IT STRATEGY DISCUSSION DOCUMENT

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Contents What are we doing at the moment ? What problems do we face? What would be our perfect IT setup? What options are available to us? What is the best plan? Case studies Cost comparison

What are we doing at the moment? We have 2 core IT functions/services in use: ?? An internal intranet network ?? An externally hosted network of websites Our internal network runs 2 Microsoft back office servers with 13 clients and offers the following services: CLIENTS (x13) ?? MS Windows 2000 Operating System (OS) or MS XP Pro ?? A SWYX voip soft phone client ?? A web browser ?? Email using Microsoft exchange ?? Access to our MS SQL database using a MS Access database client (major application) ?? MS Word and MS xls files for ad hoc functions (rarelu used) ?? MS Shared fax (rarely used) ?? Network printer access ?? AseeDSee image viewing software (rarely used) ?? PDF viewer and writer ?? Adobe Illustrator, CorelDraw, Photoshop and Freehand for 1 client SWYX SERVER - 1 ?? 1 x MS Windows Back Office Server OS that supports the SWYX server for our swyx voip phone system MAIN SERVER - 2 ?? 1 x MS Windows Back Office Server OS ?? network file storage ?? MS backup routines ?? MS DHCP ?? MS DNS ?? A network Email function using MS Exchange and Exchangepop3 ?? SAGE accounting systems for 2 users

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MS Network shared fax MS SQL server for our database back end Terminal services for remote desktop Website hosting Symantec corporate antivirus MS active directory / local domain CD burning software Ftp client access VPN access MM Dreamweaver website design software

WEBSERVER Our external dedicated server is hosted in an external data centre for reliability purposes and once fully commissioned in October 2006 will include: ?? Fedora Linux OS ?? Apache web server ?? MySQL database for website ?? Html / PHP used for website pages ?? SpamAssassin anti spam software What problems do we face? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ??

Strengths We use Industry standard windows software and OS Reliable and cheap ADSL link Well understood software by all staff Powerful customised MS access/VBA front end that is very heavily customised for our needs Recently recruited FT in -house IT manager Early adopter attitude to IT Comfortable with supporting mission critical software in house Opportunities Speed and reliability of broadband lines is increasing, and will soon be suitable for full website hosting eg SDSL (risky strategy). Open source software is becoming increasingly viable as a replacement for many traditional MS software products It is likely that there will be extra sales and business flexibility benefits to be had from converting our database front end to be delivered over the web, rather than MS products. These are hard to define, but experience has shown that our software development is increasingly website based, and it si likely that customers will require more online intereaction in the next 5-10 years that we will find increasingly hard to support from our existing Access 2000 platform

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Weaknesses Unreliability and instability of Microsoft software Lack of documentation enablin g support outside AS for core software No external support available Slow, old and unreliable hardware that has not had an systematic upgrade policy and is starting to fail ADSL links are currently not fast enough for website hosting

Threats All our current MS software (office and OS) are based on windows 2000 versions, which are rapidly becoming obsolete Our exisiting SQL database backend will not run on Windows Longhorn, which means that we will soon not be able to buy any new PCs with operating systems installed eg laptops, but on the plus side Access 2000 will convert to Access 2007

PESTEL Analysis affecting our IT Political – the UK is becoming a “smart” service driven economy, and strategically our business model must account from this – we will no longer be able to grow a business on the basis of a manufacturing niche, we will need the back office to support this. Environmental – nothing

Social – Corporate social responsibility pressures Technical – existing software is out of date and will be obsolete within 3-5 years, hardware much sooner Economic – MS has a near monopoly on SME software, and pricing will only get more expensive as time goes by. Legal – What would be our perfect software setup? Our ideal IT infrastructure would include the following: ?? Identical PC clients running reliable free software that can be quickly updated and is future proofed with the availability of free upgrades ?? A fast 100% reliable broadband link to the office capable of supporting our own web hosting (if we had all the server infracsturre to support this, eg aircon, UPS generators etc which is expensive) ?? Internal servers running reliable free software that can be quickly updated and is future proofed with the availability of free upgrades What is the best plan? Buying new hardware with Open source software would be a bold move with a return period of about 2 years. At the end of this, we would have a fully legal Open Source Software solution with improved design , functionality and reliability, faster hardware and a zero liability for running counterfeit software. Costings The estimated cost savings for moving to open source software instead of fully licensed software is likely to be in excess of £50,000 over the next 10 years. This is based on the annual licensing cost saving of MS products at over £15,000/3 year life cycle, not accounting for an increase in staff numbers. The only additional cost that applies only to the open source option is the IT time to rewrite our database and configure the new system, estimated at 6 months FT IT manager. This can be developed and run in parallel with our existing systems. There will be an additional cost of retraining all staff, but this is likely to be less than 5 full days per staff member, estimated £5,000 of payroll costs. New staff would not be familiar with our new system but this is the case currently anyway. There are inevitable external assistance costs from consultancies knowledgeable in OSS (http://www.clocksoft.com/ ), and new hardware £2,000 and under) Plan The development plan would proceed along these lines: 1. decide IT strategy at board level 2. purchase and configure 2 PCs as a Ubuntu or Centos server/client network 3. install, configure and test all necessary software to establish the feasibility of the transfer for all software we need 4. commit to rewriting our MS access database software as a web driven application (?? php, Ruby on Rails /Ajax??) running on a mysql backend

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final configuration testing purchase a complete suite of new client PCs and rollout fix and develop as needed When the costs or SDSL or fast ADSL decrease, cancel our remote hosting and migrate all existing web hosting to be hosted on site. Case studies

Directors briefing on moving to OSS: http://www.openforumeurope.org/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_view& gid=11&Itemid=102#search=%22IOD%20open%20source%20software%22

What happens when you get raided: http://news.com.com/2008-1082_3-5065859.html?tag=lh

How a UK network has moved to open source software: http://www.theregister.co.uk/Design/page/linux_case_study_orwell_high_school.html

SMEs moving to open source http://www.siriusit.co.uk/index.php/news/4/92

Buyers guide to OSS for SMEs http://reviews.zdnet.co.uk/buyersguides/linux/