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Standard Bank 'still backs open source'

By Iain Scott, ITWeb group consulting editor
Johannesburg, 21 Jul 2005

Standard Bank says a more than R100 million licensing agreement with Microsoft does not mean the bank no longer supports open source.

Yesterday the bank announced it had signed a licensing agreement with Microsoft SA for the upgrade of its 42 000 platforms over the next three-and-a-half years, with Dimension Data being appointed large account reseller to assist with the licensing and administration of Microsoft products at Standard Bank.

The size and nature of the deal also resulted in Standard Bank being the only company in SA with a Microsoft Strategic Account Status, which means Microsoft has allocated a dedicated account team to the bank.

Standard Bank IT and business operations director Alewyn Burger says the deal does not signal the end of the bank's support for the open source environment.

"At server level, we continue to use and access Linux," he says. "Thirteen of our servers in our data centres currently operate on two versions of Linux."

Burger says 95% of the bank's software licences and support contracts were up for renewal within an 18-month period, leading to a decision to investigate options for an optimum technology platform.

"We evaluated five different platforms, including Linux and various open source alternatives, for their compatibility with our strategic IT roadmap, functionality, security, staffing requirements, support implications, and ultimately their total cost of ownership," he says.

The bank found that a Microsoft environment was the best option from a total cost of ownership perspective.

The deal also allows for possible future conversion of the bank's 16 000 branch platforms to Microsoft XP, should it be necessary. This would replace the legacy OS/2 platform.

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