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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."
2. Consumers who use Microsoft have to pay more
The logic is impressive.
There are other costs associated with software than the upfront cost paid. This article does not account for those costs. Second, for those under SA you don't see the big costs of upgrading.
Costs that come up when switch.
Testing (QA) on the new product, mainly to help develop some means of support across the organization; ie standards. You also have to determine the best install of the package and how to deliver it. (is it easy to push?)
Training. Sure it might LOOK like package X. The key is finding the quirks that generate support calls and find solutions.
Prior investment. If it works, its even cheaper to not upgrade and keep the old stuff.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I mean, if you think of software as only needing x amount of functionality in the first place, with little or no noticable productivity gains seen from upgradeing to the next major version, the question will pop up; Why upgrade at all?
If you look at the actual article, they note that "Wilcox estimates that firms taking Microsoft up on its offer to integrate back-end processes with front-end client software on the desktop may run up tabs 10 to 40 percent higher than with earlier editions of Microsoft's products, depending on the server licenses and client access licenses (CALs) they purchase. "
That is all. This is not a comparison against Linux, Macintosh or whatever competing Office suites may be left. This is simply an alalysis of how Microsoft's vendor lock-in--- umm, i mean, how the vertical integration of Microsoft's products affects the amount that companies will pay to use those products.
Isn't it grand how monopolies lower prices for consumers because they're more Efficient? Ahhh.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
" To my recollection, MS Office has always cost lots more than its competitors,"
To be fair, I have yet to see a mail client that does all the stuff that Outlook does. I agree that you have your work-alike people (who probably aren't aware of the extra stuff Outlook can do), but there are also the people who are buying the right tool for the job.
"Derp de derp."
On the same note, it takes about 15 minutes for a sysadmin to run Windows Update on each machine in a Windows network every week. For an office of 100 machines that's 25 hours of admin time x $15/hr. $375 a week just to keep Windows up to date. But that's just one figure. It doesn't really mean anything until you take a look a the bigger picture in which case Linux wins on the TCO argument.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I can't speak for my entire organization, but I can speak for my department of 20 people.
We've made the switch away from Microsoft. About 2/3 of us use RH9; the other 1/3rd use Mac OS X. I'm one of the linux guys.
In a nutshell, we've managed (with some pain) to completely unload Microsoft. Pretty good, eh?
Our primary Office products are Open Office and Mozilla (for Web & Email).
Needless to say, we are an IT-centric organization, so we can take care of ourselves pretty well. In addition, our organization never standardized on the "viral" Microsoft practices, namely "MS-Exchange".
The savings? Well, for starters, there is the fee for Microsoft Office for 20 people. Plus we were able to get rid of our IT support guy (he was a contractor - we paid about $50k/year for his services - VERY PART TIME).
That's all pretty substantial $$$ - and it's money that flows right out the door.
The downside? Well, none really. It was difficult at first - we had a bunch of older docs in Visio and PPT 2000 format and stuff like that.
Now we have one PC in the office just for Windows.
It's kind like the old days when you had an unused microfiche machine in the back room.
dear worker drones:
- My Documents is now
/home/drone
- you'll be using mozilla instead of IE for the internet. you'll notice the lack of popups.
- the big K = start button
Thanks.management.
p.s. since we have transitioned over to linux, and saved shitloads, we'll be upping the christmas, er, holiday bonus this year.
sure, there is support options. but look at it this way: if you save money on software licenses, virus attacks, security holes, etc., then you got a few bucks to hire a linux admin. nuff said. it is that easy. businesses just have to be willing to bite the bullet.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
"Only in their dreams can men truly be free 'twas always thus, and always thus will be."
