Minnesota Moving To Microsoft's Cloud

An anonymous reader writes "The State of Minnesota is apparently the first state to move into the cloud, agreeing on a deal to have their messaging and collaboration services delivered through Microsoft's Business Online Productivity Suite. The thing the article doesn't tell you in detail is that the agreement precludes the use of open source software, which could have saved the taxpayers millions of dollars. And once such a large organization goes Microsoft, it's difficult to go back. Isn't it interesting that these developments occur right before elections, as senior officials are trying to keep their jobs with a new incoming administration? What do you think, Slashdotters? Is this a good move for Minnesota? Or a conservative move that bucks the trend of saving money and encouraging open government and transparency by aligning philosophy and practice with at least the option of utilizing open source software?"

Comments

Re:Initial cost is a small piece of the cost

[hairyfeet]

And who would provide support for the "OSS solution" hmmm? You gonna tell them to RTFM? What FOSS advocates never seem to get is there is a reason why companies like MSFT get these contracts, it is because someone at the MN governor's office can pick up the phone and say "WTF? HELP" and they WILL get support. If fact for a big contract like this they will probably get tier 1 first class "ass kissing and tripping over themselves to try to fix it" level of support, oh and from a SINGLE vendor. With FOSS you are gonna have one vendor for the server, another vendor for the IM and collaborative software (probably Scalix...eeew), yet another for the Office software. Is there any guarantees it'll even work? How much will retraining cost? Or converting their existent infrastructure?

The thing nobody seems to get when they say "just use FOSS" is that the cost of the software is so low as to be inconsequential especially on large scale contracts like this. Often it is the support (can't just send them to a forum!) the cost of retraining and hiring those capable of managing the new system (Linux gurus don't work cheap!) and converting the bazillion Excel macros and specialized apps and other costs that bite you in the ass. That is why companies, and yes governments are companies, even if they are badly run, go for the big guys like Google and MSFT. Because like it or not it is less headache in the long run, as the Swiss found out the hard way.