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Choosing Microsoft Products May Cost 10-40% More
securitas writes "Jupiter Research has issued a report that says businesses that choose to stay with Microsoft products may end up paying anywhere from 10%-40% more than if they chose another solution. Software Assurance clients will see the lowest costs and SA-have-nots will see the highest costs. The rationale is that Microsoft's strategy of integrating server and client software, as it has done with the new Windows Server 2003 and Microsoft Office 2003 suite, will force costly upgrades and licenses. Ultimately the goal is to transform Office into a platform instead of a collection of applications. Analyst Joe Wilcox says, "Microsoft argues that increased integration will cut down ongoing costs, maintenance and what not, but whether that will be the case has yet to be seen. The increased acquisition costs, though, are pretty clear." This leaves the door open for other office suites like Corel WordPerfect, Sun StarOffice and OpenOffice. More on costs and integration at Jupiter/Wilcox's Microsoft Monitor Blog."
The purchase price is just one part of TCO.
That's assuming they download every single piece of software from the project sites and order no distributions of Linux, etc. from large companies like Red Hat or Mandrake.
Sorry, my karma just ran over your dogma.
I assume you're joking, however I'll still bite. You've made several bad assumptions:
Don't forget to check out the recently released OpenOffice.org 1.1. Unlike previous versions of OpenOffice.org, it has wonderful font handling, looks like a native application, improved office file formats support, and most importantly, it's FAST. Now it only takes about 4 seconds to load on my machine, compared to around 30 for 1.0. Download it now.
Windows Version
Linux version
Other versions
Or just install Debian, which has everything prepackaged... and incedently is free too.
The article is not about the cost difference between say Office and Open Office, but between the current pricing and software structure versus the future.
It would be ludicrous to use this articele as a vehicle to prove the viability of Star Office, say, versus Office. I find the description of this article very misleading. Any new generation/paradigm(is it a paradigm? I'll check Kuhn) can result in a rise in total cost of acquisition or even ownership.
This applies to any software, free or not. If PHP or HTTP were radically changed, would it not require significant investment to reintegrate old applications? IPv6, while necessary in the lon run will undoubetedly cause an initial cost of migration.
What are the costs of migrating from office to Open Office? What are the costs of then intregrating Open Office into the organization as tool for scheduling, data sharing, etc.?
absolutely.
....etc etc etc.
from someone who has been in several med/large corporate environments...i.e. 500, 1000, 3000, 15,000 strong and sbc as well (200,000)
i can say with certainty that training is a complete farse.
in the best of environments, it nets you almost nothing. we're not talking about On The Job Training...whereby one learns their job by doing their job.
i'm talking about classes, conferences, on staff trainers...in house and out sourced Microsoft Office training, Windows 101
it's a load of crap.
if you've got a boat load of stupid people on your staff..you are so screwed...cause training isn't going to help.
sharp ppl will figure things out, good departments pull together to make sure new additions get EXACTLY the knowledge they need to do their job...no more no less.
i'm sure a few exceptions exist...and i'm sure they will be replying shortly.
In the U.S. at least, tax brackets are incremental. Someone in the 40% bracket doesn't pay 40% on all his income; only that over the threshold of the 40% bracket. Thus, reducing one's income into the next lower tax bracket doesn't result in a whole bunch of income suddenly being taxed at a lower rate--it already was being taxed at the lower rate.