CERN, well known for its Large Hadron Collider (LHC), has launched the Microsoft Alternatine (MAlt), a preparatory project to convert Microsoft software that has been around for a long time to open source.
CERN started this project because in March Microsoft stopped offering scholarly discounts to CERN. CERN says the policy change has increased software licensing costs by more than tenfold.
CERN signed a ten-year incremental contract to cope with the price increase, but considering the number of users, the CERN technology sector has started a project to reduce reliance on monopolies and software, will be.
The project is expected to take many years. Once it starts with the IT department employee email service, all staff will switch to a new email service. In the future, Skype for Business or analog phone line will be reviewed for other softphone conversions. Other software and services will be adopted as alternative solutions in a few years.
CERN said many public research organizations are facing similar problems in recent years and Microsoft is curtailing preferential treatment for educational institutions. CERN is in a position to take the lead in migrating and presenting the path to open source to other organizations. This could be a good opportunity to show that the project is not tied to specific companies or data and that core services can be built. For more information, please click here .