Watching Linux grow in the islands of Andaman and Nicobar
by Swapan Karmakar
In February 2007 we met Swapan, the only Red Hat® Certified Engineer® in the islands of Andaman and Nicobar. We thought we’d check in with him now that the year has passed, and see what he’s been up to.
In the last eight months, the islands of Andaman and Nicobar have witnessed tremendous development in the IT sector, especially in the case of open source and Linux®. Those I call the “IT people of Andaman” have been reluctant to implement and explore the benefits of open source software in the past. Some still are.
But the growing popularity of Linux within India is amazing. Many of the top multi-national corporations (MNCs) with projects in Andaman are using Linux as their major platform. These choices have shifted the minds of IT people here from Windows®-based software to Linux-based software–but not much as I might have expected.
Companies like New Horizons, 3i-Infotech, CMS, TCS, and PCS are entering these islands with open source projects–a blessing for a small IT industry that’s just born to grow.
New Horizons India, one of the leading IT Training centers, has recently started an open source project in the islands that includes training government staff as computer operators using OpenOffice.org software. They expect to expand the project and impart the training in all schools too.
3i-Infotech, one of the top 10 software companies in India, has already implemented Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS4.0 servers running Red Hat Enterprise Linux Cluster suite, Oracle®10g® RAC, and IBM® WebSphere® for the online ticketing software system that powers the shipping services of Andaman.
CMS Computers is another leading IT-ITES provider running some projects using Linux. The Indian Oil Corporation has implemented 2 UNIX open source servers in its bottling plant and a server in its terminal plant that runs their online billing software system. Through this, open source is running many important applications that are used daily.
The Life Insurance Corporation of India’s (LIC) Port Blair branch also runs 90% of their applications on Linux systems. (Port Blair is the capital city.) Their Linux-based servers are maintained by a third-party company.
The National Informatics Centre in Port Blair also runs its QMAIL-based mail server on Linux , with the services provided by Patni Computer System India (PCS).
Sometimes my friends–those IT-people I mentioned earlier–bring the question to me, “Where’s Red Hat India? Why haven’t they seen and developed the prospects of Linux and open source software here?” It would be a perfect place to set up a training center. As an RHCE, these queries are somewhat painful, but as we say, never lose hope. In the future I–and all the other IT guys–know that we will see Linux and open source software continue to grow in these islands.