--Tom Schulman
Integration has been known to lower costs. Microsoft uses integration in a rather clever manner than takes advantage of that assumption. When you buy a single microsoft product, it is becoming increasingly difficult not to have to buy a whole slew of products just to use it. As someone pointed out in another slashdot comment, Exchange 2003 server requires AD which requires Windows 200x. Microsoft has been slowly increasing dependencies between products since windows 95. This is a good business practice in that it provides a way of generating revenue while looking cheaper short term. But initial cost is only 10% of TCO. I challenge that assumption because if you just want to upgrade to Exchange Server 2007, you will probably need a complete infrastructure upgrade. Or even better, you upgrade to Office 2007 and need an infrastructure upgrade. That is the path microsoft is following. In terms of employee training (admins, even with excellent training will still have to figure out the quarks/implications of the new software. Most available training for Microsoft products is far from excellent.), business disruption, etc. that certainly raises the cost. It is more difficult to measure since their is no way to compare without using a different setup. I am constantly amazed that Microsoft is pushing businesses toward a disruptive 3 year upgrade cycle despite the increased cost to customers and I am even more amazed how many customers are still sticking with Microsoft. Well, it's their money.
To be fair, I have yet to see a mail client that does all the stuff that Outlook does.
:)
Yes, it'll enable you to run pretty much any e-mail virus without any compatibility problems. Non of the alternatives come even close.
People couldn't type. We realized: Death would eventually take care of this.
Hrm, shame you posted as an AC because you bring up some very good points.
/. MCSE's are easier to find. Some of them actually even know what they are doing but...still.
I think many people like the functionality of MS products, like Exchange, and think that moving over to something else will be a very big hassle so they just stay with an all MS solution but they just don't know enough.
Key of course is getting a good set of admins and then letting them goto work. Of course having a good set of admins is key for any enterprise level IT but as has been noted many times before here on
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
It's not really the integration that I object to, some things are nice to have. But on the other side, Word being integrated? Why do you need Word on a server, for a server you need one text editor; NOTEPAD.
Don't call my crazy, that's what they called me back in the home!
do busineses really sit down and say, "first you take the mouse, move it over the text, push and hold the button, no the left one..."
Hell yes, they do! And it's not because their employees are "stupid" or whatever other moronic arguments you make.
If you work in IT, then it's obvious that you know something about how to use a computer. Sure, some companies expect some people in some jobs to have computer literacy skills, and usually those skills are on MS Office, or Wordperfect or Lotus 1-2-3. Training and retraining really is expensive. People in, say, accounting or manufacturing know how to do THEIR jobs, not YOURS. They don't spend their days tinkering with computers, they spend it doing a real job for which they get paid real money.
If you were to take my marketing job, I GUARANTEE you would get your ass handed to you, day in and day out, forever. You don't know how to use a machine tool? You don't know how to close a company's quarterly books? You don't know how the mailroom works? Boy, you must be a complete moron.
Yes, you're expected to know how to "use a freaking computer". That computer is called an x86 personal computer running Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office. My marketing job is not valuable unless I know how to use that OS and those applications, and I know how to use them well.
Secondly, governments are not in the business of spending money. They are 'in the business' of providing common services that can be more effectively done collectively. Courts, police, fire departments, military, highways, schools are example of activities that are done by governments. As you may guess, these services take ... money. Real people do these services and they deserve to be paid with real money. Grrr .. I wish everyone else would just work for free, its so much better for me.
There is good evidence that governments can do certain tasks more efficiently than private industry. The US healthcare system consumes about 13.6% of GDP. The French healthcare system consumes about 10.6%. Which system covers 100% of the population? (France). In which system do doctors still makes housecalls? (France). Which system has a lower infant mortaility rate? (France) Which system requires the doctor's office to spend several minutes verifying that you have insurance and figuring out how much you have to pay for todays visit (US). By the way, the French system doesn't mall all doctors state employees, many doctors are in private practice - they only have to deal with one set of bureactrats to get paid.
Think global, act loco
If I am taught what a door looks like, and how it works, I can be reasonably sure it will work that way for all doors (or most, anyway). I don't have to be re-trained for every door I encounter, because they are similar enough that I can easily figure out how to resolve any variation between them. I think it can be reasonably argued that the Linux desktop is similar *enough* to Windows, that the "retraining" we keep hearing about might not really be that be big an issue.