City of Vienna increasingly turns to open source
he administration in the Austrian capital, Vienna, is expanding its use of open source solutions, including on its workstations, because of new requirements, open data, budget constraints and the major shift towards smartphones and tablets. "Open source helps to solve IT vendor lock-in situations", Norbert Weidinger, ICT-Strategist for the city, said in a presentation on the city's use of free and open source solutions. Open source is now well-established in the city's main IT operations, according to the presentation which Weidinger delivered at a Major Cities of Europe conference in Dublin on 17 January. The city has 454 Linux servers (from a total of 2,000 servers), 270 Apache instances, uses Postgres to manage 380 databases and MySQL to manage another 90. Open source is used for file and printing services, for e-government services and for external and internal websites.

"We're promoting the use of open source products where possible", Weidinger said.

The IT department's responsibilities include the IT in the city's public healthcare, public schools and the administration of city-owned housing.