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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?"
And once such a large organization goes Microsoft, it's difficult to go back.
You need a large, thick, vertically and horizontally integrated businesses to handle large customers. But actually, unbeknownst to you, the average person has been going Microsoft for much larger, er, longer than you realize. Imagine the confusion that would ensue from switching to Linux - a Windows user who is used to tasks being performed for them on the bottom of their desktop may find themselves confused that the tasks are all on the top and they have to do much more work themselves.
TFA:
How could switching to an entirely incompatible platform have saved taxpayers millions?
People are used to microsoft. Its a recognised brand name - irrelevant of how good/bad it is.
If a leader decides that their underlings will use this 'new-fangled' leenux instead of what everyone else always uses, people get scared of the change and react badly to it.
Even trying to explain to my sister why she should give Ubuntu a try was a problem for me, let alone trying to get a large group of (non-techy) people to make the switch.
Then once the smallest problem crops up, people would go "Why did you switch to such a rubbish system? We should have gone Microsoft" - again irrelevant of the change in problem amount.
"lady, I never go into any place I can't get out of"
The cloud is a great idea combined with standard formats for data (XML, whatever). IT overhead is a headache. Running servers is a pain.
The data is the important thing, not how it's manipulated. This point needs to be beaten into people.
If you're foolish enough to move into a third party cloud without standardized data formats.. or a way to get out..
You'll wish being ambushed in a bar by spies was the worst thing that could happen :)
..don't panic
Just a wild guess, but I'd say that it's because you don't need to pay to use it.
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.
Before I saddle up the war horses, can you provide a citation?
This is a serious allegation; tying arrangements are dangerously prosecutable under antitrust laws, as Microsoft should remember.
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
Surely the real cost they're paying here is for the "cloud services", and so the price would be similar whether or not the software behind it is OSS or not? Or is the argument just anti-MS really? It sounds like there's some saving from a previous move to MS Exchange and the licensing deal from that as well though.
What do you think, Slashdotters? Is this a good move for Minnesota?
Hmmmm... I've studied the data carefully and considered the pros and cons, taking account of the prevailing trends and allowing for all the variables. Based on my analysis I predict that the Slashdot consensus will be that going all Microsoft is not a good move.
To summarise the summary of the summary: people are a problem. ~ h2g2
You can't just compare the upfront costs. What are the on-going support costs? There's even an open source tool to calculate TCO: http://www.tcotool.org/index_en.html
Probably less than the cost of being locked into no-shop clauses in an MS agreement.
Such a non-compete clause is most likely an anti-trust violation if TFS is correct.
I'm from Duluth, MN and I say GACK! At one point, there was a state legislator who attempted to set into law, open document formats. Black suits showed up and ......bzzzzt!
But really, does this mean I have to now own proprietary applications to view public documents? Thanks for so much you've left us Pawlenty.
While those are valid points, we're talking about a cloud here. You don't see what OS you're dealing with if you don't want to.
For example, take salesforce.com. That is entirely based upon RedHat Enterprise Linux. It used to be Solaris/Sparc, but they found that x86 was much cheaper. They serve 88,000 companies with 1,500 Dom0 servers. And the cool thing is that they've integrated mobile devices (phone and pads) with their cloud. So you can handle your apps from your office PC, or smart mobile system. That's one heck of a competitive advantage for businesses.
And the funny thing is that I had a debate recently with a rapid Microsoft zealot who gave me the usual (outdated) MS hype about how Linux was a rip-off of UNIX, yada, yada. He was also a solid zealot for salesforce.com. He shut up after I mentioned that salesforce.com was a Linux shop, and his beloved tech was running on Linux.
The numbers above come from a recent RedHat dog-and-pony show about their new Cloud technology. They trotted out a guy from salesforce.com, and these are the numbers that he gave.
Now, I'm wondering where that leaves Suse and Ubuntu in the Cloud space. They can do like RedHat and hire Wipro to write their semi-proprietary Cloud stack. Or they can go with Open Stack and give NASA and Rackspace a hand with their Open Source Cloud.
FTFA:
Am I the only one who sees a basic incompatibility here?
Also, the original poster is wrong - if you can't manipulate the data, it's pretty much useless except to historians. You might as well store it on microfiche and lock it in a vault.
A few years ago Minnesota was looking at mandating open standards for all government operations. Now they have taken a huge step towards vendor lock-in. This move will lock up Minnesota's history for decades to come. At the same time it will make the state's operations far less reliable.
