Linux conference to focus on business and govt

Stan Beer
Thursday, 08 December 2005 16:00

IT Industry - Development

The President of Linux International, Jon 'Maddog' Hall is on a mission to Australia early next year to lead a debate about the accelerating shift to Open Source software in business and government.

Hall, well known throughout the Open Source communities by his nickname 'Maddog' - conferred on him by university students in the US he was teaching several years ago - will speak to Australian businesses and government using or contemplating the use of Open Source platforms, as the first up keynote speaker at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo in Sydney in March next year.

Organisers say that LinuxWorld Conference and Expo over three days from 28 to 30 March next year at the Sydney Convention & Exhibition Centre, will be the largest dedicated Open Source event aimed at business and government ever held in Australia.

The message to Australian government technology decision-makers and their counterparts in the private sector from Jon 'Maddog' Hall will be that it's well and truly time to move from an ad-hoc, less planned approach to the use of Open Source software to adopting a strategic model of using Open Source to help achieve their business goals.

To underline and reinforce the message about the benefits including significant cost savings to business and government from moving to Open Source, Hall's keynote address is titled 'You can bet your business on free software'.

The conference agenda just released by organisers, Australian Exhibition Services, lists a number of high profile speakers who will be in Sydney for the three day Expo. 

Martin Fink, vice president of the Linux arm in Hewlett Packard, will look at the way Open Source 'continues to challenge and revolutionise the business model for commercial software'.  Fink says the market is 'already witnessing the beginning of commoditisation in the middleware market with My SQL and JBoss' and predicts that the application market will be next.

Even Open Source nemesis Microsoft will participate in the event, with a keynote address by Bill Hilf on 'Managing Linux in a Mixed Environment'.  Based in the US, Hilf is lead program manager, platform strategy for Microsoft. In Australia, Microsoft has kept Hilf gagged prior to his visit, refusing to let him speak to the local media.

Pia Waugh, Vice-President of Linux Australia, says the conference part of the Sydney LinuxWorld event will be enormously valuable for Australian businesses and governments at all levels who have already made a wholehearted strategic shift to Open Source or are in the process of strategic planning to meet their future technology needs.

Waugh, who is also conference advisor, says while take-up of Open Source in Australia has been strong, it has, to a large extent, been implemented in an unplanned, ad hoc project-by-project basis rather than an integrated, strategic business planning approach.

However, Waugh cites examples of where Australian businesses or government have adopted a proper strategic approach to Open Source planning and reaped enormous benefits including substantial cost savings.  She refers to the Cairns City Council which, she says, saved 75% of their ICT budget when they moved from Oracle on mainframe to Oracle on Linux on Intel.

Waugh says the conference part of the Sydney LinuxWorld Expo will provide many practical answers to questions attendees will likely have on Open Source, including legal implications, successful Open Source installations in Australia and information on emerging technologies, as well as practical approaches to developing a strategic approach to Open Source software in business and government.

Registrations have just opened for LinuxWorld Australia at https://events.infosalons.com.au/ei/linux06/register.asp

Organisers of the Expo are expecting between 300 and 500 to attend the conference and around 3,000 to view the exhibition. Many of the industry heavyweights are major sponsors and will have stands at the Expo and participate in the conference, including Novell, Oracle, Hewlett Packard, IBM and Red Hat.