Practically, the main blow is taken by Microsoft, at least at the level of its public image, because in fact the Windows and Office licenses are not abandoned by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services employees, the most important organizations to which announced lately their intention to adopt open source software solutions.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services have already signed a several million dollars contract, to be deployed during the following years, by which they commit to use Linux and identity management products developed by Novell Inc.

The exact terms of this business contract between Novell and HHS have been kept a secret. However, a spokesperson from Novell stated that this deal is the first enterprise license agreement between a federal department and a Linux distributor.

And if this time the National Institute of Health took the fist step by associating with Linux, many other agencies find themselves in similar situations, and it is very likely that they will follow the same path, adopting Linux and other open-source solutions.

Based on this contract, Novell offers unrestricted access to its products for the almost 70,000 users within HHS, out which 30,000 are a part of the National Institute of Health. Novell will also offer a secure operation through upgrades and technical support for products as Suse Linux Enterprise Server, Novell Open Enterprise Server, Novell Linux Desktop.

Sources from within NIH clearly stated that the Microsoft solutions will not be abandoned, because they are used at too large a scale within the entire HHS structure.
However, the Linux solutions will offer an interesting and cheap alternative for the thousands of users from within NIH and HHA, but also from within other agencies