Mandrakesoft to migrate 1500 French government servers

French Ministry of Equipment chooses Mandrakesoft to migrate office 
and infrastructure servers to Linux
http://www.mandrakesoft.com/company/press/pr?n=/pr/business/2490

Moreno Valley, California; Paris, France; July 9th, 2004 - The French 
Ministry of Equipment's migration to Linux project is replacing 1,500 
office and infrastructure Microsoft Windows NT servers with 
Mandrakelinux Corporate servers. Mandrakesoft, the premier European 
Linux player, was also chosen for deployment, training and support for 
its Linux solution.

The French Ministry of Equipment has approximately 100,000 agents, 
located throughout France, in several services: central 
administration, local administration, technical services and 
navigation services. With 160 remote locations, including 102 local 
administrations, the Ministry's IT infrastructure is composed of more 
than 60,000 workstations and 2,000 Microsoft Windows NT servers near 
end of useful life.

The Ministry of Equipment's central administration for IT (DCSI) is 
managing the migration's technological drive, in order to guarantee 
the information system's coherency and the use of state of the art 
technologies. Under its control, the Linux server migration project 
began in November 2003. It will continue through the end of 2005, to 
ensure a progressive deployment at the national scale.

The migration was established in terms of technical and organizational 
requirements. In order to meet the project's needs, two specific Linux 
distributions based on Mandrakelinux Corporate Server were developed.

To benefit from technology monitoring, technical assistance and 
personalized training, the Ministry has also subscribed to the 
Mandrakesoft Corporate Club.

With Mandrakesoft, the Ministry chose an alternative to proprietary 
software, and this is a significant step towards technological 
independence and the guarantee of enduring public standards for its 
information systems. This large scale project is in concordance with 
the French government's intent to promote technologies based on public 
standards, to open public markets to more competition, and also to 
reduce IT costs.

François Bancilhon, CEO of Mandrakesoft, declared: "We are delighted 
to see Mandrakesoft's work in terms of server products and services 
crystallize in such a large project. This is the proof that 
Mandrakesoft solutions now fit perfectly with enterprise scale 
requirements. This project is our first achievement among several 
similar new ones, and is a sign of Mandrakesoft's dynamic growth".

About Mandrakesoft

Mandrakesoft is the publisher of the popular Mandrakelinux operating 
system, one of the most fully-featured and easy to use Linux systems 
available. The company offers its enterprise, government and 
educational customers a complete range of GNU/Linux and Open Source 
software and related services. Mandrakesoft products are available in 
more than 120 countries through dedicated channels and also from 
Mandrakestore.com, the company's online store. Number 1 in several 
countries, Mandrakesoft has won many awards for quality and technical 
innovation. "Born on the Internet" in late 1998, Mandrakesoft has 
offices in the United States and France. Mandrakesoft is traded on 
Paris Euronext Marche Libre (ISIN Code: FR0004159382/MLMAN; Reuters 
code: MAKE.PA) and the US OTC market (stock symbol MDKFF).

http://www.mandrakesoft.com