Swiss Court Halts Non-Competitive Contract With Microsoft

Ade writes "Looks like the challenge to the Swiss Administrative Court concerning the government contract given to Microsoft without any public bidding was successful: The court has issued a temporary injunction (note: article in German) against the Federal Office of Buildings and Logistics (BBL), effectively stopping the CHF 14M (£8M; $15M)-contract to deliver licenses and support for software used on government computers for the next three years. According to Swiss Government practices, any contract over CHF 50'000 has to undergo a public call for offers. The BBL cited 'no serious alternatives' as the reason which this contract never did."

Comments

But they may (sadly) have been right

[XanC]

If your requirement is to be able to run Windows software, then there may in fact be "no serious alternatives". Now, clearly they should step back and look at the bigger picture.

Re:But they may (sadly) have been right

[royallthefourth]

If your requirement is to be able to run Windows software, then there may in fact be "no serious alternatives".

A realistic goal for the agency would have been more like "run whatever software gets the job done". For every job, there's a non-Microsoft product that is at least worth consideration.

I suspect this is simply a case of non-technical bureaucrats getting in over their heads making purchasing decisions when they should've handed it off to their IT folks (if they even have any).

Re:But they may (sadly) have been right

[Frequency Domain]

Too many idiots write specifications in terms of products vs protocols.

Re:But they may (sadly) have been right

[macbeth66]

I bet/hope that they are using this opportunity to call into question the validity of "be able to run Windows software" requirement.

And to what degree does the software need to run? I have been able to run Office 2003 in Wine on Ubuntu 8.04. Some of the 'features' do not work. Like VBA. IMHO, not being able to run VBA is a feature, not a liablilty. Screw that IMHO.

Re:But they may (sadly) have been right

[Samalie]

Sure, sometimes that non-technical bureaucrat will still go with an option that most tech-savvy people wouldn't (such as going open source), more times than not "free" + "works almost the same" is enough to get the higher-ups on board.

"Works almost the same" just doesn't cut it in the real world most of the time.

I work in IT, and I would *LOVE* to deploy Linux/OO/etc as a way to dramatically kill my budget.

The problem is, my accounting software is propriatary and does not run on Linux - Windows Only (and I've tried WINE, no dice on this one).

So fine, I'm stuck on Windows, but bring in OO.

Again, no dice...my same accounting package hooks into Office itself for reporting functions, and will not work without Office.

And I can't make it work with MySQL, so I'm stuck with SQL Server, which means I'm stuck with Windows Server as my backend. Sure, I could migrate my other server services to Linux, but for all the Microsoft that I'm absolutely stuck with there's absolutely no reason to not just have it all on Windows.

And I know what the child poster is going to say...ditch the sad propriatary accounting package and find an open license alternative. Well, we're a specalized enough industry that there is no way in hell I can get an open alternative that does more than 25% of what I'm doing today with my propriatary system.

So I'm stuck with my crappy windows application which keeps me on windows and office for the frontend, and microsoft on the back end of my network.

So its all fine and good to rally the Linux troops, and try to make inroads into the mainstream, but until they convince "real" vendors with "real" products to support Linux, its all just a fucking pipe dream.

You do know what will happen in this specific case, don't you? The Swiss will now do an open bidding process, and all the linux/open community will bid on it, and they'll be rejected regardless of the fact that it will be WAY cheaper than the Micorosoft bid, on the sole basis that some application that timmy from accounting requires won't work on Linux, and rather than wait through 3 new sourceforge projects with 11 forks over 3 years, they'll buy Microsoft.

I hate Microsoft as much as the next geek, I really do...but the Open community has a LONG LONG way to go before they becaome an accepted player at the table for any company/organization that can't afford to spend the time, energy, resources, and dollars to get programmers building them their "open" applications.

Re:But they may (sadly) have been right

[elashish14]

An awe-inspiring exemplification of the term 'lock-in.'

Re:But they may (sadly) have been right

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever tried calculating the real price that your company pays for that accounting application?

Re:But they may (sadly) have been right

[Samalie]

Correct my licensing thoughs if I'm wrong, but doesn't Citrix in this case, since it has to run a true Windows environment, require a Windows license for every connecting PC?

So in this case, I can deploy Linux to the desktop, and pay the MS Tax at the Citrix level, as well as Citrix licenses, so I can do what I'm already doing with Windows on the desktop.

I love Citrix, I've used it in the past, but I don't think I'm gaining a damn thing with this one.

Re:But they may (sadly) have been right

[Samalie]

As if I hadn't already asked/pressed for this :)

You know what? Outside of the pure IT crowd (like us here on /.), nobody gives two shits about Linux yet. I'm one of mabye 10 voices in a group of 20,000 installed locations asking for Linux for this application.

Do you really believe, in this economic climate, they're going to waste their efforts to port the application for 0.05% of their installed base? Never going to happen.

And yes, I've exaggerated, I have a couple of Linux boxes floating in my environment for doing some tasks (most notably: Spam Filtering), so I'm not pure Microsoft. And yes, I love Linux. But, bottom line, despite all our wishes, it just ain't ready for alot of businesses yet.

I hope that changes, and I'm doing what I can to add my voice to the chorus...but to restate again, unless the companies out there that make real solutions that businesses use every day that finally run on Linux, we're never going to ditch Microsoft.

