Switching to open source-based virtualisation software, allowed the government of the Canary Island to reduce its budget by close to 70 per cent. "Using our previous solution, we expected to spend around 1 million euro over the next three years. Switching to the open source-based alternative brought the total down to 300,000 euro", confirms Roberto Moreno Díaz, director of the government's department for Telecom and New Technologies.

"The past few months, we have migrated our virtualisation software. And the company that delivered the solution, Red Hat, has been pretty excited about the experience", commented the IT director by email yesterday.

The switch to open source-based virtualisation software is detailed in a case study published by the open source firm in February. Earlier this week the company sent out a press release, adding that their solution resulted in budget savings of up to 70 percent, without mentioning concrete numbers.



Very demanding

According to Moreno Díaz the government needed to increase efficiency of its virtual IT architecture, while keeping the budget under control. "We've been very demanding on the software and the company, in terms of requirements and the size of the installation."

The Canary Islands administration is using virtual machines for an increasing number of services. Examples include web servers, proxy servers, mobile solutions for general administration, voice over IP, video conferencing, email and the home-built e-government services platform Platino. "The architecture had become complex, divided also geographically over two sites on separate islands. We wanted to simplify this, while also increasing the number of virtual machines."

"We focus on the sustainability of the whole system, technologically and economically", Moreno Díaz says. "We have to take into account the heterogeneity of the IT system and keep our business critical systems running non-stop even during the migration. And so far, so good."

More information:

Red Hat case study

Red Hat press release

Gaceta Technologica news item (in Spanish)