Arpa Piemonte, the environmental protection agency in the Italian Piedmont region, has reduced its costs for video-conferencing by 80 %, after switching to the free and open source Big Blue Button web conferencing system, replacing a proprietary alternative.
"We cut the number of proprietary licences by 80 % and we plan to phase-out our use of this proprietary system within a year", comments Mario Salvetti, IT architect at the agency. Together with two of his colleagues at the agency, Salvetti wrote a brief study how Arpa Piemonte implemented Big Blue Button. Their report was published on Joinup, on 29 July.
Arpa Piemonte employs about a 1100 people, mostly technicians and scientists. These work in either the head office or in one of the nine branch offices in the region, including laboratories. The agency prevents, reduces and eliminates environmental pollution. It provides information, serving other public administrations including municipalities and health service agencies. It also organises trainings, to disseminate its knowledge. The institute networks with scientific institutes and other governmental organisations in the region and in the provinces of Trento and Bolzano.
Open source spectrum
The environmental agency expects the switch to Big Blue Button to result in further costs reductions, now that staffers can easily participate online in the organisation's regular management meetings, for example in case they're working from home. They system is also used to organise meetings with colleagues working in other offices, "and we're planning to use it for e-learning."
The institute implemented Big Blue Button on a virtual Ubuntu Linux server. The use of open source solutions is part of the default ICT approach at Arpa Piemonte. Apart from the web-conferencing system, it has many mission critical services on machines that run Linux. It uses the Plone content management system, Zimbra for email and calendaring, osTicket for keeping tabs on support requests and Zabbix for managing the IT systems. It even uses open source in its labs, using OpenNMS for analysing mass spectrometry data.
First choice
"For those with good technical skills, open source is the first choice these days", says IT architect Salvetti. Previously, management stuck to the ubiquitous proprietary brands, keeping the IT department on their toes, in order to overcome their wariness. "We focused on using open source products that offer a better service than their proprietary competitors. This would guarantee that open source is about saving time and costs."
The situation changed last year, when Italy adopted a law requiring its public administrations to prefer using open source solutions if the solution is comparable to proprietary alternatives. "Today the conditions are more favourable to open source."
Comments
Reducing cost around 80% is a great result and big plus for open source.