With more than 90% of market share, Novell`s Net Services Software remains the products of choice for most government departments. Furthermore, all indications are that it will stay that way, according to Novell`s government account manager, Tracy Hoy.
There are 41 departments in the South African government and 25 of these use the Novell Product Sets today. Novell signed a Corporate Licence Agreement (CLA) with the Office of the State Tender Board, which simplifies the purchasing process of software for central and provincial government departments. Negotiations to extend the contract this year to easily facilitate the procurement of new software for the government departments are currently underway.
According to Hoy, Novell is in negotiations with the State Information Technology Agency (SITA) - to ensure that it will be able to offer the same levels of service as before to its clients on the Novell platform.
"Our strengths lie in the fact that our solutions are designed to function across multiple platforms, and most government departments already run our software. Consequently, SITA won`t have difficulty implementing strategies based around our One Net Vision," adds Hoy.
Novell traditionally has been the platform of choice for governments around the world because if its scalable and secure nature. In fact, the latest release of GroupWise, version 6, is the only messaging system today accredited by the United States Department of Defense because of its security features. GroupWise Systems are not affected by the virus attacks suffered by others, making it an ideal messaging solution for environments dealing with sensitive information.
Hoy adds: "Novell Net services software provides the 450 000 residents of The Hague 24-hours a day access to their property assessment information, giving them the ability to respond quickly to their personalised property tax information. All homes and business premises in The Hague can be viewed in 52 000 panoramas- 360^0 photographs. You can see your street, your house or flat from all angles and that gives a feeling of identification. You can also use an interactive map to find your home or to read a detailed description of the property. This is just one of the examples of what we are doing with Net Services Software today in governments worldwide and we would like to extend these offerings to our government in SA.
"We want to realide a `One Net` vision for the government, where it can not only provide its citizens personalized, fast access to information that affects them directly, but also achieve a greater degree of public interaction and openness with all people.
"While it will be a while before government achieves these goals, the HANIS identification project and the implementation of Public Information Terminals are the first steps towards these objectives," says Hoy. "Novell is integral in providing the back-end infrastructure in these initiatives.
"Government has been running its IT functions and services on Novell solutions for many years. Novell`s eDirectory and Net Services Software of today have successfully withstood the test of time, delivering the return on investment promises and lowest total cost of ownership. There`s no reason why government should want to change that," Hoy concludes.
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