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Microsoft Funded Study Cinches 10yr Deal
Genevish writes "According to an article in the Register, Microsoft and the Newham Council in London have signed an agreement making Microsoft the preferred vendor for the council, instead of the original hybrid MS / Open Source plan. The council was very careful in choosing Microsoft, having an independent study done and all.
The only problem is that the study was, you guessed it, not independent at all but funded by Microsoft. Their decision even had the journalists at the press conference laughing."
The joke's on Newham. Let's hope they do another study in a few years and see how much they really saved.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
One final point to note is that Newham will be using Internet Explorer. Steel explained that this is because Microsoft is very serious about addressing security concerns
As if I weren't chuckling a little throughout the article, I almost wet my pants on that line. Sure Microsoft is serious about addressing the security concerns, but there's JUST SO DAMN MANY!!! Finding all those security holes would be a computing task akin to solving RC-72 only difference is, in 300,000 days RC-72 will be solved and MS will probably STILL have security holes in whatever OS is running then.
...in bed
Nope, you just got luck and posted before the glitch in the matrix or whatever it was that caused the article to go back The Mysterious Future which means posting is disabled, even if you're trying to relpy to a post that already exists. I know, I've been trying for at least 15 minutes.
Microsoft not only are getting license fees, but consulting fees.
p ?CommitteeId=294&CF=Cabinet&MeetingID=2149&DF=22/0 4/2004&Ver=4#AI2970
d oned_vehicle_form.jsp? report an abandoned car...). This guy should loose his job, and there should be a public investigation, as there is call for one in this instance, we are not talking peanuts here, millions of pounds that will be invested into systems that are inheretly costly and have huge running costs - not to mention the costs of viruses. Newham have had thier fair share of virus related incidents (news on website).
/.?)
Isn't this illegal? If this is classed as consultation I am sure that there is somethign to stop conflicts of interest.
The guy responsible is Contact: Richard Steel, Head of ICT Tel 020 8430 4301 richard.steel@newham.gov.uk.
richard.steel@newham.gov.uk You can petition here sensibly.
Details of the settlement from the minutes of the council: http://moderngov.newham.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.As
From the Newham Council website (where you can http://www.newham.gov.uk/content/Environment/aban
(what happened to this stoy on
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
On the risks of Open Source:
Open source vendors are currently experiencing more vulnerabilities and receiving more security advisories than Microsoft
Let me get this straight.... because OSS publishes and fixes their bugs, rather than MS' security through obsecurity (don't publish security advisories), OSS gets docked more points??!
Where is the business sense? Very serious about addressing security concerns? You don't select a product to run your production apps based on someone being very serious. When it comes to security concerns, you select a product based on the product's track record with security.
I don't care if you like MS products or not; the statement above is not gounds for any business decision. When will people learn to evaluate products correctly. If MS wins on security, then say they win on security. If they don't, don't say they are very serious about getting there. Tell them they haven't done a good enough job yet and they need to prove it first.
They've set the new template for Microsoft negotiations. Of course, if they actually cared about the community they supposedly represent, they'd have actually followed through with the initial suggestion. But that's asking way too much.
From the article: "One final point to note is that Newham will be using Internet Explorer. Steel explained that this is because Microsoft is very serious about addressing security concerns."
One has to wonder if they're actually being serious here.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Maybe the bad press of the incident combined with the ever-growing list of XP SP2 application breakage will cause Newham to rethink their agreement.
You know, the funny thing is that if they had gone with Linux (RH, Suse/Novell, etc) they'd get a new, updated OS every 2 to 3 years if they wanted it. With the 10 year MS deal, they'll get Longhorn (maybe), but nothing else most likely. So at the end of the deal, they'll be like all those NT4 users were a few months back. Sad...
Microsoft must really be begining to feel the heat if they are starting to push for 10 year contracts. I'll concede that a sense of permanance is good in IT (and especially local authority), but 10 years (in any industry) is a very, very, very long time to be betting on one horse.
Just look back at 1994 and see what has changed sense - and what hasn't changed. All the world has changed, except for Microsoft.
I just hope that Newham Council survuve this contract. Repeat after me: Microsoft doesn't scale. There is (believe it or not) a reason why it appears cheaper than all that nice Peoplesoft/Oracle/IBM - its not as good.
