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Telstra To Put Linux On Desktop
StArSkY writes "The Australian has an article today outlining how Telstra, Australia's largest Telco, is switching to Linux and open source on the desktop. Their pilot has been quite successful, and improved stability has been noticed. On trial are Star Office, Gnome, Mozilla and Wyse. Spending AUD$1.5 Billion a year on IT, means Telstra using Open Source is a massive boost to Open Source developers and support professionals. Not mentioned in the Article is that Telstra also just Dumped IBM Global Services, and will be running IT in-house again! Telstra will be hiring Linux-savvy people I think..."
Telstra will be hiring Linux-savvy people I think..."
Outsourcing companies rejoice! India rejoices. US, UK drink wine in the park!
"It's not your information. It's information about you" - John Ford, Vice President, Equifax
"... [O]ur goal is to complete... at the end of October, draw our conclusions and rapidly roll it out."
Will we be surprised if, two months from now we hear: "Alas, all 500 test subjects hated it terribly; we'll stick with Windows. Oddly, they all seem to have inherited $1M from abroad.".
Most likely the #1 Unfunny Meta/Moderator on
For the last couple of years they have been increasingly conservative, increasingly anti-competitive and increasingly stupid. They artificially inflate their Telstra Shop profits with their exorbitant call costs and line rentals (Really, charging $20/month to a rural person who makes 2 calls a month???). Not to mention how they ripped off millions of mum and pop investors with the whole T2 failure. However. Supporting Linux is a good thing, so ummm, I'm a little confused about how I am supposed to feel about Telstra now...
It starts with a small scope. In some, small, area, Linux is "good enough".
Then, somebody asks: "What about..."? - and it works there, too.
And then somebody else asks: "Well, it worked here, what about..."? and it's good enough there, too.
This process continues until some major company decides to bet their farm on it - and it's good enough for that.
Suddenly, everybody sees it. Everybody recognizes the value. This is a turning point. One of many, but one of the big ones.
Linux is now widely recognized as "the future". As a Linux user, I routinely have conversations where Linux is "the future" and it's not questioned anymore.
With paying clients. And other vendors.
Linux is on its way. In 10 years, it'll be the default, like Windows is today still.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Yeah, loving Telstra for moving to linux may still be hard cause quite frankly Telstra sucks. But you guys have gotta start doing what I have been doing for a year now. Become a telephone whore.
I've never stayed with one company for more than about 4 months before I switch to some new 'welcome back' plan another phone company is offering. The only way services will increase while prices drop is if there is considerable competition. Do your bit for Australian telecommunications and be a phone whore.
I must admit I am currently with Telstra but Optus has offered me a 'hard to refuse deal' to come back to them. I'm just waiting to see if my local Telstra affiliate Cooee will beat them both.
So change you phone companies like you change your undies ... once a quarter.
"Too slow chicken marengo" - The Cat
Perhaps some of the IT savings can be ploughed into letting me download more than 3Gb per month.
Hmm... I heard a whisper about this earlier, and there were suspicions earlier when I read the Financial Review and was told that they need to halve their IT spending.
I don't know if Telstra are doing this because of the benefits that Open Source could provide, or cause they've been told to save money.
I just hope that they get it right for once. They seem to have enough trouble with their Microsoft products.... (the school's system in South Australia -- run by Telstra -- was down for three hours due to the Blaster worm on Monday, as was a number of Telstra dialup and e-mail....)
Probably about as much as the average home user spends on OSS...
To be quite honest, I'm surprised that more organisations haven't jumped on board the open source bandwagon; especially those who have a skilled IT department (Universities, Telcos, etc). I can understand small business owners wanting to toe the Microsoft line for the sake of being able to get advice from their buddies over red wine and dinner parties (or maybe it's the lack of OSS exposure?), but for those who know what they're doing and can afford to support it, there's savings to be had in open source.
Does anybody know how well Telstra pay? It could be time to dust off the ol' resume...
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Telstra is probably saving more by ditching IBM Global Services than switching to Linux. The businessI work for outsourced all desktop support to IBM Global Services to save money a while ago and employee productivity has dropped due to the poor care of the desktops. They still have not addressed the Blaster and Welchi worms after weeks -- they never patched the desktops. IGS doesn't judge success based on employees being productive but how many "tickets" they can clear. Clearing a ticket does not mean a problem is solved, it just means they were able to push a problem on someone else. Even IGS employees call their ticket system, "ManageNow", "MangleNow". Its freaking scary what they do to you!
If you here that IGS is taking over your support, quit your job! You life will be less frustrating.
(anonymous to stop karma whoring)
Who knows, maybe the money they save can be put towards letting people connect to their 'broadband' service, which they kindly cap at 3gb/month? Or maybe educating our communications minister?
