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Japan To Do Payroll On Linux
strannik writes "Yahoo/Reuters is reporting that the The Japanese Government will use Linux for it's payroll system. Fujitsu LTD, IBM Japan LTD and OKI Electronic Industry Co. will develop the system by March of 2004. The new system is expected to halve operating costs (to about 350 Billion Yen a year)."
I'm always wondering why doesn't people use Java for such large developments... If tomorrow Linux is declared illegal because of the SCO suit (very unlikely though), you just reinstall FreeBSD and keep on going.
Multi-platform is an invaluable freedom on such projects where deployment and operating costs are so high
Write boring code, not shiny code!
350,000,000,000.00 JPY Japan Yen = 2,974,249,477.00 USD United States Dollars
Can someone explain how they will save nearly 3 billion dollars by using Linux?
MS licenses can't cost that much!!! (really!)
Company/Government X is using linux to do Y! woot!
It would be much nicer if it was news everytime microsoft landed a big contract.
/bin/fortune | slashdotsig.sh
Since when does a payroll system require $300 million a year to MAINTIAN?
Must be like one of those $500 screwdriver type deals the US Govt likes to pull.
Additionally is cheap...
...would be how much would they have saved (relative to their old mainframes, of course) if they had decided on a Microsoft-based solution?
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
It doesn't say in the article that they have been running windows in the past. Just that Microsoft wanted them to use it. Maybe they are already running some *nix variation and already have a knowledgable staff, mass layoffs and new hires would probably cost as much the added expense of nix admins... at least for the short term.
Visualize the world of wine
Well... first before I get flamed to death, I will note that I am writing from MozillaFirebird on X11 with a lot of nice graphics support (GL, etc).
That being said, however, one of the nice things about 'nix is that you can trim down the graphics or the GUI (as above, not to indicate that linux can't do advanced GUI). With windows, you're looking at the latest OS every now-and-then just to make sure it runs on your hardware... which usually included a bevy of bloated and distasteful GUI crapulence.
Now, for payroll, we're talking money, calculation, etc... a simple GUI (widget-wise, not necessarily design wise) is all that's needed for the client-side. For the server-side, no GUI needed at all... we're just processing more or less straight numerical data, except for strings on names, account ID's, etc.
As always, the beauty of linux is choice. For your accounting system, you can eliminate a lot of headache by not using the unnecessary GUI components. In windows, you often don't have as many options in that direction (except disabling "fade effects" and other silliness).
I fully expect linux to take root and grow within the financial sector more and more as time passes - as long as you don't have MS-only software, there's just no need for an MS Operating System in such an environment.
Windows admins make a lot less than *nix admins
But you need fewer admins to maintain the same number of machines when they are running *nix.
I think you may want to look carefully at one of the major vendors that is developing this Linux-based computing system: IBM.
You know, the same IBM that spent over US$1 billion to port Linux over to run on S/390 and AS/400 hardware. In short, the so-called "Linux wins" are mostly due to the fact they're getting IBM big iron computers running Linux.
Payroll systems are generally about databases and applications--not about operating systems. I suspect most US payroll systems are in whatever OS the company uses for other applications. Big companies do their payroll on big equipment. Small companies do their stuff on MS or Linux, or whatever. There is a lot of outsourcing in the industry...out sourced payroll seems to end up on big Sun boxes etc.
Since payroll was one of the first big applications to be put into computers, I suspect that there is a ton of different legacy systems out there on a variety of machines.
Regardless, payroll is a data application, so I find it odd that the OS is the primary consideration in a payroll application.
BTW, the mention of "large systems" suggests mainframes to me, so potentially no-one's lost on this as it was probably IBM mainframes.
I'd be willing to wager that most of the cost savings will be in manpower, usability, etc, of the home-built software itself. Additionally, unless they're deploying Linux on the exact same hardware that their old system was running on, you can't credit Linux with the operating cost savings.
For example, let's say that they were running the old payroll system on some cluster of Pentium 2 or Pentium 3 machines. Those machines supported X concurrent users. With today's hardware, you can support X concurrent users with half the amount of hardware. Remove half the hardware, and you can potentially remove half your support resources. Congratulations, you've halved your operating costs.
I think "using Linux" is just a side-note to this story. Systems evolve, and get easier to use, more powerful, and require less support, regardless of which operating system they're using.
I'm sure Microsoft wanted them to use their software, but Linux is more likely to win when the competition is another *nix. Microsoft probably couldn't meet the requirements of 'runs old payroll software' or something, no matter how low they could price their software to compete.
... the real movers and shakers are flying to Munich, or having the president of Peru come crawling to them in Redmond, and paying bribes...excuse me, campaign contributions... to keep Linux deployment at bay).
It is unlikely the GNU/Linux is going to be running their old software either (hence they are "developing a new system" for deployment by Q2 2004), although they may be able to reuse some code. However, coming from a mainframe environment to a Linux environment doesn't really imply that they will be able to reuse much more code than they would have had they chosen Windows instead.
However, given Microsoft's incessant moving targets, incompatible windows releases, forced upgrade paths, forced obsolescence, licensing limitations and costs, and labor intensive administrative and maintenance requirements, stealth DRM and backdoor technologies, and woeful security record, it is unsurprising that governments are chosing Linux over Windows.
Microsoft themselves have said they are focusing the bulk of their efforts on combating the adoption of Linux in government ($CO is but a sideshow of this effort
It is quite telling that despite all of these efforts on the part of Redmond the stream of countries dumping Windows as well as older mainframe and *NIX platforms in favor of Linux and other free software efforts (FreeBSD, etc.) is quickly becoming a torrent and shows every sign of escaliting into a flood.
Don't kid yourself. Wins like this are big for Linux adoption, and they are a huge blow to the monopolists of Redmond.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
The biggest cost savings come from systems architecture reorganisation. If you can architect your systems so that they require only log(N) support rather than N support people per box then you can make some very large savings.
You don't necesssarily cut your costs in half by reducing the number of systems or even staff by half.
It's very easy to architect Linux systems to require just log(N) support people, it's far far more difficult to architect Windows the same way.
So you've got to get the architecture right and yes, the OS can make that easy or it can make it difficult or even impossible.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.