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The U.K.'s National Health Service Licenses JDS 124
deputydink writes "Recently the NHS licensed from Sun 5000 seats of its JDS system for tactical deployments within the health care service, adding that it deemed JDS a viable desktop alternative for certain types of user communities. The NHS has already deployed JDS in its back-office. This could be the high profile boost for JDS subscription services that Sun needs."
Yikes. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Yikes. (Score:5, Interesting)
As an ex Sun guy with plenty of JDS experience let me just say this is farking insane unless these tactical deployments are not mission critical deployments.
Don't worry, I imagine the deployments will be standard desktop use. However, from the article:
An NHS representative could not elaborate on exactly where in the agency's sprawling system, incorporating tens of thousands of users, the software would be deployed.
This makes me concerned that the NHS administration is adopting the classic 'head up arse' approach to IT administration, buying 'cool' new kit before they have any clue what they will be using it for.
Re:Yikes. (Score:2)
I get the impression the representative is not a CIO or even one that really understands the technical side of things. He probably came to the media armed with just enough information to satisfy the masses.
I'm sure there is a very detailed plan, just not one we are privy to.
Re:Yikes. (Score:5, Funny)
Not a troll, but you're not very familiar with UK governement IT projects, are you?
Re:Yikes. (Score:2)
Re:Yikes. (Score:3, Informative)
Such projects usually start with great, noble intentions. They may be a tad ambitious, but that's about the worst thing about them.
The contract goes out to tender, and bids are taken. Eventually, supplier(s) are chosen.
Then the requirements change, usually because they weren't very clear to begin with, or they were
Re:Yikes. (Score:1)
Re:Yikes. (Score:2)
I hear what you're saying, but in my experience most UK government departments are at least three-parts crippled with petty beaurocracy devised by sad, pathetic little people who have decided to vest what little power they have into Making Things Work A Particular Way.
Not that this way is any better, it's just a demonstration of their power. It may be as small as a form which has to be filled in. I've seen cases where it actually d
Re:Yikes. (Score:2)
The NHS National Information Technology Plan [doh.gov.uk]
Re:Yikes. (Score:2)
Re:Yikes. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Yikes. (Score:2)
Re:Yikes. (Score:1, Insightful)
I would say just the opposite -- admins and execs like to run things other than StarOffice and gnome craplets. The ER would likely be running a single data entry application that could be developed for Linux.
Re:Yikes. (Score:1, Insightful)
Dont tell me about rare examples like mysql.
(Of course, now noone will get my point and they'll mod me down as a troll)
Re:Yikes. (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't it so that Sun for example may well be making money on open source, but has also made Openoffice.org possible by releasing the source code for their office suite? Red hat has also done some good things.
Furthermore, the developpers that do the work for (almost) nothing do that of their own choice, and if they wouldn't like that someone else would profit from that, they wouldn't work on open source software. The fact that some large companies make money with open source is even a good thing, since that kind of industry backing will make linux and open source a more credible alternative for closed source software in some cases.
All this support from those large companies is certainly good for extending the user base, which IMHO gives those aforementioned developers a good feeling, because more people are able to enjoy their work.
Re:Yikes. (Score:4, Insightful)
No. I don't.
First, they're not making much if anything.
Second, much of the payback of open source is in collaboration; I craft a stick to scratch an itch, and you improve on it so we both benifit. If you sell that improved stick for a profit, I still get the improvements free.^
The amount of waste and rework involved in closed + propriatory software is amazing, so using that instead of OSS has a steep cost.
I don't feel bad about Microsoft or Corel loosing out when OpenOffice is used, let alone when FreeBSD or Linux are used instead of OSX or Windows.
Re:Yikes. (Score:2, Insightful)
The whole point of free software is freedom, and that includes the freedom for other people to try and profit from your work. The only freedom not granted by the GPL is the freedom to change the license; the only freedom not granted by the BSD license is the freedom to remove copyright notices.