Re:But they may (sadly) have been right

[digitalunity]

Linux on 64 bit is *beyond* Win64. I've been using 64 bit Ubuntu on my home computer for a while and have had relatively few issues. So far, the only issues have been with compiling old unmaintained software.

Vista 64 Home Premium has been an altogether disappointing experience. I had to wait nearly a year for new Canon drivers and was just told by Texas Instruments my shiny new TI84 is incompatible with Vista 64 as are all other TI graphing calculators.

Funny I have to use Linux to get past software incompatibility with Windows. I'd considered just taking back the calculator but the closest runner-up in functionality is the Casio ClassPad 330 which is also Vista 64 incompatible.

Re:But they may (sadly) have been right

[Sparr0]

For what you are paying* for that proprietary accounting package, and all that MS software to support it, you could probably hire a team of programmers to make an open source accounting package meet your needs more precisely than your current package does.

Re:But they may (sadly) have been right

[jellomizer]

I think you will be surprised how many seasoned IT guys will go with Windows other then Linux or Unix (Even if they are quite skilled with those OS's)

Factor 1: Change may be good, but you are going to take a lot of heat from it. Say you move from MS Office to OpenOffice and they get that 1 document that doesn't load in Open Office correctly, it is your fault, and business will stop until they can get that file. If they have Office 2003 and Get an Office 2007 files that they can't open. Then it is just the fact they are out of date, it is not your fault. And will ask the author to resend it in a different format.

Factor 2: Hiring staff. Sure there are tons of Linux and Unix guys who are willing to work for a good price, but they also know windows to a good extent, and there are the windows people too. Skills are only part of the picture when hiring. So s;taying on a windows environment when your company grows, means you have a better work force to choose from.

Factor 3: License Costs are really not a big deal, support costs are. Lets say a 500 person company. Now windows license will come with their PCs, and the cost of going linux preinstalled isn't proportionally smaller yet. Then say $300 for office per seat OK that is $150,000 and lets double that to $300,000 in software licenses for an average lifespan of 3 years. So license fees are an average of $100,000 a year. Going with an unfamiliar (to the general users) option over the period of time will have the following effect. 500 people paid an average of say $15 and hour, and say these people will need a minimum 40 hours of training/practicing time, to get use to the new systems (In real life this isn't unreasonable, even for the easiest to use Linux, as people will get hung up on every little difference) that makes it $300,000 then you need more resources to support all these people with problems, and requests for incompatible software (I NEED MICROSOFT PROJECT!) or whatever. So it really adds up. Yes their may be a cost savings over time. However the higher learning curve combined with turnover will always be a bit painful. Besides License Costs for software are really easy for the accountants to work with. The hidden costs are much more tricky.

Factor 4: As I eluded in Factor 3. Additional Software, these are specialty software that someone needs that the rest of the company doesn't. Microsoft Project, Adobe Photoshop (GIMP Will not cut it), Crystal Reports, GoToMeeting, or some video conference tool that your biggest client uses. Are you willing to fight for Open Source all day long against your company who pays you. Probably not.

Now you can win in some areas perhaps moving your web server to Linux (assuming you don't have ASP.NET developers), or even if you do move some of your Servers to Linux. You may be able to push Virtual Machines and Terminal Services. or even SaaS so your primary OS doesn't matter much. You can lax rules so it is OK for other people to install Linux if they want to, however they shouldn't be forced into it as it will give you a lot of headaches.

Re:Probably Saved a lot of money

[Col. Klink (retired)]

Yes, that is the correct everyone follows. In this case, they simply forgot to pretend to open the bidding process...

There is possible competition

[Alain Williams]

OK: I have be benefit of not knowing exactly what the tender was for, but it appears to include ''support and maintenance''. Assuming that MS s/ware is provided could not this support be provided by a local Swiss company rather than directly with MS ?

''Applications'' is horribly vague.

Part of the problem with this sort of thing is that the people who write the specifications tend to think in terms of solutions, thus ''Word Processing'' is ''MS Word''. These people need to think in terms of what they are trying to achieve and to draft the specifications in those terms. This will allow different/innovative tenders.

Re:What are the consequences of this?

[huckamania]

What a horrible system. Unless the company that originally won the bid was the wrong-doer, why should they be excluded? Sounds like something a lawyer could sue over and a bureaucrat could manipulate to game the system.

Storm's a Brewing.

[zippthorne]

The problem is, my accounting software is propriatary and does not run on Linux - Windows Only (and I've tried WINE, no dice on this one).

Your problem is bigger than "open source vs. proprietary" I'm afraid.

It should matter whether the accounting software is proprietary or not, because the data itself ought to be in as flat an plain of a file as possible. Encrypted, perhaps, and even compressed (a la open document), but the actual data should be in a plain format like human-readable ascii, or easily parsed binary, where the file header holds a description of the format in human readable form.

You're talking about ever-important financial data. Its storage ought to be even more robust than mere solar data or ice-core sample data.

Open source might give you that, and it might even be the easiest route to that, but if you're stuck with a proprietary format you don't know how to read yourself, how do you know it's not going to screw up (or worse, screw up silently) on the first errant bit-flip?