[ Monday is a terrible way to spend one seventh of your life. ]
Well maybe they want to waste money being a government body and all? You know what's really sad about this was a proposed Hybrid solution was rejected. You know, like Linux isn't perfect, and Microsoft isn't perfect, so you use whatever makes sense? Personally I like Linux, but don't advocate it's use in every situation. It just doesn't make sense on desktops in a lot of places, but does a good job on servers. Hell, just switching to Open Office would be a great start in most places to save ass loads of money.
So I guess that's probably my issue with all of this. Each "study" takes the black and white approach. You do all Linux, or you do all MS... never seems to be much about stuff like running MS software off of a postgres database and the like.
And I don't know if Munich will have a lower TCO or not. But they'll probably give less money to MS and spend more money on their own staff, so that's a win in it's own right.
From the article, Netproject's Eddie Bleasdale says his consultancy was used as a negotiating tool to get a better deal out of Microsoft. He argues that the council never really intended to deploy an open source solution at all - because it doesn't have the expertise to do so. This wouldn't be the first time. How many times have we seen governments and large corporations fake the move to OSS only to get a better deal from MS?
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit
If I were a British taxpayer (yes I know the term is redundant), I'd have to think that either:
- Newham knowingly allowed a sales pitch to be used as if it were logical unbiased analysis (in which case they're idiots)
- they didn't know (in which case they're idiots)
- they did know but didn't care (in which case they're not good stewards of the public's money)
- they found out and but didn't demand a greater discount from MS (in which case they're not good stewards of the public's money).
Anyway, I hope other public entities take the proper opportunity to be more aggressive with Microsoft in negotiating lower prices given the new competitive landscape afforded by open source solutions."Provided by the management for your protection."
One final point to note is that Newham will be using Internet Explorer. Steel explained that this is because Microsoft is very serious about addressing security concerns.
Aren't alot of the security concerns because of IE. That had me laughing. Firefox 5 secuirty issues vs IE 1459879683 security issues and still counting for IE.
I belive is TCO studies include the cost of administrators, Correct me if I'm wrong...
I'm not trying to be sarcastic, but from my experience a mediocre UN*X/Linux administrator draws a higher salary than a "expert" Windows administrator. But on the other hand a good UN*X/Linux administrator can do "more", in less time, than the MS Administrators I know...
The only problem is that the study was, you guessed it, not independent at all but funded by Microsoft.
No one claimed it was independent. There were actually two studies: one by an avowed open source advocacy consulting firm (which was hoping to score a consulting gig charging Newham for 'coverting' to open source) and one by CapGemini, which was indeed openly commissioned by Microsoft.
I'd suggest both studies might have had an ax to grind, making the reality a lot more mundane than the tin-foil-hat-wearing slashdotters would want to acknowledge.
Newham is traditionally one of the UK's 'loony left' local govts -- marxist/socialists who have little knowledge of or interest in government, but a lot of greed and a lot of the kind of ideals and emotions people normally grow out of at age 15. Honestly, if you haven't witnessed UK politics, you really can't imagine it.
It's interesting how the ones with the biggest fanciest and even most seriously-held ideals are often the most corrupt in their actual manner of business... that goes for a lot more than just UK borough councils.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
I still can't, for the life of me, see how MS can say with a straight face that something that costs money is cheaper than something that doesn't cost anything?
I'm not talking about home desktops which frankly they would be lying through their teeth if they actually tried to pull that one out saying they're cheaper. But I'm talking about large corporations with IT departments.
IT wouldn't be spending yearly cash on service contracts and the like with open source, wouldn't they instead just HIRE their support? Hire IT pros that KNOW how to program and configure and support and fix the open source servers/databases? You pay for the IT people anyway, why pay in addition to that for service contracts?
You have company X. They need a new server infrastructure. They hire the people that will build the system from the ground up with open source solutions. They don't buy any software, not even Redhat. They use open source, build the databases, the os, the web server etc etc. The only they they buy is the hardware to run it on.
After they build it, you keep them as your IT department to maintain everything. No service contracts...not even to Redhat or SUSE or anyone. Now, how is that more expensive than the MS solution?
I obviously am out of my league here and have no idea how any of this works, I'm just wondering. Can anyone set me straight here?
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
Actually, I believe Microsoft or Cap Gemini themselves funded the study, and Microsoft gave them a pretty lucrative deal.
It's still damned dishonest, especially considering that others will take the study at face value, but it wasn't, in itself, necessarily a burden on taxpayers. The fact that others may follow could be...
In a way, it's sad that corporate PR isn't carefully regulated. On the other hand, I'm strongly in favor of free speech, on the other, I wish publicity were better balanced...sadly, I can't think of how to effectively regulate the latter without opening up opportunities for infringing on the former...
