The European Public Sector Switches on to Open Standards

FYI,

This week, almost a dozen governments are announcing significant forward
strides in their move to adopt Linux, confirming the overwhelming momentum
behind the open source operating system.  Country by country, governments
around the world are adopting Linux in record numbers to save costs,
consolidate workloads, increase efficiency and integrate their
infrastructure.

One year after the German Federal Ministry of Interior signed an agreement
with IBM to help federal, state and local governments move to Linux, the
German government announced that more than 500 agencies throughout the
country have signed up for the service.

At an event in Berlin today, IBM is announcing several new government
customers, including Brussels-based Union des Classes Moyennes (UCM), a
government agency that calculates salaries for doctors and dentists;
Finland-based Kela, one of the countryâEUR(tm)s major pension providers; the
French Ministry of Education; the Fraunhofer Institute for High-Speed
Dynamics, in Germany; Agencia Estatal de Administración Tributaria, a
public tax agency for the Spanish Ministry of Finance; and the West
Yorkshire Police force.

In the U.S., the chief information officer of the U.S. Department of Defense
(DOD) issued an agencywide memo outlining the DOD's policy on acquiring,
using and developing open-source software, including Linux.  The formal DOD
approval follows a January report that identified 115 open-source
applications and more than 250 open source projects already in process at
the DOD.

In Beijing, a city government official announced Beijing's intent to
increase its use of Linux for upcoming IT projects. This announcement comes
on the heels of the opening of Beijing's new Linux Research Center, run in
partnership with IBM, to help local companies improve Linux skills and
develop applications that run on Linux.

This week's announcements are more evidence that Linux and an open approach
to computing is a powerful alternative to proprietary systems.  Worldwide,
thousands of customers - including government agencies in France, Spain, UK,
Australia, Mexico, the United States and Japan - have now embraced Linux.

I have included the press release from IBM Germany. 

Regards,

Emma

         THE EUROPEAN PUBLIC SECTOR SWITCHES ON TO OPEN STANDARDS

Government agencies opt for open source as IBM announces a range of  new
deals



Berlin, 26th June 2002

IBM today announced a range of new deals that will allow government agencies
across Europe to opt in to the benefits of open standards software.
Building on recent ground breaking engagements, such as IBM's framework
agreement with the German Ministry of the Interior, these new Linux
contracts will allow a variety of European public sector services - from
police forces to tax departments, universities and pension providers - to
lower their IT costs, improve the responsiveness of their technology and to
create new revenue opportunities for local business communities.

New Linux deals announced today include:  Brussels-based Union des 
Classes Moyennes (UCM), a government agency that calculates salaries for
doctors and dentists; Finland-based Kela, one of the countryâEUR(tm)s major
pension providers; the French Ministry of Education; the Fraunhofer
Institute for High-Speed Dynamics, in Germany; Agencia Estatal de
Administración Tributaria, a public tax agency for the Spanish Ministry of
Finance; and the West Yorkshire Police force.

"Over the past twelve months IBM has seen open standards software like Linux
move squarely into the mainstream for governments across Europe," said Piero
Corsini, IBM VP Public Sector Europe.  "We're now well past the 'tipping
point,' and today's new deals reinforce the wide-ranging benefits that open
standards software brings to the Public Sector.  It's a bigger thought than
just costs - the use of software like Linux allows government agencies to do
more sophisticated things with e-business, and its use also presents local
economies with a range of commercial opportunities - like delivering new
support services and building new applications."

In commercial terms, adoption of the open source operating system Linux
continues to outstrip any other operating system on the market today - at a
compound annual rate of 35 percent*.  According to industry analysts like
Giga and IDC, Linux is also projected to become the dominant server
operating system in the next three to four years. Linux adoption by
governments and other public sector institutions is growing faster than the
overall growth rate -- at a 38% compound annual growth rate from 2001-2006,
compared to 35% overall.

The general market ecosystem that surrounds Linux continues to grow rapidly,
generating new revenue for government agencies and small businesses in new
markets.  Today, more than 44,000 independent software vendors and corporate
developers around the world are working with IBM to create new Linux-based
applications. These ISVâEUR(tm)s are rapidly capitalizing on the number of
Linux-based solutions - in fact IBM saw a growth rate of over 40 per cent of
new Linux applications created world wide last year.

In addition, the number of IBM business partners actively working on 
Linux across the world has grown 800% since the beginning of 2001.

