München Government saves 4 million Euro by switching to Linux

Almost ten years after Munich’s Linux project started, they are now begining to report positive figures. The mayor reported to the City that the project has meant a saving of around 4 million €.
It was in 2003 that Germany’s third largest city, Munich kicked off a project with the goal to the municipality all PC workstations would use Linux and open source. It was about 14 000 computers that would use a Linux-based operating system and the Microsoft Office would be replaced with OpenOffice.

The project appeared to be more difficult to implement than was originally thought and it is not until later this year as it should be fully implemented. In its report to the City writes Mayor Christian Ude writes that one can already see positive results in terms of cost, four million euro, to be precise.

And then it’s all about savings during last financial year. The estimate is based on the municipality to avoid paying 15 million for Windows licenses and an additional 2.8 million within the next few years for upgrades.

The choice of Linux also means that the municipality could continue to run some older computers as this OS is not as resource intensive as Windows 7.