While I do realize you are just a troll, I feel compelled to argue against your statements.
I use OpenOffice.org on my Debian Linux (Sarge) box at home, and find it quite capable at replacing Microsoft Office. Hell, I even run OOo on my Mac (OS X 10.3) off of the Linux box through the network (X does have some good qualities after all!), and the speed is still more than acceptable for me.
By the way, my Debian Linux box is a 1.7GHz Celeron with 512 MB of RAM.
I also run OOo on my Slackware 10.0 notebook. This system is a 466 Celeron with 256 MB of RAM, and again OOo is more than up to the task.
No matter where you go... there you are.
You'd be surprised. My Dad told me a story of when he was a kid - Dr Pepper was a relatively new drink at the time, and he and his friends tried it and didn't like it - but his friends kept buying it!
My Dad: "Why do you keep buying that stuff? You said you didn't like it!"
His friends: "Yeah, but you might win a free bottle!"
Basically, his friends kept buying stuff they didn't like because they might win more of it.
But how much are they paying for their IT staff already? These are corporations that don't just have a server sitting in the closet and have a tech come in every 6 months. I'm talking about people there daily.
Hell, a little Pre-press shop I was in had an IT staff. Why pay for the staff AND a service contract on top of that?
So yeah, 80 grand a year isn't that far off and you would still save money.
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
Well I dunno. I am a web and database developer for a small shop at a vendor for Microsoft and I make less that most people in my field (mainly because I work for a smaller shop). I use Apache, MySQL and PHP but not Linux (because they won't let me). I find I can implement everything alot easier due to a larger online community; I save money with downtime from virus and patching.
My wife works for Expedia (which is a huge Windows shop) and she always comments that their machines running IIS constantly crash and that they require 4 times the number of machines for what one Linux machine running Apache could do.
I always hear this argument that open source people are more expensive and I wish that were true because then I would be making a decent salary... but it just isn't.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Many times, it is not, and the results are published anyway.
Thats not entirely true. That's the big problem with drug studies funded by these companies. When the results dont align, they bury the study.
I have heard the major organizations are trying to get drug companies to announce when said studies begin, that way everyone will be looking for the results, and it will be harder to bury unfavorable ones.
Heard it on a story on NPR.org about 6 months ago.
IF and only IF they throw the whole damn thing out and start over.
Windows is too complex to fix in in it's current incarnation. With COM/DCOM, ActiveX, band-aids piled on top of band-aids instead of fixing things right the first time, it's amazing that XP even WORKS let alone is as "secure" as it currently is (It's the most robust and secure OS from MS to date and it's still got the holes of a seive...).
Sure security is their top priority- but after the fact is the worst possible time to be worrying about that sort of thing. It's just NOT going to happen the way you're claiming- it's a sysiphean task to begin with and adding the problems of not breaking everything that wasn't designed with security in mind just makes it ten times worse.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Funny you should mention this. People generally use service contracts with 3rd party companies because it is more expensive to hire people to do a job, than it is to pay a yearly fee, and be covered X hours a month.
The country I live in, has a very agressive tax policy. For instance, when you work in my country, and your net wage is 1.250, the state adds 30% taxes to that for the individual, and an extra 7% for healthcare and wellfare (I hope I spelled this right). This means the company actually has to pay you 1.250*1.37.
Most Americans stare at you in disbelief when you tell them this, but this is only the beginning of the story. The company itself has to pay the goverment additional taxes (about 30% of your net income), and additional contributions to healthcare, welfare and pension funds.
Now, let's start talking benefits. Your employee will want a cellphone and a subscription if he has to call a lot for work and is on location. Wait a minute, did you just say "on location"? Hell, throw in a small car (nothing fancy) that needs to be leased every month. And then, you need to have a pensionfund and insurance for ALL of those employees, because once you decided it would be a good thing when the company was small.
These employees also want leave of abscense, certification (which the company needs from time to time), expenses (hey, those cars don't drive themselves you know). To top it all off, if you want to fire someone who is out of his trial time (which by standard is 30 days, but can be extended up to 90 days for high wages), you have to keep them in service for at least another 3 months to over 3 years (depending on how long they've worked for your company), or just get them out of the building and pay the equivalent sum (and let's not forget taxes).