For programmers who agree with you that money should be shared as well as code, licenses such as the AFPL exist which forbid commercial exploitation. It should be not
But you are a Troll (Score:2)
Secondly your going to complain about Red Hat making cash after all they've done for the community and all of the GPL OSS they've put out year after year? Do you have any idea
Re:Yikes. (Score:1, Funny)
Right, and as an ex NASA astronuat with plenty of space experience let me just say that you are full of Grade A Premium Cow Shit.
Re:Yikes. (Score:1)
IT and the NHS (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:IT and the NHS (Score:1)
Pot-AYE-to, poh-TAH-to (Score:2)
Re:Pot-AYE-to, poh-TAH-to (Score:1)
Just a question- (Score:5, Interesting)
Are we talking ER situations? Homeland Defense/Emergency offices? I mean, the article leaves little mention, just stating that they are to be used in "tactical deployments"?
Any docs out there who can explain?
-thewldisntenuff
Re:Just a question- (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Just a question- (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Just a question- (Score:1)
Using the "Vision to Reality" method we provide complete command of your IT initiative from inception to vendor negotiation to complete company transition and all projects are set price.
Perhaps I'm reading it wrong, but I get the sense of comprehensive implementation consulting marketed as distinct steps in an overall strategy (hence the whole tactical spin). Of course, that could be my Marin
Re:Just a question- (Score:5, Funny)
They don't even know what hit them.
Re:Just a question- (Score:4, Interesting)
* the NHS direct call centre operation
* the huge adminstration that tracks monitors and pays for
all non-hospital NHS prescriptions
* central and regional management and support -- allocating money
Re:Just a question- (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Just a question- (Score:2, Funny)
doc -- explains (maybe) (Score:2, Interesting)
As Newham (local government in part of London) did.
Newham's anticipated savings and level of support with their eventual systems are reported to have made sharp alterations as a result of that tactic.
These will not be the first Linux desktops in the NHS and its contractors (most GPs are not directly part of the NHS but are contractors to it althoguh the latest Great Idea is to co
View from me in the NHS (Score:2)
There's a pretty poor level of IT knowledge throughout the NHS hierarchy as far as I can see. Well, maybe not so much a poor level, as a very poor breadth. Many little things annoy me, such as how NHS sites (such as QMAS for those who know what I'm talking about) are explicitly geared towards IE, even when they work fine with other browsers. Our Clinical Systems supplier is proudly announcing an enhanced partnership with Microsoft, and the PCTs (Primary Care Trust - regional organizational bodies for loca
FLOSS in healthcare and codes (Score:1)
I was involved with Read 3.1 and at one point with the IPU oversight of the Mayo Clinic integration work - Read 3 and the CAPS SNOMED codesets. The intention was that every Read 2 code would be in Read 3, and that all the SNOMED concepts and all the Read concepts would be combined i
Re:doc -- explains (maybe) (Score:1)
Re:Just a question- (Score:2)
Medical records and open source (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Medical records and open source (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Medical records and open source (Score:3, Interesting)
But anyone with half a brain in their IT department would know that is a good thing. And they should have evaulated those systems as a matter of course. I'm sure both companies would offer 24/7 support if you paid them for it.
I don't run JDS - I can't because it has the suckiest hardware support since Corel Linux and I wouldn't due the licence - so I have no idea of how good their security bulletins are. What I do know is that if there a
Re:Medical records and open source (Score:2)
Re:Medical records and open source (Score:4, Insightful)
And that's just one package. The same could be said for glibc, GNOME, XFree, CUPs, Samba, Apache - you name it.
Likewise, the kernel is 2.4.19 based and therefore wouldn't pick up any driver or security fixes that have appeared since. Perhaps Sun / SuSE have retrofitted critical patches, you're still left with a heavily forked and obsolete kernel used by no one else. There have been eight 2.4.x releases since, and already most other dists are on 2.6.x with a 2.4.x fallback if need be.