The article comments that Minnesota is switching over to something businesses have found great success in for years. As someone that has to use BPOS at work I must say the system is incredibly unreliable. We have had email simply disappear into a void. The service is slow. It frequently stops working for hours at a time. We have had other email delivered hours after it was sent.
We had to disable rather important functionality in order to migrate over to BPOS as we are not allowed to customize anything. Now we have users doing things by hand which used to be automated.
Before we switched over to BPOS I considered email as trustworthy and reliable as most utilities. My employer has structured the company with the assumption that email will be a reliable communications medium. With BPOS in place it is a burden on our organization.
The cost of retraining government staff on inferior software?
Aren't they doing that with Vista/Win7/Ribbons anyway?
Hmm... seems strange that this is also the home of Michele Bachmann, who is very outspoken about "wasteful government spending" and a proponent of small government (http://www.michelebachmann.com/about/). This seems to go against those values and her push to keep jobs local and create jobs locally. However it does seem to fit with her less spoken about ideas of privatizing everything. I wonder if we should be drawing any conclusions from the fact, or coincidence, she sits on the Financial Services Committee. I would think once one state goes this route, others will follow suit. I can also see how having all of your data saved in the cloud (we aren't responsible for it) would be in the interest of any generic banking institution. Also, not having an open source platform could make transparency much more difficult, not that government or banking institutions would ever want to hide anything!
Member of American Sarcasm Society - Motto: "Like we need your help!"
Using OSS and having transparent government have NOTHING to do with each other, unless you are counting on everyone's ability to hack into the OSS and see every detail of how all government agencies are working. At which point, the entire state would collapse into a coma from the sheer boredom of it all. Second point - whether or not the state saves money is not really a function of what the software costs. Ongoing maintenance and staff support time will dwarf that figure.
It's interesting how you ignored the other points raised, such as retraining staff and converting documents between formats.
yeah right.
i'm sure tim pawlenty (whose claim on history will be having given minnesota's infrastucture budget to his rich pals in the form of high-bracket tax reductions - with predictable impact on, particularly, the I-35 bridge) and michelle bachmann are more than happy at your retconning of history.
hubert fucking humphrey? from the 1960's? you asshat.
You mean like training people to use Windows 7? Converting Visual Basic stuff to "dot net"?
okay lets try this
N copies of OSS software = 0
Nmillion copies of OSS software = 0
N Billion copies of OSS software = 0
Cost for Required conversion to OSS format = 0 (there is no cost unless you really want to)
training and support for new programs = Unknown since it depends on if you do a FLAG DAY type cutover
Cost to recover from virus/worm/X-ware related shutdowns = 0 once you have a complete LINUX setup
hardware cost to update your systems as required = most likely 0 unless you are already due for a refresh cycle
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
I guess this news should have floored me but it doesn't. We have an entrenched administration that has the mantra "No new taxes" which has a nice sounding ring to it but the result has been less pretty (like a major interstate bridge that just decided to fall into the Mississippi river). I was drivng down the freeway today and the truck was bouncing around so badly I had to slow down (and I was not speeding).
How does all this relate to moving to the Microsoft cloud? I am sure the state is getting a low cost price to get them in the door. Once hooked the price will go up and it will need to be paid and some other service will be asked to do more with less. Maybe the old lady in the nursing home will have to cut back on someting like drugs or catheters. Maybe a school will have to put off buying science textbooks (for the tenth year in a row).
Not to mention that for the same performance, you need three times the hardware to run Windows 7 vs Linux or BSD.
Probably because even if you used Microsoft software in the past, you had to change formats for their own software. Remember when 2007 couldn't open 2003, until all the backlash, then they finally decided to introduce translation. A shame that a government would be shackled to a company known for their insecure software and their greed. But probably that state has too much money, and taxpayers were requesting to have higher taxes.
I started using Linux in 1995 and have been using it almost exclusively since 1998.
What confuses me every time I try to use Windows is how many tasks I have to do on the top of the desktop that Linux does for me automatically without any intervention from me.
Linux just works, Windows is continuously asking me to do something.
Linux is the lover from your daydreams, Windows is the nagging wife from your reality.
The difference is that in the software world dreams can become reality.
I worked for a startup that used branded google services for email, instant messaging and calendar. It worked pretty well. Not sure how the cost worked out, but it was certainly less headache than maintaining our own mail server. Especially since we didn't have a dedicated IT person.