Now look at the option of paying those 1500 a month for a company that has a multitude of people only a phonecall or e-mail away for that service contract. You'll get 20 hours of technical support for that price, and they are often more efficient than that staff of 10 people who are constantly nagging for more benefits. Instead, you hire one or two guys who do the grunt work, and the rest goes to a company who'll service you faster than you can walk to the IT department and shout at the nearest techie.
I hope this was enlightening, when I first started counting how much I made I was disappointed, now I know why we're understaffed and pay so much money for those damned service contracts in the first place.
PS: I typed the € symbol everywhere, but I'm too lazy to type € everywhere now.
Sounds like either your computer or your install got corrupted. I've been using OO.org for about 2 years, for everything from presentations to my wedding invitations, and have never had the types of problems you describe. Sometimes converting presentations to Powerpoint has object placement issues, but for the most part everything else I've tried just works. The new export to PDF in 1.1 (I think?) is just great - it produces great, small PDFs! And I've been able to create address labels, as well, and the standard Avery label numbers were already built-in.
In fact, one of the few occassions that OpenOffice did crash on me, it recovered gracefully on the next startup. MS Office seems to have gotten better in 2k/XP with that, but 97 was pretty bad (which was what I replaced with OO). Also, I love the fact that OO is 100 mb download, versus the 3-4 CDs that MS Office takes.
The only thing I'm missing is an Access-replacement - a nice lightweight database for doing stuff like address books, that doesn't require a full MySQL server, but is painful to do in a spreadsheet.
I was like you and didn't realize people use all that built in crap until I saw a business dev guy creating a excel spreedsheet. He's memorized every hotkey, he doesn't even touch the mouse. I asked where he picked up the skills and he told me that in one of his required MBA classes, he was required to learn excel, including tests that required the user not to use the mouse. I'm simply amazed what people actually do in excel. I've seen sheets that will calculate all the numbers for your business, generate graphs, tell you when your expected to be profitable on growth.
Even with word, most of our business guys have taken courses. Everything has little edit balloons, or someother weird features that I never seen.
Same thing goes with power point, give our business guy 1/2 hour and he'll have a 1 hour presentation done. With crappy little animations the whole works.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
Exactly. Find me a UN*X-guy wh's willing to walk to each machine in an organization, they can all do what they have to from their desks. And while Windows admins struggle with .BATs and registry files to automate administration, the UN*X guy has phat shell scripts that can do much more.
The problem I always see with Windows organizations is that they have to make a million compromises to make certain legacy apps work, usually negating most features of their 'advanced' OS. You see places using FAT32 on their XP boxes so they can keep their auto-imaging tools from ten years ago, you see file and print services turned on by default because users think it's OK to share office files P2P, even though you have NAS.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
And furthermore, how many of them get sent to training for each incremental MS Office version? There tends to be about as many differences between any given version of MS Office as there are between Open Office.
Whatever. Some ambitious intern wrote some VBA macros. I'm sure he'll be happy to port them to javascript or whatever OOo uses now for automation.
All's true that is mistrusted
Maybe this is a problem with the Windows port. I run OOo all the time under Linux, and like I said, I don't have any of these problems. I usually leave my apps up and running in another virtual desktop, and there are no problems.
No matter where you go... there you are.
That's a fascinating article. I think I just watched somebody advocating OSS alternatives to Microsoft because in the Windows XP version, you actually have to run a couple of command lines, view a couple of text files, and understand what a port is, all in order to configure a firewall! <shock> <horror> Can anybody see the staggering irony of this pithy attack? Particularly when -- as the article notes, but not exactly prominently -- the user is following a point-by-point list of instructions to do it, and only has to do it if the normal, one step, GUI-based approach doesn't work anyway. (I would remind the less attentive reader that the alternative under consideration is a Linux-based system, where as we all know, no configuration work ever requires you to step outside a highly tuned and immaculately user-friendly GUI environment.)
In fact, if you read over the original Reg article, the (not so) independent study may have been funded by MS, but the points it makes are pretty obvious. If they have 120 custom MS Office-based applications running already, with all the attendant development costs already paid and all the staff already trained, can any OSS zealot really tell us with a straight face that it will be cheaper to switch to OpenOffice? The other points quoted in the Reg article are similarly self-evident and entirely credible; the security one is probably most tenuous, but does anyone really believe OSS is a silver bullet here? <ahem> shell: <ahem> How many large organisations do you really know that have been hit hard because of a bug in Microsoft software?
I know some of Microsoft's FUD is pretty laughable, but guys, with the anti-Microsoft FUD in this thread you've truly exemplified how OSS can surpass Microsoft's efforts...
