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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!
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.
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
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.
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
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.
First of all I believe they're saving somewhere near 3 billion dollars...
Secondly I work for a department that supports a payroll system for about 10k Employees and I'd guess that for Developers alone we shell out about $250k a year to support the system. And this isn't even a home-rolled system, we're talking maintenance of a system that we pay for. With all liscenses included and hardware costs, I'm sure we're well over $500,000 a year.
Thats for 10k Employees, how many employees does the Japanese Govt. have?
They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty nor security
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.
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.
It's so much easier to put together a cluster of Windows machines when you don't know a lot about it that a cluster of *nix.
.ISO, boot the clients via network or .ISO and presto! A Mosix Cluster!
Not any more! Search google for 'cluster knoppix'. Or go here
It's this simple: boot a server with the
It's a facinating this to turn a Windows network into a temporary Mosix cluster in under an hour. Pull the CD's out and reboot, and your back to Windows. (Or other OS)
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
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.
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.
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