The deal gives Health and Human Services employees unlimited access to a
range of Novell products, but there's no plan to unseat Microsoft software
By Marianne Kolbasuk McGee, InformationWeek
June 1, 2005
URL:
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=163702338
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has signed a
multi-million-dollar, multi-year enterprise deal to use Linux and
identity management products from Novell Inc., the vendor revealed on
Tuesday.
Financial terms of the deal between Novell and HHS weren't disclosed.
However a Novell spokesman says the agreement is the first "enterprise
site license" between a large federal department and a Linux vendor.
Although HHS' National Institute of Health agency was "the driver" of
the deal, under the contract, other HHS agencies are eligible to use
Novell Linux and OpenSource technologies, the Novell spokesman says. NIH
is the primary federal agency that conducts medical research.
The contract provides unlimited use of Novell products to about 70,000
at HHS, including about 30,000 NIH users. Under the arrangement Novell
is providing to HHS "unlimited access, upgrade protection and technical
support" for products, including SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, Novell
Open Enterprise Server, Novell Linux Desktop, patch management, and a
range of identity-based services for management, integration and security.
HHS is already a user of Novell products, however the new deal provides
an enterprise license to Novell's Linux and OpenSource products, the
spokesman says. The pact doesn't require HHS or NIH to migrate off other
platforms used in their environments, he says.
An NIH source says there are no plans to "unseat" Microsoft products,
which are widely used throughout HHS. However, Linux products provides
"an attractive low unit cost" for thousands of scientific users within
NIH and other HHS agencies, such as the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, the NIH official says.
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