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British Health System Looks at Linux
DanBrusca writes "The Observer is reporting that Britain's biggest employer, the National Health Service, may ditch Microsoft due to mounting licence costs. 'Richard Granger, NHS IT director, has ordered a trial of a Linux-based system from Sun Microsystems as part of a UKP2.3 billion computer modernisation plan. The plan could see Java Desktop software rolled out across the NHS's 1 million staff and 800,000 computers to replace Microsoft's Windows operating system and Office suite of programmes.'"
Linux is an 'open-source' system for running computers invented by a young Finnish student in 1991 and refined by thousands of programmers working together across the internet.
how long until they stop seeing it necessary to give linux a definition? i kinda wonder why they feel like 'quoting' open-source in this too, do they think they're lying? =D
My other sig is an import.
The National Health Service, Britain's biggest employer, is considering ditching Microsoft software after a row over mounting licensing costs.
What's the chance that MS will be offering them a heavily discounted plan after this.
I might be a little cynical but could it just be the NHS trying to get a better deal from MS?
Sun seem to have done the right thing, at the right time. I assume the Java Desktop thingo doesnt have huge licence fees, because then there would be no point in people using it, if their sole reason was to get away from Microsoft!
:)
Good on Sun! Someone had to do it, and really, who else could have pulled it off? And dont say Apple
Great, Grand, Wonderful... Everybody on the BUS!
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Of the doctors in my hospital who know what an OS is, Linux gets a mention more often than not as a preferred platform.
Most people here run basic MS Office apps (and usually run them basically) and connect to legacy databases using terminals. Some people make their own Access databases but the IT people really hate that - you know how it goes: individual makes DB in Access, time passes, undocumented and poorly implemented Access database becomes the lynchpin of a Ward, originator leave, everyone's up shit creek.
We are migrating from '95 to XP and everyone is getting lots of training. This training could just as easily have been applied to Linus apps.
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
However, for the sake of argument: if you look in general at a Linux-based system like this one versus a Microsoft-based solution, you will indeed find it is true that the Linux-based solution will be far less susceptible to forced upgrades. This is because Microsoft has two covert methods by which it forces upgrades:
- Associated software. If you go with the MS OS, you're probably going to be going with other MS software as well, for example Word. If you want to do this, you're going to continuously over time upgrade Word, both because MS continuously updates Word, and because you will have to keep upgrading Word in order to work with the new-version Word documents people send you. Over time this means that you will have to eventually upgrade your OS as well in order to run the newest version of Word. That sort of thing. With a Linux solution, you have access to the code and have the ability if you need to to (in an analogous situation) alter the OpenOffice and/or Linux itself so that a newer version of OpenOffice runs on an older version of Linux, or add support for newer document formats to the older OpenOffice you were running.
- Hardware upgrades. Over time, what if you want to perform partial hardware upgrades on some of your systems, or add new systems, but you wish to keep your network homogenous from a software standpoint? If MS does not choose to continue to add support to its OS for new hardware, and they often do not, then what do you do? You will be unable to work with the new hardware without performing an upgrade. With the Linux solution you have the ability to add support for new hardware yourself if the vendor chooses not to.
Both of these cases imply on the Linux side changes to the code, which is a sort of upgrade. However the open source model provides the *possibility* of doing minor upgrades to bring over crucial new features, rather than (say) having to upgrade all the way to WinXP from W2K, with all the baggage that implies, just to get one tiny little feature. Moreover they give you a large degree of flexibility in your choice of vendors. If the British health system needs changes to the system they are using, they may go to Sun and purchase the upgrade, OR they can hire an independent contractor of their choice, point them at the code, and say "add these features".And note that with everything I have said here, you can replace "Linux" with "Open Source" and "MS" with "Closed Source" and it works just fine.
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hopefully moving to Linux will help combat the problems various NHS trusts had with recent computer virus attacks - I know of one Trust where for weeks access to online medical records was only possible for a short amount of time every day.. makes one wonder how big the human cost of computer viruses is..