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

First (shill) post!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't you just leave Microsoft alone, after everything it's been through!

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

[Frequency Domain]

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

Re:But they may (sadly) have been right

[AJWM]

Even if the requirement is to run Windows software, there may be alternatives. How will they know if they don't put it up for bid? (E.g, someone might bid a system based on Linux and Wine. That may or may not actually do the job, depending on the specific software and how much work the bidder is willing to put in to tweak things.)

But yeah, the requirements ought to be based on functionality, not a specific software package.

Re:But they may (sadly) have been right

[MoldySpore]

It is ALWAYS the non-technical bureaucrats making the purchasing decisions, since they have the money. But it is the job of the IT/Computer Techs/Nerds under their command to show them the alternatives and, clearly, state why X is better than Y.

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. Although the cost of retraining an entire user-base of employees on how to use Linux effectively is a much bigger step than switching from, say, MS Office to OpenOffice.

Case and point, I did contract work for a company that had switched completely over to OpenOffice, and saved themselves a CRAP load of $, which is significant in this troubled economy. I'd be surprised if more companies didn't start doing this, especially if the economy stays in the crapper like it has been. But that same company still runs Windows XP/2000 because the cost of retraining people would outweigh the short-term turnaround. Illogical, but in these tough times it is hard to blame moves like that.

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.'

Probably Saved a lot of money

[jellomizer]

Having done work for the State of NY, I am sure this happens else where.
Fair and Competitive bidding work like this...
You need a job to be done.
You call the guys who you want to do it.
They do some "Free" analysis of the problem.
They give you the requirements as they would do it.
They also attach the Resume of the people who they want to do the work.
They make the bids to match the requirements and fit the resume of the people.
They take in all the bid.
Then they find the winning bid (which isn't the cheapest) but is a perfect match to the requirements. (which happens to be the company that did the free analysis)

Linux may not be ready for the desktop...

[halivar]

...but it's close enough for government work!

*ducks*
*runs*

What are the consequences of this?

[Ghost Hedgehog]

Does anyone knows how the Swiss law handles a wrongly done bidding? In the Netherlands and probably the rest of the EU, when a bidding was done against the law, the company that won the bidding may not enter the new bidding. At my old university they had this situation with the coffee machines, there was only one company that had a machine that produced decent coffee and so they won the contract. However a mistake was made in the bidding (the bidding was nationally, instead of European, contracts worth more then a ceratin amount get a European bidding procedure) and the bidding had to be done again, however the only company that could produce decent coffee was excluded and the university got stuck with terrible coffee machines.

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.