Bahrain's Ministry of Social Development first to go open source

A phased deployment of the new 'Linux' environment is in line with the Government's strategic open source initiative and is being managed by Gulf Business Machines (GBM), IBM's sole distributors, excluding selected IBM products and services, in the GCC with the exception of Saudi Arabia.

Acquiring the world renowned Linux operating system will involve the deployment of sophisticated IBM Servers which will utilize the latest IBM Blade Technology and its relevant open source tools.

According to Maha Al Mandeel, Assistant Undersecretary of Human and Finance Resources at the Ministry of Social Development, by being the first to embrace open source technology completely, the Ministry will gain a number of advantages and benefits.

"In addition to featuring the lowest total cost of ownership, the implementation of this IBM solution and the deployment of the new environment will be swift and will result in numerous benefits including simplified IT management, the ability for modular scalability when we require it, high availability and security of our systems and of course, improved space efficiency,"

said Ms. Mandeel.

Linux is an immensely popular and robust, powerful and compact operating system that is freely downloadable from the Internet. It is also available with full documentation and additional applications for a nominal fee by distributors. Since its introduction in 1991 it has been continually developed, tested and refined by a dedicated IT community including IBM. Today it commands respect as a serious operating system for the mission-critical operations of Governments and businesses.

"This is a very significant and strategic decision from the Ministry and the decision to move to open source software reduces the burden on governments to have to depend on proprietary solutions which lead to higher costs and less choices," said Abdulla Ishaq General Manager of Bahrain Business Machines (BBM), Gulf Business Machines' operation in Bahrain. "The Ministry will also be able to take advantage of advanced management tools such as IBM Director Software, which enables the IBM BladeCenter solution and its dynamic capabilities to be comprehensively managed." "And with Gulf Business Machine's 24/7 Support Line the ministry would reduce the down time to the minimum available in the industry."