The Solusi Open Source Story

[Kalpesh Thaker]

Hi Guys,

Thembinkosi, This is a great story you have sent us.
No doubt, we will try and post it as an article on the website once it is
up,
via simpson and the ubuntu zw website...

"Our network is 99% free and open source software.

The cost of software did not hold us back from delivering a world class ICT
experience to our users, thanks to open source and free software."

That is a very great statement.

Many thanks for sharing this with us,

it is very inspiring.

Kalpesh.

On Fri, Jul 11, 2008 at 8:52 AM, Neil Coetzer <ncoetzer at halsteds.co.zw>
wrote:

>  Hi Thembi,
>
> Many thanks for that testimonial to Ubuntu and open source. Very
> impressive. I would like to suggest that, once our Web site is up and
> running, we include that in a sort of "case study" section on the site, with
> your permission of course. Please advise if you would be happy for us to do
> so? As we continue to grow, all similar testimonials could be added to the
> same section of the site.
>
> Regards,
> Neil
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, 2008-07-10 at 19:21 +0200, Thembinkosi wrote:
>
> *Case Study: The Solusi University Open Source Software Project *
>
> Solusi University is located 50 kilometres south of Bulawayo in Zimbabwe.
> Our Vision is, *to be a World-class Christian University by 2010*. The
> vision is faced by huge challenges due to the poor economic climate we are
> operating in. One area we have to address to archive our vision is the
> efficient use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT's).
>
> In 2006 Solusi had less than 90 personal computers on campus. There are was
> no campus wide network.  We had independent dialup internet connections that
> were not reliable. There were no servers for email or websites. In short
> there were no sound ICT's.
>
> Late 2006 began a revolution at Solusi. We got donors you where willing to
> identify with our vision and wanted to help develop the ICT area of the
> university. This resulted in the acquisition of 240 computers from Computer
> Aid International. These machines came without any operating system
> software. We had to find a way around the huge cost of Microsoft Windows
> operating system software. We began looking for the free or open source
> alternatives and decided to use Ubuntu 6.04 as our solution. In no time, we
> were able to have all 240 personal computers installed and running.
>
> We managed to acquire a Sun Microsystems FX2000 blade server at an academic
> price. This server has 10 Gigabytes of Random Access Memory (RAM), two 250
> Gigabytes Hard Disk drives, and 4 Dual Core processors. We installed free
> Debian Linux 4.0 operating system software on it as the base operating
> software. The free VMware 1.05, server virtualisation software was then
> installed on it. With this setup we where able to install 7 Ubuntu 8.04
> servers on it. These servers included; a web server to host our
> www.solusi.ac.zw website and our intranet sites for campus clubs, software
> based firewall Ipcop, an online registration system called IUTUS made by
> AIIAS in the Philippines, among others. We use Nagios to monitor these
> servers. Nessus is used as a vulnerability checker for our network.
>
> We have installed a free email server [MTA] called qmail to run our email
> service. This email server authenticates users from a Light weight directory
> authentication protocol (LDAP) which is also open source and free. All
> systems on our network use this directory to authenticate users, we
> currently have over 6000 email accounts running on the server. The web mail
> interface is Claros InTouch 2.2 interface. We also use Open Exchange as the
> collaboration software. We added a free open source Jabber chat server
> called Openfire, which our users use to communicate with each other though
> online chat. Moodle manages our elearning portal.
>
> We also setup a campus area network to join all these computers to a
> 1Megabyte link we have to the internet. IPCOP, a free Linux based firewall
> software was use to share, route and control access to the internet.  The
> 240 machines have Open Office and the alternative to Microsoft Office. This
> works well for students who take courses in Introduction to Computers, in
> which they were taught to use word processing software, spread sheets and
> presentation software. Mozilla Firefox is used as the free alternative to
> Internet Explorer.
>
> With the main advantage of being free and legal software, Ubuntu proves
> unaffected by viruses and more stable than the Microsoft operating systems.
> In our academic environment where movement of files from person to person
> and computer to computer is high, Ubuntu manages to rise to the challenge.
> It reduces support costs. Our network is 99% free and open source software.
>
> The cost of software did not hold us back from delivering a world class ICT
> experience to our users, thanks to open source and free software.
>
>  As open source software develops we for see a strong if not better
> alternative to the proprietary software in the operating system software
> area.
>
>
>
> --
>
> Regards,
>
> -------------------
>
> Thembinkosi Moyo
>
> ICT Manager
>
> Solusi University
>
> www.solusi.ac.zw
>
> Direct Line: +263 9 887733
>
> Cell + 263 11 633 962
>
> =>You've achieved success in your field when you don't know whether what
> you're doing is work or play.*Warren Beatty<http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Warren_Beatty/>
> *
>
>
>
>
>
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