Scottish Police switch to Windows
In a bid to cut costs, Central Scotland Police are abandoning their current installation of Sun Microsystems StarOffice suite of applications and moving to Microsoft.
In a bid to cut costs, Central Scotland Police are abandoning their current installation of Sun Microsystems StarOffice suite of applications and moving to Microsoft.
This move is against the current trend where many government bodies are activity testing open-source software packages such as the Linux operating system.
About the move David Stirling, Head of IT for the Central Scotland Police said, Its not really based on any ideological argument about open-source software its based on pure business needs.
The adoption of the StarOffice application was a result of a costly purchase of crime reporting software in 2000 that resulted in a lack of funds to buy the Microsoft Office application for the forces 1,000 officers and support staff. A move to a Linux based system had been planned for this year, but after a review of the options, it was decided that a move back to Microsoft would be in the forces best interest as they are part of seven large police jurisdictions that are all based on Microsoft Office applications. Central Scotland Police has now signed a three-year agreement that will see the Microsoft Office System, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 installed at their premises
