Gen-i, Datacom, Microsoft leading government ICT suppliers

Eight percent have 'no open source' policy

By Computerworld staff, Auckland | Tuesday, 14 April 2009
The State Services Commission's Government use of ICT Survey 2008 shows Gen-i/Telecom as the leading outsourced ICT provider to government organisations.

Microsoft is rated as the leading software supplier, in terms of estimates of business valued at over $100,000 in the 2009 financial year.

Datacom came second in the outsourcing category in the survey and the combined HP/EDS third. IBM was fourth while Unisys made fifth place.

In software, Oracle came second to Microsoft, followed by IBM, SAP and Eagle Technology.

Fifty-seven percent of organisations that responded to this survey reported they have a policy of considering open source software and 8 percent had a policy of preferring it. A further 8 percent, however, had a policy of not using it at all.

In more than half of responding organisations, up to 20 percent of servers had open source software. In more than a third of responding organisations, up to 20 percent of desktops had open source software other than operating system or ‘Office’ suite software.

Mostly, open source software is supported by internal staff (40 percent of respondents), but others use both internal and external staff (24 percent) or exclusively external staff (23 percent). Larger organisations were more likely to use exclusively internal support.