Slashdot Mirror
Telstra Used Linux To Get Microsoft Discounts
awful writes "Last year Slashdot ran a story about Australia's largest telco moving to Linux desktops. Turns out it was all a way to get some tasty discounts from Microsoft. The Australian is reporting that Telstra just signed a four-year deal with MS for $AU15-20 million, for 40,000 users. No figures yet on how much of a discount Telstra got, but MS might want to rethink handing back all its cash to investors if this is how they're going to do business from now on ..."
I seriously object to the first sentence of that article:
"TELSTRA has secured badly needed cost savings".
Ziggy's not exactly going hungry over there.
Hey, when you're that close to China, why not pick up your copies of Windows for 5$ each at a neighbor store? Sure, they all come with the same key, but you have all your copies right? Who needs licenses? :P
Mod parent down he's claiming that microsoft doesn't cost a ton of money!
I love linux, but, go Telstra :) Way to use the free market to your advantage.
Wow. You obviously aren't from Australia.
But I do not think that they will find value in business suggestions on /. even from an editor.
/. Here are some of the gems I found over the years.
/. instead of calling the company to find out why."
What do you mean? There are plenty of good business/financial suggestions on
"High income = being rich, no matter what."
"You shouldn't invest because you'll have to pay capital gains tax when the value goes up (and is realized)."
"Government should take over the health care becasue they did such a good job with Medicare and Social Security"
"You shouldn't have to put away money for the retirement because Medicare and Social Security is all you need"
"Buying an overpowered computer is a good investment. It's even better if you buy it using a credit card and make only the minimun payments on it."
"If your credit card company raises its rates, bitch on
"Businesses shouldn't lay people off no matter what because it's a bad thing."
"For-profit businesses should exist to serve the mankind, not for-profit."
"The due date on the credit card bill is only a suggestion."
"Pay your bills at the last moment because the postal service always delivers and the online payment system never fails."
"The financal experts recommend that you have 3-6 months worth of living expeses as an emergency fund only because those experts get paid alot."
"Don't budget for the emergency fund because it will cut into your cool gadets (and gaming computer) fund. Use the credit cards instead. And if you do use those credit cards, you'll somehow magically budget to pay off the cards AND the interest over time."
"Don't listen to the doctors who says you should eat healty and exercise. They work for the greedy health food stores and gyms (like you shouldn't listen to the economists because they work for the rich)."
"Don't wear seatbelts. The greedy cops work for the insurace companies (less injuries mean less payouts)."
"Put all your investments into the Linux companies because they'll crush MS, UNIX, and Apple. Don't invest in diverse stock funds, such as S&P 500 based index funds, because they are likely to contain shares of MS and owning shares of it will make you evil, no matter how small."
"It's easier to lobby the government to spread the wealth of the people who actually saved millions for their retirement instead of actually saving for yourselves"
"Best thing to do in a recession is to tax the hell out of those evil corporations to stimulate the job market."
"The rich are evil because majority of their wealth are in form of unrealized gains, which is not yet taxed. They should sell all their investment to buy usless things that they don't need in order to pay the fair share of taxes."
"Even though higher income usually means higher taxes, there's a cutoff point where you don't pay any taxes once you reach the 'rich' status"
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
I guess we all know there MS gets it's sales force from!
Used car saleman: This is the best deal we can give you.
Buyer: OK, that's fine, I'm going to look around some more at the other dealerships.
Used car salesman: walks over to the sales manager's "office"....."uh-hu"..."other dealerships"..."uh-hu"....comes back. "Ok how about this "some made up discound bullshit" deal? We can knock another 20% off.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
This story reminds me of the one million dollar coffee cup legend.
The legend goes like this: A major company is negotiating with IBM for a new mainframe system. They've called in IBM and gotten a quote. Then they call in Amdahl and get a quote from them and a coffee cup. Next they call IBM back into the office with the Amdahl coffee cup in plain view. Legend has it that the coffee cup gets you an automatic 1 million dollar discount off the original quote.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
$20 million divided by 40,000 = $500 per user. That's a deal?
That depends upon the weight of Australian Dollars and whether it is a metric ton.
You know why Telstra only make 20-30 calls to MS a year? It's cos their bloody phones are never working and their internet is always down!
" In the end Telstra's customers are the ones who get screwed. "
It will be news when Telstra's customers don't get screwed
The Singularity is closer than you think
Quant
Microsoft is getting 180 tonnes of dollars from Telstra, if they were to pay exclusively in one dollar coins. :) Thats 4.5 kg per user.
s .cfm. One dollar coins are 9.00 grams each.
Reference: http://www.ramint.gov.au/making_coins/coin_design
--
no sig for you. come back one year.
Linux just gives them a justifiable destination other than Microsoft.
Time to invent a new word: "linussend", as in "You mean we don't have to shift onto MS-Windows when our hardware becomes obsolete? Hurrah! What a linussend!"
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
It's more likely that their internal billing system screwed up again and disconnected them.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing