VietNamNet Bridge – Open source software has been used not only at local state agencies but also by organizations and enterprises.

Open source software welcomed by state agencies

The Ministries of Education and Training, Industry and Trade, Construction and the State Bank of Vietnam have been using open source software in their works.

Quach Tuan Ngoc, Director of the Information Technology Agency of the Ministry of Education and Training, has affirmed that a lot of products designed on open source software which have been operating effectively. The ministry’s information portal at www.moet.gov.vn, for example has been designed on PHP, Web server Apache and My SQL.

Meanwhile, the portals of many universities have been created on the basis of Liferay portal, Upportal. The store www.edu,net.vn uses Server Community. Most of the Vietnamese teachers and students have been using Firefox and Unikey. Meanwhile, Linux Server, CentOS have been used widely for server operation system, and the online education management information system has been programmed on PHP and running on CentOS.

Ngoc also said that in the time to come, the information management system of the educational sector would be shifting to the open source software platform, from the operation system to the station computer. All the websites of education establishments would run on open source software, not to use SharePoint Server. Especially, lesson plans and textbooks would be re-compiled on the basis of open source software.

In the northern province of Bac Giang, Nguyen Van Dieu, Director of the provincial Information and Communication Department, said 20 agencies in the locality have built up their websites on the basis of Joomla, six departments have opened on-stop-shop software for administrative procedure management with Drupal, and four others are running the software on document and work management developed from Drupal on a trial basis.

Meanwhile, Director of the Quang Nam provincial Information and Communication, Ho Quang Buu said since 2009, more than 300 officers and civil servants have been trained on open source office software, including Open Office (Writer, Calc, Impress), Mozilla, Ubuntu, on network administration based on Linux for information technology officers.

In the southern province of Vinh Long, the one-stop-shop software has been installed and used by the Vung Liem district’s Department of Natural Resources and the Environment.

… favored by big enterprises

Even the big guys have also paid their attention to open source software. Nguyen Ngoc Long, a senior executive of Viettel Telecom said just within nine months, Viettel successfully deployed Ubuntu open source code operation system and Zentyal open source code concentrated administration system at 64 branches of the telco.

Long said roughly 72 billion dong worth of royalty has been saved by using Ubuntu for the thousands workstations.

Especially, Viettel has built up an Ubuntu and standard open source software operation system package specifically used for Viettel, which is very friendly and relatively similar to Windows.

The most important factor that has convinced Viettel’s leaders to use open source software is that this allows it to take initiative in its works and not depending on other big companies or economic groups. Besides, with open source codes, software can be designed specifically to fit users.

Open source software allows saving money, and technically, there is a large community which would be ready to help fix the holes of the open source software if necessary. Viettel is building up the VIettel-Ubuntu on the basis of the Ubuntu provided by the supplier.

Buu Dien