Another Win to Lin story from Kerala - Savings = 1 Crore

Source - Mathrubhumi, the lading newspaper in Kerala, dated 2nd Oct 2007

I saw an article in yesterday's news paper about KSEB (The Kerala State Electricity Board) move from Win OS to Ubuntu. Really un-belivable but true story.

During late 2002, Microsoft® came into the picture with an offer for free of cost application software, training etc. in return to selection of Microsoft® products in respect of operating system (OS) and database management
system (DBMS). Price water house coopers (PwC) was selected by Microsoft® for the development of application software.

Tha pplication they developed was useless and hell lotta bugs (of course MS can't be blamded directly, but the deal was for OS and RDBMS (SQL server) sale mainly and they got 4.5 Crore !!! ). They promised a neat app in return which they failed to deliver.

As the application didn't work, the officials stopped installing MS Windows and RDBMS they supplied in the remaining systems and asked MS to take back it and give the money back. That came to Rs.10,000,000 (1 Crore !).

They could have saved the remaining - 3.5 Crore too - if the officials / Goverment people were aware of alternatives.

Finally they decided for in-house development based on open source softwares and Ubuntu as OS. So far it is working perfectly saving a lot of $$$.

Another classic example how MS does 'great' marketing and business.

A PDF file is available Here which is from the KSEB officers website which explains it all.

great news

Good very good

I have read it in orkut kerala-linux-club something where the chief officer of kseb explaining the shift from M$.

L

Good news! Where are all the MS junkies? Wait till they pop up here too if u know what i mean gx_saurav for example.....

ohh yes, I've NOT seen gx_saurav from many days....

Where are u gx ???

^^^ "Both" are here only. They seems busy in the ' Zune 2 and Flash Zune Official' thread !

WOW. Go linux conquer the world.

din said:
^^^ "Both" are here only. They seems busy in the ' Zune 2 and Flash Zune Official' thread !

So, should we send some Invitation to them ??

It's a case of PwC goofed up big time for M$ and nothing more. If the project would have been given to any other sub-contractor the problem would not have been so severe. To come to think of it whatever could be done in M$ can be done in Linux and vice versa but in Linux it is for much less cost. So the moral of the story Subcontractor Goofeth Linux Wineth.

Main thing for MS was selling their OS and RDBMS and the application for billing was not at all an important thing for em.

For KSEB and Govt, important thing was billing software, OS and RDBMS were second to that but they agreed on MS as the top officials were not much aware of alternatives + MS played dirty tricks + MS agreed to provide application + 'some decision makin guys' might have got $$$$.

It is like billing software is important for KSEB or Windows OS !!!!

Has anyone read the report, a PIV 2.2ghz machine for 99,000/- a piece

hailgautam said:
If the project would have been given to any other sub-contractor the problem would not have been so severe.

its good tht it happend !!! KSEb moved to linux .. if some other contractor was setting it up he wud have used windows based sytem & added more buggs to the KSEB which is allready filled with political 'bugs'.

gary4gar said:
Has anyone read the report, a PIV 2.2ghz machine for 99,000/- a piece

WTF, So much for saving 1 crore out of 4.5, when actually they were only supposed to spend that much. Naturally someone ate the buitter off the deal and some luscious butter it was.

i have seen those AMD pc's packs not opened dusting n resting in kseb offices in rural areas!sure bhrastachar!the sad thing is they were not even using these pc's.not to mention that our kseb meter is not working for the past 1 year.but get regular bill which obviously is lesser than what it may come.

efficiency of the dept is gr8