French military ditches Microsoft, saves 50 million euro’s with Ubuntu

“This year the IT budget will be reduced by 70 percent. This will not affect our IT systems.”

This Thursday, in the city of Utrecht in the Netherlands, Guimard gave a presentation on the move from the Microsoft operating system Windows, to the open-source, GNU/Linux-based operating system Ubuntu.

Most of the savings in the military are coming from not having to buy software licenses anymore. Up until 2004 the Gendarmerie acquired 12.000 to 15.000 licences annually. “Since July 2007 we have bought two hundred Microsoft licences. If one of us wants a new PC, it comes with Ubuntu. This encourages our users to migrate.”

Myself, I have already moved to the open-source side of things, running Ubuntu on my desktop at home. I think that with the advancements in Linux technologies, more and more companies and people will be switching from Windows or Macs to the open-source technologies.

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