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Munich Spurns Steve Ballmer's Software Rebates
Kurt Pfeifle writes "Steve Ballmer's recent trip to Munich to offer up to
90% rebates for the Microsoft Software Assurance and
Licenses was in vain. The ruling party of Germans biggest city and self-proclaimed 'technology capital' now decided
to migrate 14.000 workstations to Linux and an OSS
office suite. A study comparing the alternatives had
assigned 6218 (out of 10.000) points to Linux/OSS,
while the MS Windows platform only scored 5293. Babelfish translation of the latest newsticker story."
When any manufacturer offers incredibly deep discounts like this, it's only so they can get their hooks into you. "Give them the razors, sell them the blades."
Trolling is a art,
Is this a sign of things to come as more and more jurisdictions move to Open Source?
Note that it is still a preliminary decision. But as you can read from the article if it comes to the final decision there probably will be 43 (SPD and Gruene party) to 33 (CDU and FDP) votes for Linux. :-)
14 workstations! Good work, guys!
Seriously, if slashdot starts using "." and "," interchangably, it could get confusing. We ought to decide which notation we like better and stick with that. Personally I don't see why we need to stick in a <whatever> every 3 zeroes at all.
Duct tape, XML, democracy: Not doing the job? Use more.
This is not an article about just Miscrosoft. It is an article that offers me a faint glimmer of hope that maybe, just maybe, greedy mega-corps do not control the entire world.
UNIX/Linux Consulting
90% discount?! Now THAT'S a monopoly! I don't see Steve Balmer rushing to offer me a 90% discount on any MS products. Then again I'm not a city so no wonder!
This is selling it below cost, which is dumping, which is illegal. The EU competition commission should take note of this (along with other infractions 1 through 97bn) and throw the book at them.
If it's a lead plated copy of War and Peace, hurled at 1,000 m/sec, all the better.
Beep beep.
several reasons:
to strengthen the 'technological capital' thing
free is still cheaper than 90% off, which is important in the current german economy. also, most of the cost that does exist will stay inside munich, instead of giving a foreign company the money
it creates 'real competition'
it gives greater flexibility
the change will create jobs for qualified people (which means more off them come to munich)
not dependent on a single company
Yes the user submitted a bombastic headline for this story. Heise.de actually used "SPD Munich goes for Linux" which is not quite this bombastic.
However you really should learn to read stories behind headlines. Headlines are usually meant to be bombastic. There is indeed a mention to Linux in the news summary.
Regarding Windows XP vs Linux there are several things which can be said.
For desktop purposes indeed Windows XP is superior for several reasons: common look UI, proper crossapp DND, multimedia support, better hardware management GUI tools, etc.
For server purposes Microsoft OSes lag in several respects: You do not have as many built-in facilities for automation of batches, the fact that UNIX devices are character streams make things like backup trivial, etc.
For something like this desktop win at the German government it is very obvious license costs are important. These are 14,000 machines we are talking. It is a tidy sum. Microsoft may be willing to lower prices *now* but they could well recover their investment later on with upgrade fees after customers are locked in using data with proprietary Microsoft file formats. This way the German government also promotes the local software industry.
What would *you* do if you were in their place?
First Ballmer interrupts his skiing trip to talk to Munich officials.
Then a Microsoft memo gets leaked in which it is stated that "no matter what, don't lose against Linux"
Then Ballmer offers a 90% discount
Then Ballmer sells 10% of his MSFT-stock.
And finally Munich uses Linux anyway.
just some thoughts on the situation...
first, it's been said before that by going w/ Linux it will help the German economy more than by going with windows.
second, 90% is a great rebate discount. But what happens 5 years down the road when MS decides to not support the piece of software that they have already sold and instead tells the people of Munich that they have to buy new versions of the software at full price?
Third, this is a good way to bring Linux to people's homes. Didn't the x86 processor (and subsequent MS OS) become popular due to the fact that it was all over the workplace and people wanted to use it at home? not exactly like that but i hope you get my thought.
and just so people don't think i'm some Linux zealot, i use winxp and beos. i've tried several distributions of Linux and don't like it... yet. As more people use it, it will definitely get much better for home use.
"Tread softly because you tread on my dreams"
First I have to say that you nationalist whining kinda pisses me off.
Second: Did you read the article? IBM will make the deal instead of Microsoft. You know what country IBM is from, don't you?
Signature deleted by lameness filter.
