'No downsides' to Linux, says procurement official

In an address to delegates at a NSW Department of Commerce exhibition on Wednesday, official Cameron Parle touted the benefits of open-source to state departments and agencies, at one stage referring to wearing his own metaphorical "red hat", a reference to the Linux vendor of the same name.

"There's no doubt you can deploy Linux in any situation, it's truly robust and flexible," he said.

"It has the potential to save huge sums of money.

"You get it all with Linux, there's no downsides."

Parle's speech covered the NSW government's recently-created procurement panel for open source (Linux) enterprise software and services. The 11-vendor panel, which Parle helped create, was designed to cut the time and money agencies would otherwise spend issuing their own tenders for open-source software.

"We want to be able to consider open source and feel confident about it," Parle told attendees.

The professional services vendors included in the panel could demonstrate the total cost of ownership savings of adopting Linux to an interested agency's particular infrastructure, according to Parle.

"You don't get companies like IBM, Red Hat, Novell, committing to Linux if there's no money in it," he said.

Vendors on the panel include CSC, Dell, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Novell, Red Hat, Sol1, Starcom, Sun Microsystems and System Integration Services.