But this study is sure to create an impact in the minds of more and more people, and ultimately drive Microsoft to their worst nightmare of Open Source taking over the corporate word (at least). But let’s talk about Government Initiative in the Open Source… Now there’s a catch!

WARNING: In the following section, I might sound Frankenstein running after NIC’s to rip it’s neck of it’s body.

IBPS Site may damage your PC

Does government actually support FOSS Initiatives ? I don’t know if you are looking at th small line at the bottom of most of the Government websites, where it says – “Please use Internet Explorer 5.5 or above” or “Best viewed on Internet Explorer 5.5 or above” or something analogous. Does it

SBI site is on ASP (Microsoft Active Server Pages) meaning NOT FOSS, they are using Microsoft Technologies and are actually not leveraging the benefits of FOSS where they can be best achieved – WEB and SERVER Technologies. If you anytime in your life have applied for any of the Country’s bank exams be it PO, Managerial or Clerk, you have to visit the site of Institute of Banking Peronnel Selection (IBPS). You would notice that it won’t open on Mozilla’s Firefox, Apple’s Safari or Google Chrome – it’s is simply loyal to Microsoft Technology – Internet Explorer.

Let’s visualize a simple example, where a person who loves linux or cannot afford Microsoft Window Operating System and want’s to make every move chaste, without the pains of proprietary software involved – Is demoralize, demotivated, his faith shattered to dust with a website popping up saying I need INTERNET EXPLORER! That wasn’t the idea of Tim Berner’s lee when he proposed Internet.

Does Government really support FOSS?

If the government really want’s to take initiatives, it should have made all the websites on NON-Microsoft Technologies, it would have saved them Millions actually Billions. Today NIC has 90% of their websites being maintained on proprietary – age old technologies, that are in no way match for today’s glossy looking, superbly interactive, and Intelligent websites. Are they ? They don’t even look like Corporate/Identity websites for Company information. Even if NOW!, after going through the Prof. Rahul De reports they think of moving from proprietary to FOSS Tech’s – who the hell be accountable for the earlier un-informed baseless decisions ?

The only one of the few website I’ve seen is the NIC’s Indigov. Its’ one of the best website, and based around php. Now what new I see is a Quality certificate being attached to the website by SQTC. Does that make a difference? What is then W3C for? CDAC, NOIDA has been one of the biggest contributor and promoter of W3C in Indian Government sector. However, now NIC & SQTC comes out with their Certificate attached to the website, ignoring all the work done so far in the field by W3C and unnecessarily putting  their precious efforts into standards that have been pre-established. No doubt the website is accessible, but that accounts to just 0.1% of the websites NIC is hosting/developing/maintaining (I would rather say lingering on with). Most of the disabled people are ignored in the country (I know low floor buses just landed in Delhi, but that’s just Delhi -not India right!) and Information Technology is the last seen area where you could consider disabled people to be preferred – in INDIA.

The author is not Anti-Microsoft, he just want the web to be independent, free from the boundaries just like a free bird.  As Internet / Web was essentially created to be platform-independent so that we could; and today as we are able to browse websites over Mobile Phone, Browser’s across operating systems like – Windows, Mac and Linux. And they look same everywhere.

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17th Sept, 2009 – HCL Technologies Ltd. (HCL), a leading global IT services provider, entered into a five year Transformational IT Infrastructure Management engagement with Oncor to seamlessly connect and support Oncor corporate functions, grid management operations and numerous community- based field service centers located throughout Oncor’s service area.

Oncor operates the largest electric distribution and transmission system in Texas, delivering power to more than 3 million homes and businesses through approximately 117,000 miles of transmission and distribution lines. “With this new contract, HCL will be investing in both the utilities sector and in Texas, through the development of a worldwide Utilities Center of Expertise in Dallas.

The Center will research and develop technologies to help transform the way energy is generated, marketed and delivered to customers around the world, which fits Oncor’s leadership in advanced Smart Grid technology deployment,” said R Srikrishna, Senior Vice President and Head – Global Sales, HCL Infrastructure Services Division (HCL ISD).

HCL’s scope of work (SoW) will cover end user computing (service desk, desk-side services) for approximately 3,600 employees; datacenter and network Services, business continuity /disaster recovery and consulting services supporting Oncor’s IT infrastructure architecture and platform modernization projects. “Our client services delivery model utilizes local personnel for on-site support, which contributes to local job base stability,” said Todd Crandall, Senior Vice President and Global Head, Energy and Utilities Sector, HCL Axon. “This engagement clearly underlines our commitment and dedicated focus in Texas.”

Now this is interesting they are also utilizing local personnel and following the govt. guidelines as the part of Obama’s initiative to save jobs and reducing the loss of jobs due to off-shoring – great going. I believe it is necessary – Everything can’t be remote!

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• Storage Support – Tivoli, EMC, etc.
• Operating System support – Linux/Unix, Windows
• Application Servers Support – IIS, Apache, Tomcat, WebSphere, Glassfish, JBoss
• Database Support – Oracle, MySQL, MS-SQL Server,etc.
• ERP Support – SAP Basis Support
• e-Mail Server Support – send mail, MS-Exchange, etc.
• End-User Support – Identity Management, Active Directory, LDAP, etc.

According to top Research firms, RIMS has a lot to contribute to the countries economy. It is estimated that RIM Services can help organizations save 60% of the costs that they are incurring NOW!

• NASSCOM – Out of India RIMS Business is $ 200-300 Million.
• RIMS Business potential estimated by TOP Research firms -
  • NASSCOM:  $ 150 Billion
  • Forrestor: $ 111 Billion
  • Gartner: $ 80 Billion

There’s a very good small presentational PDF Document published by HCL on NASSCOM Website is available for reading. You can download it from NASSCOM’s Website (or Download Directly from DT: Remote Infrastructure Management Overview – HCL).

Maples ESM, a Global IT Infrastructure Co. has already come up with a course offering in RIM, Networking, UNiX Support, SOA/Middleware Training and Mainframe Training. One of the reason of Co. doing so is McKinsey India report which says that RIMS alone would create 3.25 to 3.75 Lakh job opportunities by the year 2013 capturing $ 13-15 billion worth of share. Adding to this the best of all the features is RIMS is being considered recession proof as what VM Kumar COO, Maples ESM. He say’s …

In times of slowdown in the US, it does make sense for companies to outsource the management of existing IT infrastructure rather than pay a local engineer $16,000 as salary to do it, That way, this sector is recession proof for India as companies can postpone application development to save costs but will have to manage their IT infrastructure, which can be done less expensively by outsourcing

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