Microsoft Audits UK Council To Prove Cost Effectiveness

A Masquerade writes "When Microsoft's market position was threatened by projects within the UK government evaluating open source solutions, it chose an interesting way to fight back. Computer Weekly has a piece by a Microsoft manager explaining they're paying for an external audit of the IT services for a specific UK local authority, Newham Council, to provide a cost justification for Windows and Office on the desktop, as opposed to an open source solution. The Register comments that 'if Microsoft succeeds in holding on to Newham, it will have knocked a considerable amount of wind out of the pilot schemes before they've even kicked off properly.'"

Comments

This is what we all want.

[bl1st3r]

I want to see an unbiased proof that "MS IS SO MUCH CHEAPER" like they keep ranting about. If it actually proves they are, I want it HEAVILY documented. This could be the deciding factor to stop hating MS's apparent FUD tactics. They might really be more cost effective than Linux and other Open Source solutions...

*cough* if you tack on the 699$ SCO tax *cough* ;)

Re:This is what we all want.

[FatherOfONe]

Ok, here is my beef.

Microsoft must make money to pay for marketing, sales, developers, accountants, lawyers and support. This cost isn't insignificant. Free software is... well free. Now if you consider that you need internal I.T. people for either solution how can Microsoft or any software maker compete.

Yes I know that a vendor can "add value" by making things easier, thus needing fewer I.T. people but aren't we talking about governement workers here. In the U.S. most of these people are the most basic of users. One or two tasks is all they do. Heck most of our people here use dumb terminals.

Lastly I would argue that even if Microsoft buys this ONE government off, it cost them significant time and resources, that only hurts them in the long run. This appears to give government agencies a choice. So Microsoft looses it Monopoly. That forces them to have to lower their prices. Either way they loose. So in the long run they have less dollars to combat FREE software. This makes it harder and harder to buy off other people.

So in short I guess I am saying. It is hard to compete with free.

Anyone selling expensive browsers now days?
Anyone selling expensive web servers now days?

Soon...
Anyone selling expensive office suites?
Anyone selling expensive NOSes?

Possibly later...
Anyone selling expensive databases?

Here's

[Pingular]

the original article about the 'UK test(ing) open source waters'.
Paticularly of interest is this: 'We can be sure that there will be lots of meetings going on inside Microsoft, because that is just what happened when the German city of Munich decided to use open source software in preference to Windows. The result was a secret offer of massive discounts.'
In Munich they offered discounts (although still failed), now this... If it isn't anti-competition I don't know what is.

The only way to win, really

[Dancin_Santa]

If you want to compete with Free Software, the only way you can truly compete is at the cost of use level. As far as operating systems and application suites go, the alternatives are all pretty much equal.

But once you take the fight to cost, the winners and losers get separated right quick. Mac, out. Linux, in. AIX, out. Windows, in. Solaris, way out. HPUX, out. Herd, it's almost there, any day now.

And so with the finalists Linux and Windows you have a neck and neck race. Linux wins in the licensing part, but Windows wins out in the cost of use. The total TCO is pretty much equal, so it's really a toss up at this point.

It may seem like a huge win for Microsoft if they can pull this TCO win off, but it's only one government department and the reality of the situation is that every office is different and has different needs. A company based on hacking and running high-powered servers needs Linux. A company based on being productive and interfacing with customers and customer data needs Windows.

So you can't judge the fitness of an OS on TCO alone, especially as TCO is variable among application domains.

Re:The only way to win, really

[malsdavis]

Why is the cost of use less for windows?

I study at a university in the UK where they have a lab full of about 600 Linux desktop PCs, in a lab down the hall there are about 100 Windows XP pc's.

Being quite friednly with the support staff I have on a couple of occasions asked them whether they prefer Linux or Windows and they ALL say that the 100 Windows PC's take up about 80% of their time and the 600 Linux comps only about 10% of there time (the other 10% is persumably spent doing what IT support staff do best ...sitting about whinging about dumb newbies).

From personal experience I have never once had a single small prob with any of the Linux computers ...wish I could say the same about my WinXP computer at home which just 3 days ago suddenly decided logging in was a minimum 20 minute operation!

This isn't a news piece...

[canfirman]

...it's a PR piece. The whole article puts a "Microsoft is better" slant on the whole issue of Microsoft vs. Linux. Also interesting to note who the author is..."Matt Lambert is director of government affairs at Microsoft"

Since this audit is being paid by Microsoft and being done in conjunction with Ernst & Young, you know for sure it will not be an unbiased audit (which goes against auditor independence).

Personally, I'm not holding my breath on a fair and independent audit.

Price was not negotiable

[PizzaFace]

Computer Weekly reported that Microsoft refused to discount its pricing for Newham beyond its usual government discount. Microsoft was multiply stung when its deep-discount offer to Munich was rebuffed, making the press coverage sensationally embarrassing and giving every government body in the world the idea that it should bargain hard because Microsoft would compete on price against open source.

Microsoft evidently decided, What good is having a monopoly without enjoying monopoly rents? The Newham audit allows Microsoft's handpicked shills to report that "TCO" is lower if Newham's desktops continue to use what the vast majority already uses. Even if Microsoft loses the Newham sale, the audit report will be ammunition against open source in other government agencies, and it will defend Microsoft's profit margin.

Sorry, It's my fault.

[Moderation abuser]

I get paid lots more than the guys (yes, 3 of them) in the Windows team.

However. I look after 110 systems while they look after around 15. My 110 systems are centrally managed, highly available, load balanced providing massive computing power to the engineers in the department, while the windows boxes are barely highly available and have no credible way of distributing processing.

The engineers use a thin client (X11) to access the Unix systems and no longer have a desktop Unix workstation, meaning changes for all users can be done in seconds the windows guys put a PC on every desktop meaning changes for everyone take hours, days, weeks and require a whole separate team of 4 people (yes over and above the server guys) *just* for the desktop support.

Tell me again why Unix/Linux is more expensive?