Open Source? Yeah, we’ve heard of it – it’s how we’re reducing costs!
Posted by Chris Jones on May 16, 2011 in Development, Open Source.
Dear Open Source,
We'd just like to give you a lovely big, warm hug from everyone in the team.
We <3 you Open Source!
Yours truly
Chris Jones
Architecture team leader
Architecture and Implementation department
Shropshire Council
Open Source is brilliant.
Open Source allows us to create fantastic products for our customers, at little to no cost. Here at Shropshire Council, we use Open Source quite a lot. Let me tell you about all the things we’re using and how it’s helping to reduce our costs.
- This blog, WordPress; Free. Hosted internally on a VM farm, running on Linux.
- The search engine which powers our internet and intranet sites was developed in house, using Java running under Tomcat and Linux. PostgreSQL for data storage; Free.
- Our telephone directory also uses our search engine; so it’s free too.
- Our address searching system used by many applications throughout the Council (e.g. Waste collection day finder as an example) was built using the same search engine, and uses an NLPG dataset stored on PostgreSQL. This system is also free (bar the cost of the NLPG dataset itself.)
- We use Apache HTTPD servers to route our application traffic, load balancing and to provide secure access without having to double up on servers for internal and external views; Runs under Linux; Free.
- The presentation framework that we build many of our UIs with is called JSC. It was developed by Chris Ellis; It’s Java; It’s free.
- The messaging hub/integration platform that sits in the background which takes XML messages from lots of our core systems, and passes them on to others (we call it ARIS), was also built in-house; using Java; under Tomcat and Linux. Also free.
- We use the free IDEs Eclipse and Netbeans for developing our Java apps.
- Our web application testing tool-kit Selenium; Open Source; Free
- Our issue tracking and project management system; TRAC; Open Source; FREEEEE.
- Our source code management repository; SVN; Open Source
- Our repository manager; Maven; Open Source.
- Our configuration manager, Puppet. Free.
Maybe you can see then that we really, really like Open Source here. we just can’t get enough of it.
It’s hard to quantify how much all this (and much more which I can’t go into now) saves us; But our search engine alone saves us around £40,000-80,000 a year.
Using PostgreSQL as our databases for storing our data saves us from paying for Oracle or SQL Server licences, while providing us equal performance. We use Linux on 18 servers (and growing), which removes the traditional license costs associated with other operating systems.
We still use a lot of non-Open Source products, it’s unavoidable, but every problem we encounter we always look for an Open Source solution. Not all of those problems can be so easily solved, and some decisions are out of our hands, but we are committed to reducing costs as much as we can; where we can.
Someday soon I hope that we can give you a more complete run down of the actual costs we’re saving, so that you can verify with your own peepers.
4 comments
Hi Chris
How are you using Selenium? Any chance of sharing more on how you use it?
Dave
Hi Dave,
We’re mostly using it for regression testing proxy rules and web applications, and also automating some web application functionality that requires multiple steps (e.g. switching load balancing rules set in Apache)
I will in the near future write some blog posts specifically on what we’re doing, as well as sharing some step-by-step processes and real world Java code.
I’ll also include information about why we chose Selenium over many of the other available Web testing frameworks (e.g. Waitr, Sahi etc.)
One more thing, please feel free to ask us about anything else – as we’re always looking to see what other blog posts we can write to help others out in similar situations.
Maybe OpenOffice.org or LibreOffice instead of Microsft Products? (excellent products but expensive and with some file compatibility issues when upgrading)
We are using our new laptop from BT Race to Infinity prize money as a “free software demonstrator” in Ruyton XI Towns Broadplace. The challenge is to make a laptop as would be used at home or school but not spend a single penny – so all open source or FreeSerif etc.
Hi Colin,
Congratulations on winning the race to infinity and also for showing that computing doesn’t have to mean expensive, and that Open Source is a credible option instead of paid for software.
Some of us here do actually use OpenOffice but within the Council the install base is very small. I myself use parts of OpenOffice but find some parts to be unreliable. I’ve had countless issues with opening legacy word documents here with OpenOffice having panics and rendering issues, but that’s just me.
The problem with migrating such a large user-base over from a well known product such as MS Office to the lesser known Open Source alternatives is training in my opinion. Some people require little to no training with these applications, whereas other require a lot more hand holding. Migrating our 4,000+ Office users over, whilst providing training and support is difficult and a bit more costly then it at first appears. Take into account the redevelopment of the many Office templates used daily (or at least the Quality Assurance testing on them, to make sure they work under an alternative) and you start to see that the project isn’t quite as simple as first thought.
I believe there was an investigation into using OpenOffice as a replacement within the Council sometime ago, but I wasn’t involved in that project so can’t comment as to why we chose to stick with MS Office.
I can promise you though that where we can, we will always strive to push for the most cost effective solution.
Thanks for your comment
Chris