While it's nice to hear that Telstra are switching to Linux, this hardly makes them a good company - they're still monopolistic and evil, as I'm sure any Australian who's tried to get decent broadband will tell you.
They're a pack of lying monopolistic bastards who break the law at every opportunity, employ deceptive advertising practices and screw every other telecom company in the country sideways. They're still half government owned, so we get the worst of both worlds in that respect
Enough about Microsoft, tell us what you think about Telstra?
SMH article about indian company that looks to get deal
Yay me!
lots of universities use OSS heavily
In my line of work I've had a lot of contact with universities, and I must say I've barely seen a whisper of open source usage. Perhaps there are small departments here and there who are getting into it, but if so I'm yet to see it. Good on them if they are, however.
a number of banks (with the proud exception of PestWhack) here in Australia are linux-friendly
I'll put my hand up to being a Westpac customer, and I must say that I've never had any problems using their online banking, either on Linux or Windows (using both Opera and Mozilla Firebird on both operating systems). I have heard of people having lots of problems trying to do online banking on Linux, but I can't say I've ever heard Westpac's name mentioned in conjunction with that. FWIW, I think that Westpac's online banking is quite good compared to that of its competitors.
the biggest sticks in the corporate mud for insisting on Microsoft are the Federal and State governments
This is a landscape that is changing quite rapidly in Australia. The South Australian government is actively trying to pass a bill mandating that all government departments use open source software in preference to Microsoft, et al, where practical. A number of other state governments, including Queensland and (I think) Victoria are watching the case with interest, and if it is a successful program, will more than likely move down the same path. I'm sure it won't be long before this sort of publicity reaches critical mass and other government and corporate entities start to take notice and make the shift.
Having said that, it wouldn't come as a surprise to me if I learned that MS, or other software companies with vested interests in government/big business, started offering financial incentives for these organisations not to switch over to open source...
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There are only two reasons why Telstra would make a press release announcing their intention to use Linux:
(1) 'cos they've found a way to further screw their customers by their use of Linux, or
(2) 'cos they've found a way to further screw their competitors by their use of Linux.
That aside, if you go one step further, and read the article, you see that they're actually not using linux at all. They're beating around the bush with lines about XP and NT and Sun and HP-UX and Solaris and Linux and Citrix and XP-on-a-chip and you-name-it. The article is completely meaningless marketeer speak designed to trick some journo's into picking up on the key words "unix" and "linux", and it worked.
Don't get me wrong, I'm as happy as the next guy if a large corporate makes the switch to Linux, but that's not what this article is about. Never lose site of the fact that Telstra are evil. Every bit as evil as Microsoft or SCO.
I find your ideas intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
The effects that this will cause have to be examined. Some of the comments on this seem to be a little bit too enthusastic.
Telstra is a company of questionable ethics, do you think they are looking at this from the OSS comunity's point of view? No, they are looking to exploit it. They are trying to cut costs, which in the long run is easiest to take care of by reducing how many people you need to maintain the network. If that's their goal, then what's going to happen here is that your software, if you have code that is going to be used their, is going to be exploited to create fewer IT jobs.
Sure, they are supposed to contribute source back in, but what's to stop them if they don't. AFAIK, nobody has ever been forced by law to contribute source back in. Then again, mabey they will.
stuff
They're still half government owned, so we get the worst of both worlds in that respect
Enough about Microsoft, tell us what you think about Telstra
Nah, MS owns half the government.
Just because you can't, doesn't mean you shouldn't.
Microsoft sales reps are constantly told "Never lose an account to Linux - not at any cost"
Telstra are one of Australia's largest Microsoft customers. They spend $AUD1.5Bn/year on IT (not all of this is on Microsoft)
They're now in a good position (having made this all public) to go to MS and say "We've got a problem. We give you too much money. Fix this problem and we can talk"
-kai
Specialist Mac support for creative pros, Melbourne
That being said, we can be glad that they are switching to Linux, because a) it demonstrates that there are sound economic reasons to make the switch (because there's no way in hell Telstra would do it for any other reason), b) they will either employ Linux hackers or pay desktop Linux companies to customise the solution for them, c) a very big company has decided to break the Office file format monopoly, and d) maybe they will be more inclined to support Linux for their customers now that they are running it en masse.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
it means that free software can compete purely based on "value for money", which is far better news than if someone choose free software based on ideology.
"Create fewer IT jobs" is also good, if it means more efficient methods to produce the same goods and services with fewer people. It is called productivity increase, and free software has a great potential for that. Increasing productivity is the only thing that can make a society richer. It is sometimes resented by workers in fields that experience less demand, but that is a temporary effect until the job market has adjusted to the new situation.
One of the reason I release my software freely is that I hope it will be "exploited" as you call it. I just don't want to find myself in a situation where I have to compete with non-free versions of my own software, which is why I protect it with the GPL. As long as people keep their changes to themselves, that is find But if they share them, they have to share them freely.