SITA reveals tender winners

By Dave Glazier for SITA
Johannesburg, 24 Feb 2006

The State IT Agency (SITA) has revealed the eight successful candidates for the 'OSS Solutions for Workstations' tender, believed to be the largest open source software (OSS) tender in SA.

Business Connexion, Choice Technologies, IBM, GijimaAst, ImpiLinux, Novell, Obsidian and SourceCom have been confirmed as the winners, according to project manager Wynand Swart.

"All of their roles are the same - to supply OSS and support services to the government and SITA," he says.

Three distribution channels will be used: ImpiLinux (provided by ImpiLinux), Red Hat (provided by IBM and Obsidian), and Novell software (provided by the rest).

Swart says there is "a major drive" from government to implement open source more broadly across its departments.

He expects that most departments will integrate OSS on about 25% of workstations, explaining that many specialised government functions will still have to use proprietary software.

It would be hard to determine the value of the tender, he adds, since it will depend on the uptake among government departments.