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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)."
Don't miss the battle of the century! David versus Goliath all over again as we watch SCO vs Japan! Don't miss this apocalyptical match, and it's only on paaay per viewww!
By "Operating Costs" does that include the salary of the admins? Windows admins make a lot less than *nix admins (rightly so), so is paying more to the Linux admins included in their estimates?
Aside from that point, I don't know who would trust Microsoft enough to put their confidential financial information, especially payroll, on Windows...
"It's better to have a gun and not need it than need a gun and not have it." ~ Christian Slater, True Romance
Would that make Japan Darl McBride's next stop on his 2003 FUD World Tour?
bad sig...no donut.
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!
Japanese civil servants will be expected to work for free.
Duh, who cares if Linux is making it big in the real world, gaining coroperate sponsorship thus developing quickly into a mature and usable system... what we all want is transparent windows!
The new system is expected to halve operating costs
aaah, so they move from 32 to 64 bit then ?
(ducks for cover)
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
I guess that Darl's trip wasn't particularly persuasive after all. I wonder why.
"For the past year, an intense turf battle between Microsoft and vendors of the upstart Linux has been raging as more corporations and government agencies turn to Linux software to run their desktop and network computer systems to cut costs."
Dictionary.com:
ntr.v. upstarted, upstarting, upstarts (p-stärt)
To spring or start up suddenly.
The banner-ad on the right side of my screen reading that article was the Oracle/Unbreakable Penguin ad. Granted Linux has been gaining ground quickly as-of-late, but it's not exactly been an upstart.
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!)
I think clearly there is some serious thinking going on in Government circles about Open Source and technology projects. Has anybody looked at the EU guidelines? They've even set up a special body to promote open and interoperable stuff across the EU... More stuff
---- The Open Source Record Label : : LOCARECORDS.COM
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.
Is it possible for SCO to sue a country?
No, they're moving from FULL SPEED to HIGH SPEED.
From the article it seems like the Japanese government was running their payroll software on a big proprietary unix system anyway, and was looking to upgrade the underlying system. It is not surprising that they picked Linux to do this - they say one of the reasons for the selection is because the hardware it runs on is cheaper. Maybe they ditched some Sun hardware? Some other vendor?
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.
This is a win for Linux, but not that big of a win, considering the details of the situation. This hardly indicates an expanding mindshare for the platform, just ability to cannibalize another *nix with its freeness.
...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
In other totally unrelated news, George Bush has declared Japan a terrorist state. In a recently published dossier the newly appointed Chief of Staff, Gen S. Ballmer said that Japan posed a significant threat to US security, this was further emphasised by Gen D. McBride, who will be leading Operation Litigation
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
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.
Good one ... but I bet more Japanese percentage-wise know the difference between "its" and "it's" than Slashdot editors. (See article.)
"And this is my boy, Sherman. Speak, Sherman." "Hello." "Good boy."
SCO worker:Captain! We get signal!
Chris Sontag:Main screen turn on!
Japanese dignitary appears, holding Darl McBride captive
Sontag:It's you!
Dignitary:Good evening, gentleman... all your CEOs are belong to us...
IAALS.
Godzilla 2003: SCO vs Godzilla
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.
...what the underlaying OS is for the system as long as I get my paycheck.
Still, it saddens me somewhat to see that the Norwegian Armed Forces - who pay my paycheck - are going to switch to yet another windowsbased system as they are changing the system for keeping track of the money (Prosjekt GOLF). Off course, I know why too, the entire intranet for the Norwegian Armed Forces (FISbasis) are running Windows NT something or other.. you know, the one that looks like Win98...
On the bright side, it appers that a number of the systems I'm not allowed to talk about, running stuff that I'm not supposed to know about *smiles* in places that don't exist, are running on a somewhat modified and customised Linux, since it's considered a better system with regards to uptime and so forth.
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
The Japanese have had an online bill and payroll system for about 10 years now.
Need to pay your electric bill? Pay it at the bank
Need to pay the phone bill? Pay it at the bank
Most companies in the U.S. are just starting to implement this or worst they are starting to charge for it.
Is this an attempted troll? The article clearly indicates that the contracts are with Fujitsu Ltd, IBM Japan Ltd and Oki Electric Industry Co. Insofar as vendor are ever held accountable for any software "failure/screwup/loss", these are pretty reputable organisations. It is also worth noting that Japanese do not think that way. The Japanese mindset is whether these organisations are "reliable partners" not "good potential litigation targets".
I read this to mean that it'd be nice if MS got contracts so infrequently, it'd be newsworthy.
All I can say now, is give it time! MS can only continue saying stuff like "don't pay attention to the man behind the curtain" for so long, and it looks like the time of effective MS FUD is coming to an end (remember when the discussions were about whether or not X was _actually_ going to install Linux, or whether they were using it as a tactic to get better pricing from MS?). At least some governments and companies are finally realizing that they're probably always just better off with OSS (at least, for pretty much anything they might give money to MS for).
PS
And it's news to me because it's Linux, and I'm constantly curious about rate of deployment / penetration (making sure it's still making progress, you could say!)
Considering how badly Microsoft treated their Japanese Xbox employees, maybe part of this decision was the Japanese government wanting to part ways with MS?
According to Doripush (rated "excellent"),
"Of course, Fujistu almost certainly offered Solaris first. However the great and the good in the government said 'Yes, well and good but the OS with the most popular appeal is Linux.' So they went for Linux. When offered by three companies, Linux is also easier to swallow."
See the Japanese are not the only ones who can play copycat!
"It's not your information. It's information about you" - John Ford, Vice President, Equifax
They're hoping that this Mozilla creature can do something about their bi-annual Godzilla invasions.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
It lies in the fact that instead of paying $x to J. Random Corporation, you pay $.25x to your own programming staff and release enough patches and fixes to keep the community happy (and working on relevant patches, too)
Secondly, of course, is the standard software contract terms: "Vendor is not liable" no matter where you get your stuff.
Finally, they're probably paying for a support contract (from IBM or Oracle, maybe?) which is where the REAL accountability comes in, not from the specific software vendor.
"America has done some terrible things. But I know that Americans don't cheer when innocents die." -Dave Barry
If you use portable languages and portable GUI toolkits, then the OS itself matters very, very little. You could run a solid payroll application under Windows, OS X, BSD, you name it.
Of course it matters: why would you want to develop and run your application framework on an OS that costs you licensing fees, requires proprietary hardware, has a security track record that resembles swiss cheese, has frequent downtime or requires constant babysitting?
The OS does matter.
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.
to about 350 Billion Yen a year thats what, 5$ USD?
also, Linux development is now on Japan's payroll.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
For years Microsoft's server growth has, in large part, come from UNIX to Windows migrations. Microsoft used the high price/performance ratio from x86 chips to steal marketshare from UNIX. The fact that Linux is starting to capture these sales is a big deal for the folks at Microsoft. Microsoft currently has a price/earnings ratio of 30. That means that if they want to keep their stock price up where it currently is that they have to show a significant amount of revenue growth. Even if Linux doesn't cut into Windows' server marketshare it is still robbing Microsoft of growth potential.
As for the desktop, Microsoft already has nearly 100% of that market. Part of the reason that Microsoft changed their licensing scheme is that raising prices was the only way to get any growth out of the desktop market. Microsoft doesn't have anywhere to go on the desktop but down.