly and the Gendarmiere (National Police) switched from Windows to Ubuntu...not just to Linux...but to Ubuntu. It was gradual and done in phases rather than all at once. There are other European agencies that have made the switch, too. (Key words: France open source on any of the search engines.)

I'm sure there are studies, analyses and evaluations, most likely in French, that can be used instructively if your town actually contemplated such a move.

That said, sea_dawg is absolutely correct...the human/worker/training component of such a switch is going to be the most expensive part of it.

German ministry changed from Debian back to Windows. Officially because users couldn't work with it, analytically because there was no political backup to the project.

My 2 cents (and many have this opinion too): if you want users to switch from Windows to linux, first try switching them from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice or LibreOfiice. Once you get there, the rest is easy ;).

[tgalati4]

Not to mention the fact that most local governments have to tie into state systems and there's a lot of legacy code (that will only run in Windows or other weird systems). You would have to hire programmers that understand the legacy systems to program new interfaces to run in Linux to maintain access. It's not impossible, but that can be a major hurdle to swapping out computers in government offices.

[wizard10000]

The cost of sustainment generally isn't the issue in an OS migration, it's the cost of migration.

Software costs generally make up less than 10% of a medium-to-large IT budget while better than 70% is people costs and those costs *will* spike during an OS migration.

The city employee that saves $300 in software licenses will save the city $300 if it requires no technician time to migrate him and his data to a new OS, no requirement to commit training dollars, there are no applications to recode and redeploy (and governments have quite a few proprietary applications) and if the user never calls the helpdesk.

I've done a cost benefit analysis for migration to Linux for a medium-sized federal agency and although long-term savings were around 12% considering software licensing and extended hardware lifecycles the cost of migration - even if leveled over three years - scared the heck out of management.

edit: Same agency's migration from WinXP to Windows 7 in 76 locations over 120 days (3,300 users) cost three million bucks over their annual IT budget with zero expenditures for training and an anticipated 10% spike in helpdesk calls and 5% increase in deskside visits. No applications had to be recoded but they all had to be tested.

[webcabbie]

so.. we all agree that there would be NO immediate savings but the savings over ten years could be significant.

my town gives this company 500k every year and we have an MIS department.

[wizard10000]

so.. we all agree that there would be NO immediate savings but the savings over ten years could be significant.

my town gives this company 500k every year and we have an MIS department.

Without looking at the city's IT infrastructure and the budget for same it'd be hard to determine whether 500K was money well-spent or not. My salary and benefits package costs a little more than we pay for an expert-level sysadmin on our IT services contract.

[webcabbie]

I`ll get the details of the contract and post them here. I just don't see how we have an MIS staff and pay for this too. The Mayor told me it was mostly for software licensing. I imagine we buy tons of office products. If that is the case I would like to see them migrate to Google/open office/Libre something free.

One thing I am unsure about I was told once by some REd Hat nerd that Corporate America would never be able to migrate to Ubuntu because Ubuntu infringes on so many patents and the only reason they get away with it is because they give it away and don't charge for it.

[wizard10000]

I`ll get the details of the contract and post them here. I just don't see how we have an MIS staff and pay for this too. The Mayor told me it was mostly for software licensing. I imagine we buy tons of office products. If that is the case I would like to see them migrate to Google/open office/Libre something free.

One thing I am unsure about I was told once by some REd Hat nerd that Corporate America would never be able to migrate to Ubuntu because Ubuntu infringes on so many patents and the only reason they get away with it is because they give it away and don't charge for it.

If your town has a contract with Microsoft then your software may be a sunk cost. We have a five-year contract with MS where what they formerly called Desktop Pro licensing (licenses for current or any previous version of Windows and Office plus server and Exchange client access licenses) runs us about $200 per user per year - we true up with MS once a year and generally end up writing them a check ;)

$500K doesn't buy you a whole lot of contractors - I guess it'd depend on the size of your town, its location and what the contractors do.