The Malaysian Insider

KUALA LUMPUR, April 23 — The Malaysian Administrative Modernisation and Management Planning Unit (Mampu) expects all government agencies to implement Open Source software (OSS) by the end of next year.

To date, 462 agencies from a total of 720 agencies have implemented OSS, which managed to provide a savings of more than RM47 million, said Mampu deputy director of ICT (information and communications technology) policy and planning division, Tan King Ing.

“We had utilised the OSS development model for rapid development of products at a lower cost by building upon existing solutions,” she said at a media briefing here today. Eight OSS products have been developed for use by all public sector agencies, she told reporters.

To further contribute to the industry, Mampu and Multimedia Development Corporation (MDeC) will host the 2009 MSC Malaysia Open Source Conference from May 31 to June 3.

Targeted at business executives, developers and the Open Source community, the conference is expected to attract about 1,000 local and overseas participants, said MDeC vice-president Saifol Shamlan.

With the theme “Open to Change”, the conference aimed to provide exposure and knowledge on the importance of Open Source in enhancing competitiveness with a lower cost of ownership, Saifol said.

“The conference provides a platform for participants to actively interact, share and exchange their views, ideas and tools on the latest trends and issues,” he said.

Among the speakers lined up are representatives from Mozilla, Google, Microsoft, Linux, Red Hat, Sun Microsystems, Extol, Ubuntu-my, Krimmet, Hack In The Box and Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka (UTeM).

Saifol said the OSS industry has shown a positive trend and remained resilent despite the global economic crisis. “We want the industry to be viable and growing,” he said, adding that about four per cent of the MSC Malaysia-status companies were currently in the OSS business. – Bernama

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