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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."
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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-