Swedish military feel safer with Linux so drop Windows

Stan Beer
Wednesday, 07 February 2007 11:53

IT Policy - Government Tech Policy

The Swedish Armed Forces has made the decision to migrate its core IT infrastructure servers from Windows NT to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, primarily for security reasons.

The agreement sees FMLOG Servicedesk, the IT department of the Swedish Armed Forces, now able to offer Red Hat Enterprise Linux solutions to any division or branch of the military. At present, Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the operating system platform on nearly 200 servers running in-house developed software within the core IT infrastructure of the Swedish Armed Forces.

According to a statement from Red Hat and the Swedish Armed Forces, the decision to migrate to Red Hat was primarily based on its advanced security features, but additionally the strong support, ease of migration and compatibility with existing in-house software were important factors. FMLOG Servicedesk plans to extend its internal usage of Linux in the future.

”There has been a demand for Linux within the Swedish Armed Forces for quite some time, which is why we’ve now decided to enter this deal. The primary reasons for us choosing Red Hat Enterprise Linux were the product lifecycle as well as Red Hat’s position as the leading open source provider. What also affected the decision was the fact that Red Hat Enterprise Linux was fairly easy to migrate and is compatible with our in-house-developed programs,” said Jonna Lidman of the Swedish Armed Forces’ headquarters.

“At a time when there is a lot of hype around new proprietary operating system launches, the decision of the Swedish Army to migrate from Microsoft to open source is a major testament to the flexibility, control and security of open source software,” commented Werner Knoblich, VP, EMEA at Red Hat.

“We are very happy to see that yet another company within the public sector has chosen Red Hat. The fact that the Swedish Armed Forces commit to Red Hat Enterprise Linux shows once again that it is a secure platform with high demands on availability and flexibility. The selection of Red Hat by the Swedish Armed Forces follows a number of public sector Linux projects in Sweden, paving the way for wider adoption within the Swedish government.”