Even if they waive all future upgrade license fees, they still have support contracts, MSDN and other subscriptions to services many large organizations will rerquire.
Golly. Sounds familiar. Isn't this the...*wait for it*...open source business model?
If you do a detailed business-case, I think you will find that Microsoft should be willing to charge nothing.
Recall that if Microsoft loses the account, they get ZERO dollars. On the other hand, per-license cost (to Microsoft) is essentially ZERO as well. So whatever they can charge is extra profit. All of the talk of slush fund to pay for the discount is just accounting wool to pull over people's eyes (and may be keep bonuses straight).
Also, if you look at the Market Share or Network Effect, that also argues for "do not lose". Indeed, as Microsoft (and other companies) has demonstrated, it is often worthwhile to pay a customer to take it.
Microsoft did what any hungry business does to open doors to a good market: undercut every other. This ain't illegal anywhere.
I just finished selecting a company to make a custom eLearning system at my job. The winner had the best technical offer (it had 10% more points than no.2) AND their price was 50% under the second best price. Moreover, there were about 10 bidders and the eLearning market is young and competitive. The winner was NOT the biggest, baddest, most deep-pocketed; they wanted to take over the bid to get visibility in the corporate structure (yes, we are THAT big).
In this case, Microsoft did what they could and did not win. Which shows the value of the alternative!
You're not old until regret takes the place of your dreams.
Huh?
Did I miss the part where it said american companies will not be allowed to provide the linux software?
Before the war, there was an article on how the US was spying on countries to see how they would vote on the war resolution in the UN.
5 936,00.html
http://www.observer.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12239,90
Because of this Germany may also be moving away from software that may have potential secret backdoors written in for the NSA. No matter how much you get in rebates, it will never give a government the peace of mind of having compiled and inspected the code yourself.
Hmm, could you please explain how can a CEO engage in insider trading? Isn't s/he inside by definition? And how would Ballmer sell stock otherwise, when he manages the company and probably knows pretty much all that's going on?
The first strange thing is that two teams are assigned to work independently, each of which will ultimately produce a score out of 5000 (hence the 10000 total). The logic is that should there be any different approaches taken (especially during the TCO analysis) then they should smooth out somewhat.
Then, the 5000 points are split into "distinct" sections; the reason I quote distinct is because in fact they are anyhting but: security, transition cost, and TCO. Of course, really TCO covers everything, but they chose to extract the first two as different sections because they can be measured in a much more direct way (transition cost) or must be measured in a far more heuristic way (security). TCO on the other hand is an amalgamated figure of ongoing support costs (minus security concerns, of course), training, and initial software cost, amortised over a 5 year period (the standard life-cycle of their system).
I think the 5000 is divided into 900 for security, 1200 for transition costs, and 2900 for TCO. Within each of these, the actual figures they come up with are fit to the appropriate maximum score through a sigmoidal squashing function, that is attenuated at the low end, such that there is not much difference in score between the very cheapest solutions, but a huge difference between expensive solutions. Doesn't help Linux (cheap) look good, but on the other hand it does help Windows (very expensive!) look extremely bad.
Then the scores are simply summed across the two teams to get an aggregate out of 10000. As I say, I don't really know the specifics, but that's more or less how it works.
Your message is somewhat nonsensical -
1. The slashdot community does NOT hate microsoft. Since the the slashdot community is composed chiefly of users of microsoft windows, your statement makes no sense.
2. When microsoft does badly, the "entire tech industry" does not do badly, quite the contrary. Those who depend on microsoft stock do badly - period. "the industry" is actually much better off if software companies are able to freely innovate without the fear that the 1300 lb gorilla is going to smash them with monoploy hardball tricks.
3. The mainstream adoption of open source does not mean fewer jobs for programmers, but quite the opposite - what on earth gives you that idea? open source opens up many more opportunities for programmers.
Being a programmer, I find this delightful!
When the winning software basicly scores 6/10 and beats out a competitor scoring 5/10, what does this say about the suitability of current software for what users want to use it for?
Yes I know it's fun to watch linux vs windows and cheer from the sidelines etc, but how about this bigger picture?
Maybe it's just me but software seems to be doing less and less of what we as users want and more and more of what marketing departments want. Useless features, obsolete features that are never pruned, tons of time and money spent dealing with ways to push advertising or find more ways to milk the consumer... Whatever happened to looking for ways to make doing everyday tasks easier and faster? Open source projects don't seem to be entirely immune to it either. I see lots of development in trying to keep feature parity or adding new things to invent new buzzwords for, but I haven't seen anything moving towards ease of using for some time now. All apps are now using "skinable" interfaces that make using them inconsistent with each other. Some apps have such complex configurations they're harder to learn to use than the average OS. I think that's a problem.
