India’s Largest Linux Rollout Forges Ahead Despite Tremendous Odds

“On May 26, 2006, Elcot (Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu)
let in its first penguin. Things would never be the same again.

“That day, Elcot’s managing director, C. Umashankar, walked into
his office in Chennai, Tamil Nadu and was handed a brand new
laptop. He recalls promptly giving it back to his PA. ‘I asked him
to load Suse Linux on it. I guess he was surprised. But when the
installation–complete with drivers and wireless networking–only
took 45 minutes and very little external effort, there was a new
confidence in my PA.’ That confidence spread quickly. And with it
came more penguins. Within weeks, the Rs 750-crore (Can$192
million) Elcot was undergoing a enterprise-wide migration to Suse
Linux. A year later, Umashankar and his team had moved 30,000
computers and 1,880 severs belonging to some of the state’s schools
to Linux–creating possibly the largest Linux rollout in
India…”

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