Kent coppers save a fortune using Linux

The Holmes II system is one of Inspector Knacker of Maidstone's key tools for fighting crime and was scaled up to help investigate this February's raid on the Securitas depot in Tonbridge. It was migrated to the Novell operating system after systems integrator Unisys adapted it to run on the open source operating system.

The rest of the hardware came from Dell, mostly because the Force was looking for something nice and cheap, Kent Police IT director Andy Barker told Computer Weekly.

It is possible that the savings will mean that the other systems being used by the Kentish coppers will also be shifted to Linux.

The SAP system, which supports 6,500 users for the force's finance, human resources, payroll and duty planning functions, has already been earmarked for moving to Linux by the end of September.

Testing is being carried out on Kent's main policing system, called Genesis, to see if it Linux can handle the scalability issues when it goes live. µ

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