Posts Tagged ‘openoffice.org’

Open Source Saves Malaysian Government RM188 Million

A money clipBack in January 2009, we found out that the Malaysian Government had saved about RM40 million using open source. In a little over a year, that number has been topped: over the past six years, the total costs savings are now quoted to be RM188.39 million (USD$58.54 million)! That’s a hell of a lot of money for software licenses, don’t you think?

Worth noting is that before the OSS Master Plan started, there were zero companies supporting OSS registered with the Ministry of Finance. Now more than half of the 4,000 companies do (53% is the quoted number). For more information, read the latest newsletter from MAMPU’s OSCC. Key takeaways:

  1. Saved RM188.39 million on software licenses over six years
  2. Successful OSS adoption in 691 government agencies by the end of 2009 (till April 1 2010, the number looks like it has increased to 699 agencies).
  3. In total, 95% of agencies are adopting some form of OSS solution, 87% are using it for back-end infrastructure (here its clear there’s Linux, MySQL in use), and 66% are using OSS on the desktop! (via OpenOffice.org and Firefox)*

* – Software use extrapolated from the actual OSS Master plan, and what was in the report in January 2009. I’m sure Joomla! is also used quite heavily, but never recall seeing it as the choice for CMS in the plan.

Open Source saves Malaysian Government RM40 million

Today, Dinesh pointed us out to the fact that MAMPU/OSCC saves RM40 million with open source. That’s about USD$12 million dollars!

I quote, from the report:

Savings on licensing fee alone by adopting OpenOffice.org have already exceeded RM12 million, which is based on the total installed seats of 12,760 at public sector agencies.

Also, from the same report:

The top three applications being considered by most Public Sector Agencies are:
1. OpenOffice.org — Office Suite
2. Firefox — Web Browser
3. MySQL — Database using Open Source Technology

That is impressive. OpenOffice.org and MySQL both come from Sun Microsystems Inc. Of course I’ve known this for a long time coming, but seeing it in B&W (ok, a colour report!) is of course, most useful. Go on, and read their first quarterly newsletter. More savings to come, I’m certain in 2009.

Cleaning out my tabs

With my MacBook Air, I aim to have less tabs open… Its got something to do with having 2GB of RAM, maybe.

Yebber
Maybe I like somewhat ditsy looking girls, but if you’ve never seen Lunch with Yebber I highly recommend it. Good food within Singapore is the aim. Only complaint? I have to watch it in-browser, and not on my iPod. I find it interesting that Yebber is aiming to pay people in “Yebber dollars” for reviews. Its definitely a motivator….

At the e27 Unconference, it was asked if Wikipedia was started in Singapore, would it have been that successful? I think if the Wikipedia equivalent that is Mahalo, was started in Asia, and there was monetary gain, it will be very successful.

PDF Import in OpenOffice.org
First up, you know that OpenOffice.org 3.0 beta 2 is out now, right? In that case, take a gander at the Sun PDF Import Extension. Its limited: no PDF form support, no editing say in Writer (it just works in Draw and Impress), but its a good start.

Charlene Li leaves Forrester
Its an interesting reason:

I was once asked what was the best career advice I ever received — and it was to plan for job obsolescence every 18 months, because research showed that people typically master a job in that time period and fall into a routine.

I’ve yet to post a review of Groundswell, but in short, its an excellent book.

Religious Social Networking
ZoeCity is a network for Christan folk. The idea behind it is sensible (shared values, etc. – get in the mind of an evangelical person, its “interesting”), and I know what database they’re powered by, and I’m hoping there’s traction for them to hit scalability issues so it’ll be an interesting story to talk about :)

Shinsei embraces open courseware too
Shinsei Bank is releasing their banking methods (normally a closely guarded secret), as open courseware. Of course, it will be licensed under the Creative Commons. They’re on YouTube, so don’t hesitate to watch their video about them announcing the release of their IT methods. Hat tip, Joi Ito.


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