Remember when 2007 couldn't open 2003, until all the backlash, then they finally decided to introduce translation.
um... This wasn't such a bad thing. Granted I don't know what they changed in the docx format, But for excel 2007 the change was needed. The whole 65000 row limit was a real killer. How did you expect to open the new larger files in 2003?
My guess is that the state of Minnesota already has developed custom software in-house that depends on the Microsoft platform. You migrate to a Microsoft cloud if your existing software is already locked into Microsoft platform. That's only natural. At any rate, the whole cloud computing concept is very simple: let someone who is good at running data center do their job.
You could very well argue that redeveloping the software to base on an open-source platform might be a better plan in the long run, and I would tend to agree with that. But the redevelopment will surely cost the state some millions of dollars more in the short run.
You also probably don't realize that software costs money to develop. Even when the software is offered to you for free, someone, somewhere is paying for it. That's because someone has to spend time doing something. In order to sustain the livelihood, that person needs to eat, drink, pay rent, and once in a while use medical help. When software gets open sourced, the person is donating his time and effort and has absorbed the cost of writing the software.
And don't forget that free software is not really about the cost. It's about the freedom to learn from the software, to modify the software, and to distribute your modifications.
I once had a signature.
You do need to pay to get support. There is absolutely no way any corporation, including the government, would ever run business critical apps without support. Get real.
Well this would explain why the state is blue most election years. It's not voting for the Democratic candidate; it's crashing.
I'm not sure your so-called point...
control society. Why are they allowing a private entity (non government) control of the publics information? The public (and maybe the State) will not have access to public information. What is the process for a FOIA now? The State has to ask Microsoft for the information? On a different angle, Microsoft is not known for properly backing up information. What guarantees are Microsoft making for good backup and accurate restores? What guarantees are in place to protect the private citizens information from Microsoft or others? Just look at what Grumman did to West Virginia. The State was down for over a week. This whole thing is very bad. Leave government IT functions to government employees. Otherwise your handing over your government to corporations. Corporations that hold government contracts are seldom audited, as opposed to government entities which are audited at least annually.
Many government services need to be up nearly 24/7. Government employees are not paid well and their resources are nothing like those in the private sector. I speak from experience here.
It's nice and all to say that they should be using OSS, but really? Data centers are expensive. So flamebaity as the OP was, consider:
1) government entities need to invest in a really good database platform with upper echelon support and training options, as well as with a large community of mercenary experts you could bring in from anywhere in an emergency. SLAs for the government don't just lose money; you're talking about public safety departments, state/local/federal requirements for information access, etc. Waiting for forum answers is frequently not an option.
2) having employees with deeply technical skill sets and loads of experience is going to be hard; keeping them for any length of time is going to be harder. You are going to offer very little in terms of salary for doing actual work; benefits are good, but they really only matter if you're still relatively young career-wise. 25-year retirement plans don't matter if you have 20 years of experience already. Government employees also jump between positions a lot. This means the guy who developed an app might then become a sysadmin, then he might move to the HR department, then go work for the Clerk. You really don't get to call him in when there's an emergency. It's not his job and it's not his responsibility. That boundary is a requirement in government shops for liability positions. So that personal knowledge base is going to get flushed very frequently.
3) government IT supports dozens to hundreds of apps. Jails, fire departments, municipal services, judicial services and records, clerk apps (for elections and public record retention), public safety offices, tax information, property information, GIS and spatial databases for land parcels and property value assessment, not to mention any random social programs you have going on like substance abuse programs, public health departments, transportation bureaus, etc. If you think you're managing all of that on mysql, you're absolutely insane.
4) in-house development, while nice, tends to be impractical for anything that rates higher than "minor". You don't generally have career systems analysts who built the inmate tracking system from the ground up and documented their vast knowledge. These apps and their databases get absolutely massive, and between elected officials, turnover, and the frequency with which government employees tend to switch positions (to get promotions and earn more money, since merit raises are incredibly rare), having such monsters is a tremendous liability.
This is an area where OSS has yet to prove a good fit. Here and there it is an excellent solution; as a cover-all it is a terrible one. The OSS community is good, but Oracle and Microsoft answer their phones 24/7, and allow 15-minute MTTA SLAs to exist. Which, you know...is legally required in some places.
