Buskerud County Municipality has reacted to the fact that the national Norwegian authorities wish a greater inclusion of free and open source software in the public sector.

The county municipalities in Norway have a role as regional developers, and part of this role is to strengthen and support businesses in the region. At the same time, Buskerud County Municipality, with its 3 000 employees and 9 000 students in upper secondary education, is committed to achieving a more modern and cost-effective telecommunication solution.

We believe that this project will encourage business development in our region, a small contribution that could inspire local IT companies to focus much more on free and open source software.                                                        

We know that there is money to save if internal traffic uses a dedicated broadband network, but we are convinced that there is even more money to save if the entire external telecommunication, or even parts of it, also uses a public IP network such as Internet.
                                                                
It is not enough that only Buskerud County Municipality implements this telecommunication solution. To succeed in realising these benefits, it is crucial that as many as possible implement the same solution, within both the private and public sectors.

To achieve this, we must develop suppliers in parallel with the development of the technical solution. We believe that this approach will empower the suppliers to win public calls for tender, thereby generating wide implementation, not only throughout Europe, but also throughout the entire world. We are pleased to currently have 12 suppliers involved in the project and look forward to collaborating with other public bodies as well as private companies throughout Europe.

www.bfk.no


The Digitale Vestre Agder (DDV) (Digital West Agder) is a municipal collaboration involving 11 municipalities in the south of Norway in which they cooperate in a number of areas including ICT. Like the Buskerud County Municipality, DDV also sees huge savings through the implementation of a telecommunication solution based on open standards and free software. Additional savings are achieved through a common switchboard, integrated with the existing infrastructure. The established, proprietary support systems (switchboards) currently available in the market are relatively expensive.

Development of expertise is the core of the Norwegian project, both within the companies and internally in our organisation. Our region is the home of Høgskolen i Agder (HiA) (Agder University College), a college that has set the standard in Norway for free and open source software. HiA will participate as the project’s collaboration partner for expertise development in our region.

One of the municipalities in DDV already has an Asterisk installation up and running, connected to the existing switchboard. The installation has been proven to be highly stable and by itself has saved the municipality substantial amounts in costs.

On application of the finished, total solution, Enterprise Unified eXchange, we believe we can realize significant savings.


Agder University College (HiA), with more than 8200 students and 900 teaching and administrative staff, is one of the largest University Colleges in Norway. Based on our research experience in European and national projects we wish to offer the EUX initiative a set of courses that high-light the business, user, and technical aspects of Internet Telephony and Open Source. Our ambition is to publish these courses on the web for everyone to access.

We fully support EUX vision to create a common, standardized Internet Telephony solution that will help large and medium sized enterprises to stay competitivewhile adding new capabilities to their overall work environment.

www.hia.no


CBK Tele is a Norwegian data and telecom operator with activities all over Norway. Our business is to offer IP based communication, telephony and internet solutions to corporations and government. We are passionate about technology and are strong believers in Open Source. We have many Open Source solutions in our operations. Everyday we use and deliver Asterisk based solutions, IAX termination and Patton ISDN Gateways.

We really believe in EUX and are planning to install and support EUX for our customers. We are also contributing development and design experience to the project.

CBK Tele delivers service through a carefully developed network of Authorized Service Providers. Our Service Providers are not only the best in the Norwegian market but because they're local to each market, have a unique understanding of the customer's business environment and communication needs.

For more information, please visit us at www.cbktele.no
                                                             

Norsk Regnesentral (Norwegian Computing Center, NR) is a private, independent, non-profit foundation that carries out contract research and development projects in the areas of information and communication technology and applied statistical modeling.

The main areas of research within information and communication technology include the areas of IT security and multimedia-multichannel technologies.

NR has experience in the development of prototype software as well as making various types of evaluations, e.g., security-, architectural-, user evaluations, etc.

Our main focus in the EUX project is research and protoype development aimed at a holistic architecture where security and service quality issues are integrated into the VoIP and PABX frameworks. Since several functions of the EUX framework are critical to confidentiality, availability, and integrity of the service, including financial transactions, the system must be designed and validated to ensure appropriate trust in the final product.

