25 February 2009 – Yesterday, the UK government announced its most far reaching policy initiative on open source software to date. The report, 'Open Source, Open Standards and Re-Use: Government Action Plan http://www.cio.gov.uk/transformational_government/open_source/index.asp sets out detailed steps the Government needs to take with their technology suppliers to take advantage of the benefits of open source technology. The report focuses on the need to increase the pace of open source adoption to continue to use the best possible solutions for public services at the best value for money and to reduce cost and risk, encourage innovation, collaborate and share information.

Kim Jones, president and managing director for Sun United Kingdom and Ireland said, “Sun started working with the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) on open source strategies more than five years ago and we are delighted that this Government Action Plan will deliver a robust progressive policy which, if widely implemented, we believe can help the Government save millions each year on technology spending.”

“In the current economic climate, attention is focused on ways to keep down costs while increasing return on investment. The UK Government could save millions of pounds every year if it made more use of open source as part of a competitive procurement system. We are convinced that open source and open standards drive much needed choice, competition and innovation in the market,” said Jones.

“As the leading open source vendor, Sun fully supports the Government on this policy. One of the main objectives of this announcement is to ensure public awareness around open source solutions as it provides more choice and support through cost-effective and flexible solutions,” said Simon Phipps, chief open source officer at Sun Microsystems, Inc. “Open source solutions offer quality, coherence and innovation. Sun believes strategic use of open source supports this strategy and can contribute to the strengthening of the public sector and companies’ ability to continually stay competitive in a globalised world.”

Phipps continued, “Sun views, open source as an ideal foundation for development and business in today's massively connected economy. And we believe an open source model offers liberties to every user and developer that encourages genuinely collaborative innovation, especially by allowing rapid, adoption-led approaches to software acquisition.”

About Sun and Open Source
Sun Microsystems made a public commitment to Free and Open Source software (FOSS) and in doing so has contributed billions of dollars as well as more code to Free Software than any other organization in the public or private sector. As well as leveraging many industry-wide open source projects, Sun has taken the unique step of opening its core software, hardware and storage technologies and sharing them as Free and open source.

About Sun Microsystems, Inc.

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