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Which is why large shops SHOULD pay for an independent cost study by a qualified consultant, customized to their needs.
, we ask him to look into what it will cost us, or save us.
For medium and small businesses, there are some common scenarios that can be cost-studied, and if you are a good fit to a scenario that's been well-studied, you can use that study with some confidence.
Suppose I'm a small retail shop with 1 Windows 2000 Server running MS's SQL database, MS's mail server, a third-party business-grade firewall/av/security package, MS's print server, MS's web server, and 5 terminal-services client access licenses; 2 business-office PCs each running MS Windows 2000, MS Office 2000, one of which has Visual Basic and some custom-grown apps to access my database, and the other has MS Frontpage. I have 3 pcs that are dedicated point-of-sale machines running POS software on MS-Windows 2000.
Not counting the spam my mail-server deals with, all of my servers are under a very light load.
Nobody in the office has much training on PCs except for the apps we actually use. Two of us are competent with MS Word, MS-Excel, and MS-Office, I'm reasonably competent with Frontpage, the other guy runs the LAN and the database. We aren't techies and have no desire to become techies. We outsource with a consultant for big decisions and for help when things break beyond our capability to fix it.
Our consultant just told us that in a few years we'll be vulnerable to OS bugs, and that we have the option of switching to OSS. After he explains what OSS is, that it's free as in freedom and while-not-free-for-us-might-be-cheaper-as-in-beer
Now, surely, someone's done a study on the TCO of small stores who run setups similar to ours. Our consultant can use that study as a starting point for a custom study just for us, saving us a bundle over doing the same study from scratch.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
And there are a whole lot of alkaloids that can't get past the blood-brain barrier any other way.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
This argument leaves me always wondering, how many company have the IT staff really competent enough to manage their Windoze-based IT environment efficiently, and most importantly, more efficiently than OSS alternative.
I think the answer is most. It seems that the least tech-ignorant member of staff is often elevated to the status of admin after demonstrating the skills required to change the resolution on the desktop, or clicking the buttons on a pdc's dialog boxes without screwing it up (too much). I admin Linux servers at work, but routinely end up fixing config screwups with Windows servers or desktops; or offering hints to the admin about the causes of problems.
It seems to me that the Win admins like the fact that Windows is so unreliable and bug-ridden as it gives them a scapegoat for their own lack of knowledge. The SP2 update to XP has introduced horrendous problems for us, since the admin decided to just start installing it across the machines, causing many to become unusable, and the users twiddling their thumbs. Sadly, management have become used to this type of thing and so consider it "normal". If anyone even notices my servers, I consider it a problem...
No, Windows seems to be a godsend to admin wannabes, and a nice "safe" route for lazy, disinterested, mindless clock-punchers...
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
Open Source's openness only applies to those who are interested in it, or more to the point, those who are interested in sharing the ideas that are implemented in the OS/Software. It doesn't matter to an English teacher or a clerk in a government office that they can look at the source because they have no idea what it says anyway. Any sharing of ideas that happens in a classroom that is facilitated by a computer is with other opinions over the Internet, and you don't need an OSS system for that. OSS may allow a carpenter to freely train, but you have to remember the carpenters are programmers and admins interested in working with Unix systems. These are trained or burgeoning professionals, and as such, OSS means very little to the average person.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
I took this AC up on his challenge, and in fact he is correct. If you google for "vlookup ooo", the answer is the first hit. Not bad...
Protect your browser with the Force Safe Search add-on
That joke was first forwarded to me @sitvxc.stevens-tech.edu 10 years ago. That particular machine (sitvxc) has been dead for over 8 years, and I've been told that email sent to stevens-tech.edu bounces (the school uses stevens.edu now).
So I tell you what... You find the true author, and give him credit. I doubld dog dare ya :-)
And FWIW, google doesn't find that story anywhere on slashdot.
Sir, I sense a major flaw in your argument.
/or your MP and state your reasons for disagreeing with Newhams decision.
1: I'm English
2: I live in England (and have done for some 39 years) and have a fair knowledge of the administrative hierarchy of Counties, parishes etc.
3: Read the setence as it is written then remove the bracketed sevtion to reveal:
Write to the OGC and
4: Since when would Americans (I assume that's what you thought I was) call the head of IT in newham an arshole. Asshole maybe but arsehole? I doubt it.
If you'll excuse me I have a letter to write.
Hmmmmmm..... Deep fried and look like Squirrel.