For more information, please visit us at www.nr.no

                                                            
IBM's engagement in Linux and open source provides innovative solutions for clients through collaboration and openness. These are key ingredients to successful technological solutions because innovation today comes from community partnerships with clients and industry groups.
IBM is collaborating with various open source projects with skill and support, offering the broadest Linux-certified hardware- and software portfolio in the market and with the largest Linux ecosystem.

For more information, please visit us at www.ibm.com/linux

Linpro AS is a leading Norwegian provider of Linux and open source software services, products and solutions. Our comprehensive range of Linux related services includes analysis, software development and integration, training courses, hosting, support and systems administration.

In addition to services, we offer a range of leading OSS products and solutions, including Asterisk. Linpro is involved in a range of OSS projects, and supports the EUX project in order to provide public sector with a flexible and professional IP-product and related services.

For more information, please visit us at www.linpro.no

mopo is the Free Software company of Northern Norway. We are experts of innovation, using only the hottest technology available. Our goal is to help our customers achieve more power through technology freedom.

For more information, please visit us at www.mopo.no

Nimra Norge develop, customize and deliver communication-solutions based on Open source Software.

We have been working with Asterisk for more than three years. We see the EUX project as a great opportunity to develop a complete solution for larger organizations, based on Asterisk PBX.

For more information, please visit us at www.nimra.no

Cybercom Group Europe AB is a high-tech consulting company that concentrates on selected technologies and offers business-critical solutions, primarily to the telecom sector.

Using IT, we help customers get results. We're experts in the latest technologies. And we serve leading enterprises that are on the cutting edge of technology. Cybercom is a key partner for customers that assertively invest in portal development, billing solutions, or embedded systems. Cybercom also provides expertise, advice, and services within all aspects of procurement, implementation, and operation of telecom networks and systems.

For more information, please visit us at www.cybercomgroup.com

Ella Kommunikasjon AS is a local system integrator and telecom operator based in Kristiansand in the south of Norway. Asterisk was first introduced in our network as a Voicemail server for the consumer market in 2002. Today we install, deliver and maintain Asterisk PBXs having only good experience doing so. In the consumer marked we also started using Open Source running a Sip Express Router in 2002, now having around 6000 extensions. In the EUX project, Ella have had a leading role making the White Paper ‘Technical Requirement Specification’. The demand for solutions based on open source software is rising. We want to live up to our reputation as a technology pioneer, and be in front of development. That‚s why we have joined this project.

For more information, please visit us at www.ella.no

Diptel AS is a young technology company situated on the west coast of Norway. For several years we have supplied enterprises with customized installation and support of Asterisk. Our employees are involved in numerous Open Source projects which is encouraged by the management and also is our primary recruiting base.

To participate in this project is therefore deeply rooted in our company policy; our belief in Open Source.

For more information, please visit us at www.diptel.no

Allnet Technologies has developed and maintained telephony platforms with both VOIP based services and traditional telephony services in Norway in a large scale.

Our developed billing and customer platforms are all based on open source components and developed on Linux based servers. The reason we are continuing in this area is the lack of license fees attached to the type of operating systems and open source software, the flexibility to customize applications and improving functionality without having to get the vendors to change the software or waiting for a new release of a third party software vendor. As a major driving force for using
open source software is also that there are millions of developers contributing to open source software published on the net.

For more information, please visit us at www.allnet-tech.net

FreeCode AS is backing EUX as it aligns perfectly with our company vision: Free Information Technology controlled by the user.

FreeCodeenables our customers to take control over their own IT systems - by the use free software and best practice frameworks like ITIL. Free software such as Asterisk makes it possible for any organization to more easily integrate with other systems such as CRM, ERP and groupware. Enterprises seek to lower financial risk by increasing control. Asterisk will give your organization greater control of your telephone services.

For more information, please visit us at www.freecode.no