So what were the almost 4000 points that weren't awarded based on?
Introducing the new Occam Fusion! Now with sqrt(-1) fewer blades!
Microsoft had, until recently, spoke of Linux and threw around a lot of numbers and FUD about the total cost of ownership with Linux and how Microsoft was so much cheaper. So, if Microsoft is that much better why offer a discount at all? I realize that MS no longer makes this claim, but what does it say about a product that to sell it must be discounted by nearly all its selling value? It's a case of paying 10% now and 100% later when licensing expires or upgrades are required and then required again and again.
This attempt by Ballmer to sell its software smacks of desperation.
You ain't a moron either. ;) )
You just didn't have a look at the world map.
Ask me for something on a different continent and I'll be lost.
My geometry teachers always had a favorite trick question: What's the capital of america?
Correct solution of course was, that america is a continent containing more lot's of states like USA, Canada, Mexico, Cuba, and so on... and therefore there is no capital of america.
It was a real catcher. A bad one.
(And I just realized that the capital of canada is Ottawa and not Toronto...
HAND
Stephan
Nice assumptions you're making.
I've been happily using gnu/linux for over two years now. The benefits are NO crashes, unbelievable uptimes, and an incredible collection of software, just to name a few things. But I'll stop at that, because to the non-believers, this is preaching, and you've heard it all before.
Let's go back to your math. A couple hundred bucks? That's a pipe dream. Your math is way off. I have two desktops, 4 server/desktops, and a laptop in my home, for two computer users. While I'm not a typical or average user, your heavily discounted $200 would cost me $1,400 for your software description, not counting the server applications I use. Either that, or I'm a thief, a pirate of the high seas, and should be jailed according to Jack Valenti and his cronies at the mpaa/riaa/bsa.
You conveniently left out the fact that a home user can't copy the operating system or office application from microsoft to another computer. You have to buy a separate "license" for each computer.
While I'm not the typical user, I'd say that a majority of users have at least one fairly new desktop, one laptop, and possibly an older desktop that they either 1. threw out, or 2. don't use, because the new software from microsoft doesn't run well on older, but still usable, hardware.
And the previous paragraph also brings up another point. Was a hardware upgrade required to use the new software? Did you have to buy more memory to make the os/applications usable? Faster processor? Completely new computer?
Factor in hardware upgrades, and your minimized $200 is much higher.
I know small business owners who like office, and either purchased one copy of the os and the office suite and copied it to other computers, or they didn't even pay for the single copies. With product activation, that's all over now. So I know small business owners that are using older versions of windows and the office suite on some computers, and will never pay for legit copies for each computer. Is it going to cost them your $200 figure? Hardly.
When faced with the option of even just paying your $200 per computer, on multiple desktops, or paying nothing/one copy of gnu/linux and openoffice.org, for all their desktops and bringing their companies back into legal land, guess which path they choose?
I know small business owners still using 486 computers, 386 computers, old versions of wordperfect, and several companies that even have the old 8088/8086 boxes running dos/basica for some light calculating work, because they won't pay the prices microsoft demands for their software, and they are getting by with what they have.
I'm no expert, or sys admin, or anything like that, but I'll be setting up a network for each of these companies running a file/print server on gnu/linux, and the older computers will be used as terminals to log into the file server that will also be running openoffice.
What's the cost for the companies? I don't do it for a living, so they're getting my help and advice for free. They already have some networking equipment and knowing their requirements, all they'll need is one or a few small switches, some ethernet wire, and cards in one case, and in another case, they have cards (the owner wastes time on ebay regularly, so he picked up a lot of cards in one auction), so he'll need wiring and a switch. Besides that, the cost of one distribution if they want documentation, or a copy of my disks if they don't want dead tree manuals.
So for $200 in minor hardware purchases, these companies will be equiping a couple dozen computers with gnu/linux, and will be amazed with what they get. Instead of spending your minimal $200 x 24 = $4800. And that's not including the file server software for each company. And also, I know what they'll be using for their file servers. They in no way would be able to run windows 2000 or xp as a file server on their boxes. They would have to spend, what, another $800 or $1,000 a piece for a minimal file serv