And perhaps the update mechanism itself is less friendly than other systems causing users to ignore it. It's fairly trivial to update SuSE or RH, but apparantly you have to type your serial number to update in JDS. Who is going to bother with that?
Also, JDS has a bunch of proprietary Sun code sitting on top for network deployment & management. Who's to say what remote exploits are lurking within it since no one has had the chance to review it?
So old doesn't imply secure. Of course the same could be said for Red Hat, but to be honest, their QA and hardware support is miles better, upgrading is easy, and their tools are open source and can be reviewed by any one.
Re:Medical records and open source (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Medical records and open source (Score:3, Interesting)
The third-party market practically died with Windows 95, but still.
Re:Medical records, open source and security (Score:4, Interesting)
The last thing you want to hear in the middle of an emergency resuscitation is: "I can't pull the chart up, I've got a virus!"
Re:Medical records, open source and security (Score:1)
Is there any evidence of this? Sounds like the kind of thing I would have read on slashdot.
Re:Medical records and open source (Score:5, Interesting)
You mis-spelled "cost".
But here we don't have HIPPAA, and everyone in the NHS runs windows computers with viruses on them (not as much of an exaggeration as you think), it's common for whole departments to lose their computing facilities when a new virus hits, it's common for confidential information to make its way from a virus-infected computer to the internet. Many [most?] computers are never patched, and while they've got a firewall "around" the whole lot, everyone who's got laptops in their office (many doctors use tablet PCs) knows how effective one exterior firewall is.
They were once trying to roll-out an entire public-key cryptosystem in one go, which was the last time security was mentioned. I don't know if they were going to install a separate "prescription-signing" computer in each doctor's office, or install something on their Windows machine, but either way the talk is of extremely high cost, and extremely low value. Perhaps all the years of removing "non-medical" administrative positions are taking their toll, but more likely it's this way because everything related to UK government is that way.
Of course, people on slashdot will say that nothing should be connected to the internet, but then medical researchers are just the same as physics researchers -- websites and email addresses and newsgroups are very useful tools for doing research. And the surgeries in the shetland-end of nowhere with dial-up access to the mainland probably aren't going to have security of any sort, indeed I doubt that anyone has the funds to implement "military grade" 2-unconnected-networks security.
They just signed another contract for a quintillion windows licenses a year ago for both government and the NHS, if that gives any idea of their preferred platform
Re:Medical records and open source (Score:1, Informative)
The desktop isn't really the critical security component. It's the servers that store the medical records. Those are Oracle databases and Sun Java App Servers for the central service. Individual hospitals are free to use whatever they like (though I suppose the NHS has mandatory security standards).
While there needs to be a security mechanism within hospitals, even there medical
JDS has been a Godsend for me (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:JDS has been a Godsend for me (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:JDS has been a Godsend for me (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:JDS has been a Godsend for me (Score:2)
Re:JDS has been a Godsend for me (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to make it easy for non-gurus to manage Linux, you need some management tools with GUI - and in the end, that is what JDS is.
Re:JDS has been a Godsend for me (Score:2)
Just because a reply calls forth images of nubile dancing penguins doesn't make it insightful or even valid.
-Nano.
Re:JDS has been a Godsend for me (Score:5, Funny)
....
When all you know is garbage, mediocre looks like heaven.
Re:JDS has been a Godsend for me (Score:2)
This is on the Desktop! (Score:1, Insightful)
Mozilla on JDS (Score:4, Interesting)
The last time I used JDS, the version of Mozilla preinstalled was 1.4, which did not support NTLM proxy authentication and thus I had major issues getting the computer on the Internet.
In the end, I just installed Firefox.
Re:Mozilla on JDS (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Mozilla on JDS (Score:5, Informative)
It would be unwise for Sun to run Mozilla 1.5 or 1.6, because in between the 'extra stable' releases a lot of things change and (historically) break.
Once a year or so, the code gets the big projects landed and the tree gets a more thorough debugging than normal, any forks happen (camino, netscape, galeon), and a 'benchmark' release is made.
