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Microsoft Loses Showdown in Houston
An anonymous reader writes "It seems the city of Houston has decided against using Microsoft software. It really is amazing how much it costs to use (and maintain) software. I can't help but wonder if this will become a trend." Turns out they decided on the relativly unknown SimDesk suite, which has nothing to do with The Sims, sadly. Many, many posts about this. In additional news seldo writes "There's an interesting interview on News.Com with Peter Houston. He discusses Microsoft's changing attitude in competing with Linux -- no longer calling it a "cancer" but instead promoting the advantages of Windows."
As goes Peru, so goes the world......
First, they ignore you.
Then, they laugh at you.
Then, they fight you.
Then you win.
It's not as funny as:
Step 1. Create Gcc.
Step 2. Create Linux kernel.
Step 3. ???
Step 4. World Domination!!
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
Unfortunately, I am choosing to post this as an AC but I'm speaking as one of the top geeks in a large place of work (~6,000 employees).
We are upgrading to XP, as Linux offers us no value.
He just kept repeating this over and, over, didn't he? Regardless of what the interviewer said. Now, I understand he has to watch what he says when he's on the record, but he came off as totally clueless when he kept saying this over and over. I read the interview like this:
These folks are claiming that the earth is round.
See, the problem is, these people are embracing a circular model, which is ill suited to every day life. Think about it - if you walk outside, you'll have to take into account the curvature of the earth, and really, you're not walking on a flat surface. Imagine the confusion that would cause your brain - your eyes tell you the ground is flat, but your mind knows it isn't.
But, we have people who have sailed and flown around the earth - there's no edge to fall off
I admit, their round view is interesting, but eventually you'll encounter that edge, and you'll fall off. It's far safer to subscribe to our view that earth is flat.
How do you account for the celestial movements observed - they could not exist if the earth was flat.
These observations are flawed - these astronomers are not looking at the whole picture. Sure, they portion they observe is round, but in the big picture, it's flat. We find that users are comfortable with a flat view of the earth, and it's only a matter of time before those astronomers are burned at the stake.
How do you respond to the National Science Foundation's findings that the earth is in fact round?
Those findings are biased. The earth is flat - there's no further discussion on the issue.
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
I guess that this makes Houston the first official SimCity now othat they have chosen to use the SimDesk software? Soon we will see aliens invading, fires, floods, and earthquakes all happening in the city of Houston as stressed city workers press the 'Disaster' button over and over...
[Something witty and intelligent should have appeared here.]
{Traicovn}
I took the liberty of tapping the City of Houston's phones when the negotiations with Microsoft were happening. Here's what I found:
....Hold on a second.
MS: We know you use our software and don't pay for it!
HO: How do you know that?
MS: Because everyone does. If you don't give us ONE MILLION DOLLARS (sound of pinky finger going in mouth) we will expose you and your city's pirating ways!
HO: Well, actually we have a new company to give us our office software suite.
MS: Ha, ha ha!! That will never work! EVERYBODY uses Microsoft Office, you will never be able to exchange documents without corruption!
HO: We ran into that problem when we upgraded from Office '95 to '97 acutally.
MS: Ha, ha ha!! That is because we love money!! Err... wait. I mean, that is because of all the new features in Office '97!! Ha, ha ha!!
HO: That doesn't sound like a good reason to me.
MS:
MS: Ha, ha ha!! If you don't give us ONE MILLION DOLLARS we will expose you and your city's pirating ways!
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
What if Lee P. Brown, the mayor of Houston is a Democrat?
Does that still mean that the Tollway system in Chicago proves that all southerners are uneducated homosexual Republican KKK members?
Well you could read the report. It is basically a whitewash job to save the Mayor's butt, but it can't do the job. As for whether Tatro has a hidden agenda, quite possibly but it seems rather more likely that his agenda is party politics than carrying water for Microsoft.
The report is actually pretty damning. The contract amount was $9.5 million, yet the report states that "Mr Piper did not understand the contract development and negotiation process and the time it would take".
If you have had any experience at all of city politics you know that a statement of that type is horsepucky. You do not get to be CIO of a city the size of Houston without understanding the difference between an RFP and a contract negotiation. The story that he came from private industry does not wash either, anyone involved in corporate procurement knows what an RFP is.
When you see a statement like that in an inspectors report it means precisely one thing, namely the inspector is pretty sure that something fishy went on but lacks the evidence to prove it.
The description of the bidding process demonstrates pretty clearly that the RFP was deliberately written to ensure that only one party could bid. It was written so narrowly that only IAT's application fitted. It was not only the Microsoft sales guy who was frozen out. The IBM sales rep would have bid if allowed additional time - which IAT did not need because they had known about the RFP two months beforer it was issued and in any case it described their product.
Its not just the Microsoft guy who thought the deal was stinky, the BMC guy also wondered why the city would replace an existing exchange installation that was fully functional with 'an untested product for $9 million'.
The Advarion guy also had some pretty good points, the contract was massively inflated from the start, the number of users was overstated, the number of simultaneous users was overstated. It was also plain wrong about a lot of technical issues. Why specify a 5Tb file storage device when it is easy to add extra capacity? "Many requirements do not state a problem to be solved but include required equipment, resources and programming design. Most of the time the City is concerned with solving a City problem, not a programming problem. The RFP includes software architecture and virtually useless features as requirements. This does not encourage proposal submittal but confuses software companies and discourages proposal submittal."
Piper himself admits that the contract price grew by $4.5 million because they had underestimated the cost of bandwidth.
The inspectors report does not actually clear Piper of all charges, the dispute over what was said to Microsoft is 'Not Sustained' rather than 'No'. It is interesting however to read the actual text used to justify these conclusions.
The RFP process is found to have been 'fair' because the vendors who were frozen out failled to complain about the process at the time. The fact that IBM and Centrix 'indicated that they could have entered a bid'. This is pure whitewash, IBM stated they did not enter a bid because the city did not allow enough time and Centrix did not enter a bid because they did not know from the RFP what the City actually wanted.
The inspectors report only considers the issue of whether the process was unfair to the bidders. The real scandal is that the whole project from start to finish was a collosal boondoggle that was a collosal waste of public money. It is typical of dotcom era and enron thinking rather than practical realities. $9.5 million has been spent on an IT infrastructure that we can confidently predict will never be used.
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