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Open Economies - HP encouragement for Linux in Africa [Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index] HP encouragement for Linux in Africa
Relayed from AllAfrica.com: Africa Set to Embrace Linux ITWeb (Johannesburg) September 23, 2002 Posted to the web September 23, 2002 Andre Hartley Johannesburg It's been the talk of the global industry for close on three years now but 2002 is being pegged as the African breakout year for Linux, the flexible and cost-effective open source operating system technology. That's one of the observations to come out of a strategic review of business in Africa that HP conducted last week. And it's one of the solution areas that the company is keen to focus on in the coming months. "A number of Linux solutions have already deployed by our customers in the entertainment, banking, service provider, Internet infrastructure and technical computing arenas overseas," explains Andre Hartley, the software solutions consultant for Africa at HP. "Adoption in these markets, along with retail, financial services and public sector, is helping fuel growth in Linux, which consultancy Gartner expects to achieve 50% revenue increase this year." HP believes that these international adoption rates bode well for Africa. After all, says Hartley, businesses aren't supporting Linux because it's popular - they're doing it because it meets their needs and those of their customers. Interestingly, the company is also praising proponents of Linux in Africa by encouraging them to not become distracted by the many discussions surrounding the deployment of Linux and Microsoft solutions. "The reality is that Microsoft solutions on industry-standard hardware are a mainstay of many African corporations, especially on the desktop, and will continue to be so," says Hartley. "Likewise, Linux solutions have found their way into a number of mainstream enterprise applications, are already on the desktop in niche applications and will continue to make inroads." For its part, HP is teaming with its business partners across Africa to hone its focus on offering solutions that support Linux and Microsoft, as well as HP-UX (HP's widely-deployed Unix offering). The company says there's vast opportunity to offer customers a choice of building blocks for their heterogeneous environments. "That's what we're about," says Hartley. "We're the company that others come to when they want to run a multi-platform environment for mission-critical services. Right now we're taking a pragmatic approach. The question for us isn't 'will Linux dominate business in Africa?' but 'what part of business in Africa will Linux dominate?'" There are several initiatives that HP believes the open source community should drive in order to keep Linux moving forward. These include ease-of-use, support of the Linux standard to reduce the complexity of development and the resolution of the royalty-free standards issue currently being debated in the international community. HP is itself aiding the advance of Linux in Africa in several ways. The company is building customer confidence by offering a full range of sales, consulting, support and education solutions for the operating system. It is working with the open source community and software, hardware and channel partners to accelerate the delivery of Linux-based solutions. And it is delivering security-enhanced servers, blade servers, appliances, workstations, storage media, printers, business PCs and telecommunications solutions that support Linux across the continent. "We see our role as helping to increase the operating system's credibility in the African business world," says Hartley. "Market-unifying standards such as Itanium and Linux, and the inexorable march towards open source and open connectivity standards, will shift the underlying economics and the basis of competition in our industry. This will lead to more competition, greater choice and flexibility for businesses and increased ease-of-use for consumers." For more information on HP's Linux solutions and activities in Africa, surf to www.hp.com/africa. Make new networks! Dr. James F. Moore Senior Fellow Harvard Law School Director, Open Economies Berkman Center for Internet and Society Baker House 1587 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138 www.openeconomies.org jmoore@cyber.law.harvard.edu jmoore@geopartners.com Office phone number US 1 617 495-7547
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