Flinders University gives open source the boot
- 17 November, 2009 10:01
- Comments (11)
Flinders University will migrate its 16,000 students over to Microsoft’s Live@edu email platform from mid-2010 after dropping an in-house open source solution.
The Adelaide-based university signed the deal after a 12-month trial of the internally developed open source platform, Google and other hosted email systems.
The university’s infrastructure manager, Dean Gawler, said Live@edu will give IT staff greater flexibility to concentrate on internal student management systems.
“We were looking to maximise how we used our internal resources and infrastructure, and we thought if people are out there who can provide email services just as effectively than we can, we’d be crazy to not consider those,” he said.
“Then we will be able to use our internal recourses to do other things and bring more benefit to the university.”
The move follows the University of Sydney, which began rolling out Live@edu in May, the Queensland University of Technology, which began in March and most-recently Perth-based Curtin University.
The Live@edu suite of online applications includes Microsoft Outlook Live, Microsoft Office Live Workspace and SkyDrive storage, which provides students with a 10GB mailbox capacity.
In addition to a hosted email account, the students will also have access to Windows Live Messenger and file sharing, Windows Live Spaces for personal web publishing, blogging and photo sharing and FolderShare and a private peer-to-peer network.
The university is now working on the design and planning of the migration.
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Comments
Anonymous
Once again, the most important link in the 'freedom' chain, education institutes, are selling out to Microsoft. There seems to be not much point for open-source in Australia as everyone including the government (NSW rollout of Windows laptops to schools) seems ready to burn taxpayers money and nobody seems to mind it at all! "No worries", indeed.
GHABUNTU
"...maximise how we used our internal resources and infrastructure.." how do you achieve that when you are rather moving AWAY from cost reduction with Open Source?
Frank
I work in an Australian Uni IT department and I think it's safe to say that Australia is roughly 10 years behind the rest of the world with open source.. The only way real progress will happen here is when European and US companies, governments and teaching institutions have trouble dealing with us here because of the locked in propriety nature of most of our software systems.. at that point we'll be forced to evolve, which is the only way it'll happen in this lifetime.. Most of the reason for the delay is that, near as I can tell, most uni's already have to have volume Microsoft licensing so going the "Microsoft way" in each department is just easier because some other department has already paid for it for you. Case in point is our department recently wanted an internal intranet... they chose Sharepoint despite it not being the best option, simply because it was included in the existing licensing arrangement. Sad but true...
TAFE IT Admin
live@EDU is an excellent solution. It's free and offers advertising-free, school-branded, email, and cloud storage. As a TAFE IT administrator it is a very attractive option and many TAFEs are looking and/or migrating.
I have to wonder if the previous commentators know anything about the service they are deriding or if it's just another case of "it's cool to bash Microsoft".
*Frank - hard to deal with because of using industry standard MS instead of niche linux?
*GHABUNTU - no server and no linux/UNIX admin.
*Anon - it's a free service if you bothered checking!
Piccy
Wow, its no wonder with comments like that, that TAFE certificates are not worth the paper they are printed on.
FYI, implementation alone is going to cost the SA govenment $250,000 just for Dimension Data to implement, so free it aint. Did you bother checking?
And while it may be cool to bash Microsoft, the fact is that Govenment and Commercial organisations all over the world are benefiting from OSS for many different reasons, so wake up and realise that Linux isnt a niche product or you may find yourself left in the dark soon, if not already, which it seems like you are.
Tomas
You're askinkg wrong questions. Ask HOW MUCH did the person pushing the deal made... This is how deals like that work all around the world :(
Anonymous
Microsoft sales did an excellent job. There are no OSS sales teams to "influence" decision makers.
OTOH, they have some issues with their current solution that management doesn't like. It would have been helpful to know the current solution they are leaving.
Anonymous
Fantastic news! Hopefully these switchovers will also result in an outright BAN on the use of open source in a school setting. Our universities should NOT be teaching that knowledge is free. It costs money to make money, folks.
Eruaran
You can bet your bottom dollar its not qualified technicians who made this decision. And you can also bet your bottom dollar that Microsoft will be forcing Silverlight on the students as well. Microsoft has ruinded Deakin's IT reputation in Victoria. To Deakin faculty and students: I do not give a damn what you say or how much you want to whine - Computer Science at Deakin is a running joke at RMIT and LaTrobe. Clearly Flinders isn't paying attention and their standards aren't what they used to be.
Stephen Michael Kuhn - RealByteComputers IT Consul
Oh yes - certainly an uneducated and untalented choice this. I'm left to wonder exactly what kind of kickback is coming and to whom? Anyone worth their salary working in IT is going to fully understand that Microsoft's "sales team" would do/say/bribe in any manner to get "in the door" and "solidify" with a customer. I'm left to wonder if, as this decision would point out, the entire IT staff is Microsoft-centred and are uneducated about the reality of the solutions to the issues they face? I'm more than certain that for the amount of money that is going to be paid out to Microsoft, a single person (who is knowledgeable and trained) could roll out an entire enterprise-style emailing system and MS Office compatible "suite" to the entire uni, and have little maintenance to perform afterwards (oh wait, and NO licensing costs/fees, no major "antivirus/antispyware/antimalware" hiccups as well. Sad this. Too bad that the money is all going overseas to Microsoft instead of staying here in Australia. Good on ya Flinders!
Anonymous
I'd love to know what the enterprise-style calander system was in your scenario, especially when all the users ask for it to sync with there iphone / nokia / other phone your've never heard off untiul there walked through the door.
Please share, enquiring minds would like to know what it is.
In the end its all about the calandar....
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