Kerala assembly migrates to free software platform

The Kerala assembly secretariat has moved to free software platforms and has set a significant milestone for the free software movement in the state.

The government's decision to migrate to free software follows Microsoft Corporation's decision to withdraw support for its Windows XP operating system which was used in several government departments.

The Legislative Secretariat had decided to transition its large workforce several months ago in response to the state government's decision to move to free software. It approached the International Centre for Free and Open Source Software (ICFOSS) for technical support for this migration. The original request was for training users in GNU/Linux pre-loaded in the new PCs supplied to the Legislative Secretariat. ICFOSS provided initial training to the users and then moved on to the larger task of transitioning the day-to-day business to free software platforms.

For this, it used the services of Zyxware Technologies, a company that provides different services in the free software domain. The transition took three months to complete.

"Free Software migration was a prestigious project. Despite challenges-complexities related to volume and speed as well as retraining staff and reengineering workflows - we managed to execute it in time," said Satish Babu, director, ICFOSS.

Thomas P Thomas, CEO, Zyxware said, "The credit goes to the IT department at the Niyama Sabha which stuck to their decision to migrate. The willingness and passion to adopt the new system was remarkable."