Re:Mozilla on JDS (Score:2)
Getting on the internet (Score:2)
I'd suggest that a truly secure desktop has no business on the internet at all, so the choice browser is moot (except for the corporate intranet).
That's how it goes at my place of work - the secure network has a bona fide airgap between it and the rest of the world.
T&K.
JDS Back Office ? (Score:5, Informative)
Probably not, although I hesitate to suggest that a
Re:JDS Back Office ? (Score:2, Informative)
Having applied for a job updating the patient care record system for the NHS, I can tell you that only in the London region (via Syntegra consulting) are they using Java in the back office for sure. The north of England's regions on the otherhand are most definately (via Accenture) transfering over to .NET.
Re:JDS Back Office ? (Score:2)
In Scotland, the Common Services Agency (the IT agency that supports the NHS) used Solaris fairly extensively for back-end stuff (or did, 2 years ago). They seemed fairly open (sorry...!) to open-source, especially on the desktop, mainly due to concerns over per-seat-licensing costs. I'd guess they'd be pretty open to JDS/JES at this point?
(As an aside, wouldn't it be great if the NHS developed, I dunno, national strategies, rrather than adopting different platforms for different regions?)
Re:JDS Back Office ? (Score:2)
I'm not convinced I'd agree with "bigger is better" for government projects (well, at least not for government projects that I helped fund ;) but "standardized is better", certainly.
Could be a ploy (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Could be a ploy (Score:2)
Even if it is, it's still a plus for Sun and open source in general - people will begin to realise that if MS begins offering discounts for sticking with them, then the alternatives must be pretty dang good.
Re:Could be a ploy (Score:1)
Re:Could be a ploy (Score:5, Insightful)
If, on the other hand, MS realizes that you're bluffing, (and they'll probably get real good at sussing out badly designed deployments, if they haven't already), they might just deide to play hardball.
The deployments that have caused MS to really cut their prices were deployments where the customer was very serious about going to a non-MS solution.
In the Munich case, they went Linux in spite of MS's price cutting, In the British case, they had already done a (successful) pilot.
Now, if I were the CIO of a large company, I would definitely look at doing a couple of pilot projects. Worst case, I might get MS to drop their prices by a few extra points. Best case, I might find that the Open Source is a huge step better than the MS product, and worth changing to at any price.
Re:Could be a ploy (Score:1)
for example, if the country has a wide installed base of microsoft products, and the unit pricing of the software (XP, office) gets disclosed, as it probably will eventually, "small" users could start trying Linux just out of spite.
Remember, just a few corporations and the government are "Big" in any given country.
Re:Could be a ploy (Score:1, Insightful)
Two key issues... (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Printing: Best way forward is internet printing. Very difficult to get the right drivers working the right way on each desktop, but for internet printing.
2. Drivers for medical devices: Most devices come with Windows drivers only. Hardware mfrs. and Linux distors really need to take some effort here. By the way, this is a weal area for Windows versions as well. Every new OS release or Service Pack screws up some or other device driver or dll, and some app stops working!
Currently I use Windows on those m/cs that are interfaced to these devices or printers. There's no major issue with plain Linux distros and no major advantage having JDS instead.
-
Re:Two key issues... (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't work in the NHS, but IME when an organisation the size of the NHS (one of the biggest employers in the country) says "we want it to work in Linux", the answer is not "We don't support Linux".
Re:Two key issues... (Score:2)
5K is not that much is it? (Score:4, Interesting)
Don't get me wrong. I am glad there are 5K more linux desktops in the world but Sun was hinting at much bigger numbers.
Re:5K is not that much is it? (Score:4, Interesting)
However, it can't have escaped NHS management attention that a high-profile pilot of Linux on the desktop is an excellent way to negotiate discounts on Windows. Given the quantities involved, it is possible that the discounts could be worth considerably more than 5000 "throwaway" JDS licenses.
