Scotland cops go back to Microsoft

The Central Scotland Police are ripping out their Linux boxes and replacing them with Windows servers, according to a report on Silicon.com. Central Scotland has signed a three-year contract with Microsoft worth $100,000 (60,000 British pounds) a year that includes Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Windows XP and Microsoft Office for 1,000 users. The police division estimates savings of 30% on maintenance costs and 25% on staff time.

The force has run Linux domain and file servers since 1999 and web servers, LDAP, firewalls, database and mail servers also ran on Linux. There will still be cases where the force stays with Linux - basically where there are no interoperability issues and the open source software continues to meet business needs.

A driving force in the change was the need for compability with other forces and agencies. In a Microsoft press release, David Sterling, CSP's head of IT, said: "Although an open-source solution met our needs in the past, it was becoming more difficult to maintain in the increasingly joined-up environment of today. As the need for increased integration and compatibility with other criminal justice agencies and community partners grows, the value of similar infrastructures becomes more important. A shift to a largely Microsoft infrastructure gives us the ideal platform from which to drive this convergence forward.