Further details on today's new IBM Linux engagements follow:

Brussels-based Union des Classes Moyennes (UCM) is a government agency that
calculates salaries for small doctors and dentists agencies in the
French-speaking regions of Belgium. To consolidate its workload onto a
single server, UCM has now upgraded to a new Linux-based IBM eServer to
lower its total cost of ownership and to improve the reliability of its
service.

Helsinki, Finland-based Kela is one of that countryâEUR(tm)s major pension
providers. In order to offer more services online and support business
growth, Kela needed to add capacity to its technology infrastructure.

However, it also needed to reduce its IT costs to stay profitable. The
company has now chosen to consolidate its servers, replacing old systems
with two eServer zSeries systems running SuSE Linux. The IBM/Linux solution
gives Kela plenty of processing capacity for future growth. The company has
calculated savings of 80,000 Euros so far and expects greater savings in the
future.

The French Ministry of Education wanted to update and modernize its
education system, not only to maintain a competitive edge, but to better
prepare its students to become professionals and productive citizens. To
achieve these goals, the ministry wanted to increase access to educational
resources, improve collaboration among classes and facilitate exchanges
among teachers nationally and internationally. 
The Ministry of Education has now decided to implement a nationwide
messaging, collaboration and e-learning solution based on IBM Lotus   Notes
and Domino and RedHat Linux V5.  With this system, high school teachers can
set up online bulletin boards to assign and collect homework; graduate
students can do research and get feedback on their   studies; children can
master computer skills theyâEUR(tm)ll need in the workplace; and unique
classes can be offered over the Web to remote locations. In the pilot
project, affecting 5,000 users, the Ministry of Education finds has found
that teachers and researchers are more productive. The Linux platform
ensures that the system can expand while maintaining stability and keeping
costs low.

The Fraunhofer Institute for High-Speed Dynamics, in Freiburg, Germany,
performs applied research for the German government on how materials
behave under shock and impact. The institute needed a high-performance
computing platform to support massively parallel calculations that
simulate crashes and measure reactions. The platform would have to support
specialized scientific applications and be extremely robust and scalable.
The Fraunhofer Institute has now implemented an IBM High Performance
Computing Linux Cluster, consisting of 128 IBM eServer xSeries machines
running Red Hat Linux.  The system's benchmark test reported a capacity of
605 gigaflops, putting it among the top 500 highest-performing
supercomputing systems in the world. The institute can now more effectively
research how materials shatter, deform, flow or vaporize under impact.

Agencia Estatal de Administración Tributaria (AEAT) is a public tax agency
that is part of the Spanish Ministry of Finance. The agency is responsible
for tax collection, tax management, tax auditing and customs management.
AEAT runs an internal network with an intranet, but for security reasons
could not access the Internet through its internal system. This was a major
interference for the AEAT day-to-day business processes, for which it needs
easy and reliable access to the Web to access official information related
to the Central Administration of Spain. A new IBM zSeries and Linux solution
has now been put in place, allowing AEAT to access the web whilst still
maintaining its high security standards. By using IBM's zSeries and Linux to
allow its employees easy access to the web, AEAT has increased its employee
productivity, saved time and reduced costs.

The West Yorkshire Police, with the help of IBM, has now successfully
implemented VIPER, or Video Identity Parade Electronically Recorded, an
electronic video system that helps fight crime by simplifying the picking
out of suspects by witnesses and victims. A traditional parade can cost
£750 to £1,250 and take six to ten weeks to set up, depending on the
availability of a look a like's, witnesses and the suspect.

Today, the new electronic parade can be displayed on any standard laptop
computer, whilst the creation, editing, storage and retrieval of the
electronic snapshots from the video database is done at minimal cost by
using Linux clusters, built up from IBM-supplied industry standard hardware.
The National VIPER Bureau currently undertakes an average of 66 parades a
day, with a peak of 110 parades a day. Using the VIPER system, a video ID
parade can be compiled within 2 hours at a cost of around £200

About IBM
IBM is the world's largest information technology company, with 80 years of
leadership in helping businesses innovate. Drawing on resources from across
IBM and key IBM Business Partners, IBM offers a wide range of services,
solutions and technologies that enable customers, large and small, to take
full advantage of the new era of e-business on demand. For more information
about IBM, visit www.ibm.com.

* Source:  IDC



Emma Wischhusen
Senior Account Manager
Text 100 Public Relations
Global High Technology Public Relations

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