WTF is JDS? (Score:1)
Re:WTF is JDS? (Score:1)
Yes
Re:WTF is JDS? (Score:2)
Re:WTF is JDS? (Score:1)
Just to confirm (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft selling software by subscription = bad.
Correct ?
Just to clarify (Score:3, Insightful)
Any business model anywhere that leads to Windows deployments = bad.
So Linux = good, while Windows = bad. But: it's not true that the sales model isn't the issue. Proprietary software is bad in many ways; how, exactly, it will bite you depends on the exact licensing model used. So to discuss Windows = bad at any length, you have to discuss why Windows + (this sales model, whether that be ``sell packaged goods + free support'', subscript
Microsoft Subscription = Good (Score:2)
Anyway, what works in the enterprise is a lot different from what works in the home.
Re:Microsoft Subscription = Good (Score:2)
Open Source term being abused as per usual (Score:5, Insightful)
StarOffice == Open Source? I think not.
If we'd stuck to calling Free Software, Free Software, we wouldn't have to put up with this nonsense, but as it is we have a situation where people are in the throws of defining new government policy in the UK stating that the default purchasing policy in the UK should include "Open Source" software, despite the fact that nobody involved seems to have any clear idea what Open Source means.
That allows Sun to come in and say something like "StarOffice is Open Source becasue you get to see some of the source" and the NHS folks presumably say "Fair enough, where do we sign for a site license?"
I'm surprised Microsoft don't go totally ape about this, but then again, they probably think that JDS is open source too. It wouldn't surprise me if the Sun sales folks think that it's Open Source, in the same way that most SUSE sales folks used to think that SuSE was Open Source, despite the old YaST license.
Re:Open Source term being abused as per usual (Score:1)
As someone who works for Sun I'll just say that as with -any- reasonably large company there are people who don't understand the distinctions between "available source code" and "Open Source".
However, a large number do. And many software sales people you might speak to would realize that while many (most
Re:Open Source term being abused as per usual (Score:2)
The underlying issue that I have a problem with is the clueless customers, especially the British government at present, who decide that they should adopt an Open Source purchasing policy (on the grounds that it prevents vendor lock-in, say), and then invite Sun to tender JDS, and IBM to tender WebSphere, neither of which qualify.
Even more depressing is when they justify their decision to ignore their own policy on the basis that they need to
Re:Open Source term being abused as per usual (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh poppycock! 99.99% of the world has never seen "The GNU Revised English Dictionary", let alone opened it up to read its particular definition of "free". Most people using English terms and phrases will be using a more traditional dictionary such as Webster's or Oxford's.
You can bitch all you want about the poor state of English having only one word for "free" and two for "freedom", but it is the language people will most likely be using when they run across the phrase "Free Software". No amount of linguistic redaction can change this.
The fact of the matter is that people will confuse "Free Software" with something other than what RMS intended. You cannot change this. Go tell your Grandma that a piece of software is "free", and the very last thing she will think is that it confers the right to redistribute modifications of the source code. Ask her if Internet Explorer is free, and she will most likely say yes. After all, it *IS* free. The FSF's intended definition just isn't being transmitted successfully by capitalizing the word "Free".
Yes, people get confused with the term "Open Source Software". No, it's not the most precise term in the universe. But it's far more accurate and unambiguous than "Free Software".
Re:Open Source term being abused as per usual (Score:2)
Proprietary vendors are perfectly happy to associate themselves with the term Open, and will happily imply that the fact that something is based on Open Standards probably means that it's Open Source, and so eligible for funding under a government Open Source initaitive. This certainly seems to be part of the intent behind MS's adoption of XML for some things.
Those same proprietary vendors are much less likely to be willing to have the word "free" associated with software that th
Not Enough Information (Score:1)
[Yes, I know. It wouldn't be /. without rampant assumptions being made.]
JDS is not Linux? (Score:1)
Sun's Linux distribution is not Linux anymore?
Re:Thats good... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Thats good... (Score:2, Informative)
But commercially Sun is a big name,