CERN Stops Using Microsoft Products And Starts Using Open-Source Software

Most people on the internet are users of open-source software. The rest use proprietary software for the operations, including CERN.

Employers at CERN are considered the few people working at one of the world's greatest research institutions. But for their computers, they use Microsoft-based programs like many desktop users around the globe.

But things are changing.

Starting 2018, CERN launched the Microsoft Alternatives project (MAlt), which aims to make the institution get away from Microsoft programs to save money.

This is because commercial software licenses with their per-user fee structure are getting more expensive, making them not affordable by CERN.

According to Iban Eguia, a CERN software engineer on Twitter:

For decades, CERN could afford Microsoft programs because it paid "academic institution" rate.

According to Emmanuel Ormancey, a CERN system analyst, when Microsoft revoked CERN's academic status, and started replacing the old contract with user number-based one, this increased "the license costs by more than a factor of 10."

Although CERN has negotiated to at least give it the necessary time to adapt, the costs are still not sustainable.

As a result, CERN started the Microsoft Alternatives project (MAlt), with a goal to "investigate the migration from commercial software products (Microsoft and others) to open-source solutions, so as to minimize CERN's exposure to the risks of unsustainable commercial conditions."

The principles at CERN when concerning the software it uses, include the ability to:

• Deliver the same service to every category of CERN personnel.
• Avoid vendor lock-in to decrease risk and dependency.
• Keep hands on the data.
• Address the common use-cases.

Ormancey further explained that "The first major change coming is a pilot mail Service for the IT department and volunteers this summer, followed by the start of CERN-wide migration. In parallel, some Skype for Business clients and analogue phones will migrate to a softphone telephony pilot."

While moving end-user stacks is never an easy job, CERN is already using some open-source projects.

For example, on the cloud, CERN is a long-time supporter of the OpenStack Infrastructure-as-a-Server (IaaS) cloud. Before that, CERN was a partner of the organization Fermilab, and had its own Linux distribution: Scientific Linux.

"While the Microsoft Alternatives project is ambitious, it's also a unique opportunity for CERN to demonstrate that building core services can be done without vendor and data lock-in, that the next generation of services can be tailored to the community's needs," Ormancey concluded.

CERN is the European Organization for Nuclear Research, which operates Large Hadron Collider, the largest particle physics laboratory in the world, and other infrastructure needed for high-energy physics research.

Established in 1954, the organization is based in a northwest suburb of Geneva on the Franco–Swiss border.

In 2016, it had 2,500 scientific, technical, and administrative staff members, and hosted about 12,000 users. In the same year, CERN generated 49 petabytes of data.

CERN is also known to be the birthplace of the World Wide Web