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Very late modernization

Last week, during my Easter holidays, I received the usual ServerSide.com newsletter containing the following article:
"How Italy's Ministry of Education boosted agility, innovation, cut costs"
From the title I was enthusiastic about the effort of the Ministry, but...
...in the short article I read that they relied on a mainframe server since the 1980's and only in 2012 they "realized that they needed more flexibillity to handle the reorganization of its administration". For this reason the new goals of the Ministry were the following:

  • Increase investments in innovation
  • Improve agility/continuity
  • And reduce costs.

and finally, thanks to God, they realized that a mainframe system could't satisfy these new requirements anymore. In the attached video (you can watch it at the following link
http://h20621.www2.hp.com/video-gallery/us/en/4fd7619f9d740e518dc8fe0cb11a5ff445f879f4/r/video) Paolo de Santis, the Applications and Security Manager of this Ministry, declares that before the modernization project (very well accomplished by HP) most of the budget was spent in the maintenance of the system. The full name of this Ministry is "Ministero dell'Istruzione, dell'Università e della Ricerca" (MIUR), Ministry for Education, University and Research. I think that it is very disgraceful for a Ministry for University and Research to be so out of time. But if this happens in Italy I shouldn't be so surprised and embittered: this is the state of the nation about research and IT in this country.
Nuff said.
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