Tectonic has learnt that the South African Revenue Service (Sars) tender that could see 14 000 Windows machines migrated to Linux has been frozen until Sars wraps up its financial year-end.
Sars’s tender for a proof-of-concept for Linux on the desktop has mysteriously disappeared from the taxman’s tender site. While Sars has not responded to Tectonic’s requests for comment, it has been learnt from reliable sources that the tender is frozen until Sars completes its tax year-end process.
The tender’s disappearance coincides with a number of key staff members leaving the organisation, including renowned Chief Information Officer (CIO) Ken Jarvis and acting chief technologist Myrna Gordon. Sazi Gcaba, Sars’s technology strategist for open-source software, is overseas.
It was under Jarvis’s reign that Sars implemented its famous move to Linux for its Enterprise Resource Planning ERP (ERP) system, saving the organisation a significant amount and becoming a worldwide case study for e-business solution SAP on Linux. Widely regarded as South Africa’s top CIO with a penchant for hedging his bets across multiple vendors, Jarvis has moved to the private sector.
The benefits of the SAP ERP move to Linux were mentioned in the Sars desktop tender, which — if it ever happens — could result in 14 000 desktops currently running Microsoft Windows XP SP2 being migrated to Linux.
The fact that the tender was frozen has not been communicated to the tenderers, who had invested significant time and money into the tender. The first sign that something was amiss was the disappearances of the tender from Sars’s tender site, and following investigation by the tenderers, it emerged that the tender was frozen. — Tectonic