Migracija na Linux završena sa EPIC FAIL

Implementation delays, immature software, disgruntled employees whose displeasure allegedly culminated in the creation of a home page dedicated to venting their gripes and who were so busy grappling with Linux that they no longer managed to do their jobs – all of this smacked of tax payers' money being pumped into an inherently doomed project. Failure has now become a reality, but pointing the finger at Linux alone would be as short-sighted as it is convenient. A look behind the scenes reveals that many factors contributed to the project's demise.

Nominating the Scalix web interface as a replacement for Outlook proved to be an ill-advised choice:

Humans are creatures of habit and like to stick with the things they know, if only for convenience. Every software migration will produce a certain percentage of employees who refuse to adopt anything new.

The Canton's IT director probably felt safe because of an internal staff survey: The H's associates at heise open were told by a project-related source that 80% of the affected Cantonal staff were happy with the new environment, 10% complained about various teething troubles, and "only" 10% were entirely unhappy. However, that 10% amounted to more than 100 employees – and they are the ones who shouted the loudest. The disgruntled staff reportedly even created their own home page – now no longer available – for letting off steam.

A number of custom applications couldn't readily be replaced with Linux solutions. Then there were problems with the Konsul database Solothurn uses for processing government council decisions. Because the existing Windows data couldn't simply be migrated, the Ambassador project was chosen to provide the required interoperability with programs such as OpenOffice. However, although now completed, the introduction of Ambassador was postponed until the end of 2010 to fix some performance issues. The dependency on Konsul meant that none of the government council members used a Linux system.

The dependency on Konsul meant that none of the government council members used a Linux system.

Solothurn: Problems exaggerated

On our demand, said Kurt Bader, head of the office responsible for the migration of computer science and Organisation (AIO) that it currently only give a bigger problem, and there in the webmail client, Scalix. It lacks a task management in the program. This was promised by Scalix for March 2010 but has not yet been delivered. In addition, there are some there for the user to the "convenience functions" that still have the program. Otherwise, the client lacked nothing, even web-based games is that it ultimately does not matter.

Correctly is an indication of the newspaper article that the introduction of Ambassador has been postponed to 01/01/2011. Although the program was already at 1.4. well advanced, but still had the speed to be desired, so that it was not accepted by users. Ambassador is a comprehensive system that are coupled to the numerous other specialized applications. It was written on behalf of the AIO of the English company Zylog. It solves the CM from the Swiss Consul-developed computer science. Since CM-computer science would develop contrary to initial promises no Linux version of consul, received the AIO and had the source code of the renamed Zylog Ambassador in software ported to Java.

The operating system relies on Solothurn Univention Linux. Support for the recourse to a local company, but there are also direct contacts with Univention. About 800 of the 1300 simultaneously operating users of the Canton of work daily with the Linux Desktop, (excluding the missing Webmail functions) to the satisfaction of users, such as Kurt Bader says. Excluded from the migration, the courts - not for technical reasons, but because users were uncompromising in MS Outlook.

Some users continue to make the migration resistance - and this was greatly exaggerated in the article of the Solothurn newspaper. It consisted in the alleged problems with printing only a temporary problem that occurred after the update of VMWare server, running the virtualized CUPS server, three weeks ago and was corrected with a change in attitude in the VMWare server. Overall, according to the chief officer, the system extremely stable and low maintenance. Even now saves about managing a 1.5 million francs per year, and have been for years. The required expertise of immigration opponents, according to Kurt Bader is not likely to bring very much new. The final migration date Ambassador to stand on the 01/01/2011, and with the savings, there is an additional argument for the migration. The fact that the policy still has not decided otherwise seems currently unlikely, at least the Government still shows a favorable attitude to the project.

Schiessl refused to make a comparison: "We do not have a goal to compare total cost of ownership. Microsoft stopped supporting NT 4.0, so we must migrate."