Jordan to Become the Open Source Hub of the Middle East

The Jordanian Government announced the first ever agreement between an international company and a government to promote open source adoption.

Jordan's Ministry of Information and Communication Technology and Ingres Corporation have entered into a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to achieve the widespread use of information technology and communication, particularly open source technology from Ingres, throughout the local software infrastructure in the country.

Ingres Corporation is considered one of the leading open source database management companies and delivers low cost and open source innovation to more than 10,000 customers worldwide.

"The open source model delivers cost savings through a subscription model that provides excellent support with a cost that is aligned to the value delivered and totally eliminates the expense of proprietary license fees." said Roger Burkhardt, CEO, Ingres. "We applaud the Government of Jordan as being the first to sign an agreement with an open source company to ensure the adoption of open source across the country. This is a huge first step and we hope to see other governments follow Jordan's lead by taking concrete actions to adopt open source to accelerate innovation and reduce the taxpayers costs."

As part of the MOU, Ingres will organize "boot camps" to address technical requirements for the community, offer free training to certify individuals from the IT industry and will arrange executive calls to assist MOICT in understanding the world-wide open source market.

Ingres will also support the creation of an open source laboratory in one of Jordan's leading universities.

On the other hand, Ministry of Information and Communication Technology will ensure the Government of Jordan will promote open source adoption within government departments, as well as assign IT resources to develop new functions for Ingres products with the community version of Ingres Open Source Database to create a community of developers.

The Ministry will also confirm open source as an alternative for purchasing software in the Government of Jordan.

"We are pleased to promote the benefits of open source in our region and our role in becoming the open source 'hub' for the Middle East," said Samer Shamayleh, director of strategic agreements, MOICT. "Our agreement with Ingres will help us to raise awareness and create a general understanding among government agency leaders about the value of open source software. Open source allows IT systems to be built without expensive up front investments in license fees and, with Ingres, without compromising on critical needs for privacy, security, and reliability that are crucial to our government agencies."