The migration of 14,000 desktops from Windows NT 4.0 to Linux and Microsoft Office 97 and 2000 to OpenOffice.org was originally planned to start in 2005, but the schedule has now slipped, Peter Hofmann, the project leader of the migration, said on Monday.
Hofmann said that the first department to migrate to Linux and OpenOffice.org will be that of the Lord Mayor. This migration is due to happen in the middle of 2006, although not all of the department's 250 computers will be migrated straight away.
One of the reasons for the delay in the migration start date is the need for an additional pilot phase, which will run in the first half of 2006. "It became clear later in the planning phase that a pilot was more important than we first thought and should last longer," said Hofmann.
The migration team plans to set up pilot PCs running Linux and OpenOffice.org in every department. Once the pilot is completed, departments will be migrated to open source software in either one or two steps, according to Hofmann.
"Some departments will start with OpenOffice on Windows, others will start with OpenOffice on Linux," said Hofmann. "It depends on their infrastructure, for example, if a department has a small number of simple [Office] macros and templates, but a large number of complex applications, it is easier to do OpenOffice on Windows first."
Employees at the city administration have had a mixed response to the news that Munich is migrating to Linux, according to Hofmann. "Some [employees] are anxious that nothing will work [once we migrate] and others are enthusiastic," he said.
Munich is not the only European city migrating to Linux on the desktops. In July, the Austrian city of Vienna kicked off its migration to open source software on the desktop and the Norwegian city of Bergen also plans to migrate.
Considering the cost of licences, I can see all of the consulting hours being spent on this project will greatly outstrip the upgrade cost of Windows and Office. Time and impact must also be considered in the equation as so much planning and more planning and pilots etc without producing hard results, now that is a worry also. I wonder is anybody will ever total the true costs of this project and table the results or just hide it in the free software part of the project. I assume it will actually finish so Munich will actually know what the total real bill will be.