KUALA LUMPUR, 26 FEBRUARY 2009 -- The economic downturn has accelerated an existing surge of open source technology adoption, said technology firm Sun Microsystems.
Speaking at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMMS) AsiaPac09 conference, held on 24-27 February, Kuala Lumpur, Sun Microsystems, vice president, global government, education and healthcare, Joe Hartley said: "The economic downturn has accelerated the adoption of open-source technology in the region, which was gaining traction even before the global crisis. Cost-effectiveness is now the critical factor in most business leaders' minds."
"Open-source technologies are providing a stimulus to drive business in emerging economies. For example, here in the Malaysia public sector alone, agencies using open-source software have risen to 429 in 2009, compared to 354 in 2008."
HIMMS, the global healthcare industry's membership organisation, founded in 1961, with offices around the world, represents more than 20,000 individual members and more than 350 corporate members. It frames and leads public policy and industry practices through advocacy, educational and professional developments.
Innovation loves a crisis
Hartley said: "Our chief executive officer said innovation loves a crisis—both the downturns as well as the rising challenge to meet the needs of healthcare professionals, who need to have secure and rapid access to information.
"In addition, Sun's solutions are proving useful in open storage as well as integrating electronic medical records (EMR). In this region, projects are under way in India, where we are working with medical centres in Chennai as well as with Tata Communications, which is working on a rollout of patient management systems using our open-source software stack."
Hartley added that Sun was providing the software stack in a substantial healthcare project In Singapore that involves large-scale integration over a few years.
"In healthcare, storage is especially a big issue," he said. "There is rapid assimilation of patient data from CAT scans, for example, from different sources. An open storage architecture is especially useful in such a case."
Malaysian government drives open source
"The Malaysian government is smart in helping to raise awareness of alternatives to proprietary software," said Hartley. "People are beginning to realise that the actual client software they are using is not that important, it's just a tool, and that what you do with tools is important. The drive to develop innovation skills in people is perhaps one of the reasons behind the resurgence of Apple Macintosh tools."
Speaking of Sun's work with Malaysian ministries, Hartley said: “It’s amazing to see what the Malaysian government is doing to drive the adoption of open-source technology in the country, with examples such as MyWorkspace, MySurfGuard, as well as using Sun Open Solaris and the open-source database. It is a good economic policy as it also provides training to the country's IT talent.”
"The Malaysian government should continue to enhance awareness by running programmes at the school level," added Hartley. "The bottom line is that whether open-source technology or its alternatives are chosen, it doesn't matter. It is what offers the most cost-effective solution. In addition, the mere threat of open source has the useful function of driving down market prices."