Funny, but the only thing I pay RedHat for per-server? Seems to be just for access to patches and updates. I've honestly never had to call their support line in the 4+ years that I've been using RHEL professionally.
Microsoft OTOH had been a near-constant companion last year during the install of the travesties that are SCOM and SCCM - and most professional MCSE types I know of have had to do the same. Even called 'em up a couple of times back when Exchange 2007 first came out.
So, at least in my own experience, Microsoft has been a pricier support and maintenance proposition (on the enterprise level, anyhoo) than Linux has been.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
I read the article and Minnesota is moving their Email from several different platforms over to Exchange. Or in this case, exchange managed by MS, "aka the cloud". And I can see where this will save them money from having to support GroupWare, Lotus, and Exchange like they currently are and for large organizations, there isn't anything in the Opensource world that can compete with Exchange.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
A totally screwed state. After all, it's not as though BPOS is renowned for its reliability, and for that matter since when was it a clever idea for a state to go to relatively bleeding edge tech.
WTF?
Yes, the extra functionality would have been a good thing, except all of my Office 2003 users were stuck with non-opening documents.
That's going backwards, not forwards!
So yes, it was in fact "such a bad thing."
Microsoft finally agreed with that point of view; that's why they eventually put out a patch for it.
Adherence to the truth is a form of disloyalty.
We have a managed dedicated server from Pair Networks that handles our company websites and email. (We have a few more that handle our E-commerce Platform). We access our email through IMAP with Mac Mail, iPhones, iPads, Android phones, Outlook, and thunderbird. We looked at Google apps and the dedicated server was cheaper for our company (4 full-time, 6 part-time employees). Two years and we've not had any noticeable problems. I think I had to call tech support once to get the machine reset that took a whole of 5 minutes on the phone from the time I dialed until the server was rebooted and working again.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
I ised to do IT support when I was graphic designer for a very small firm (3-10 employees depending of the needs). We had our very own Exchange server, but only the boss used the calendar and contact features. When our server finally crashed, we outsourced our Exchange services for our one boss for a couple bucks a months, outsourced web servers to a datacenter for peanuts a month, including backups and kept our big fat pipe to ourselves. It made my life easier, saved the company the support budget and made our one server more efficient to serve our big fat multimedia files and daily backups. The exchange server relied on a different domain, but that was the only inconvenience...
Tomorrow is another day...
It does not surprise me one bit. Our Governor is a slime who only about 1/3 support and many of those only because of his party affiliation. (3rd parties upset results often here.) He's been doing the whole "no new taxes" thing for his whole term and its only ended up hurting us as well as word games where they actually raised taxes in other ways. Then we have our ROADS -- that bridge that fell down was ours -- which took a voter initiative to get the road funds used ON ROADS! (before the bridge fell, but not fast enough... the bridge fell while they were fixing it.) I wouldn't be surprised if MS bought his support since he wants to run for President or VP.
I used to know a state IT guy - a unix guru. You can be assured that they have some great experts for intelligent planning who were not the deciding factor. I will have to reach him and see if they cut his job since he did do some email servers among the 100s he managed.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Source article from the summary
Officials said the state did not seek bids, or requests for proposals, for a cloud computing system as Microsoft hosted suite was already a standard part of the earlier large licensing contract signed to consolidate the messaging systems.
training and support for new programs = Unknown since it depends on if you do a FLAG DAY type cutover
Never worked at any large organizations have you? The cost of software licenses is trivial compared to the costs in time and lost productivity anytime you introduce a change in the workflow. Doesn't matter if this is switching to a new program, introducing a new program, or even an upgrade from the previous version to a new version. Case in point, we hired a new Sr. developer who had his IDE of choice. Cost: $249. We used an opensource IDE. We're paying him roughly $70 an hour all said and done. How many wasted hours of time learning the "free" opensource IDE does it take to cover the cost of that license? If switching to the "free" opensource IDE costs more than 1 day of productivity, it's cheaper to buy the program. (which we did). This looks like its a change in the background, from a users perspective they'll probably still be using Outlook, it's just the settings are a little different. The end user won't notice anything different in their workflow. They used Outlook before, they'll continue using the same program here.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
I don't see your point.
The discussion was if it costs more to use free software or commercial software. There was a point raised that zero acquisition cost may not be everything, because support could be expensive.
Now you are raising the question that support for Microsoft software could be expensive because old versions of Microsoft software suck.
What are you trying to prove here?
Which version? The only version I've seen on netbook is Windows 7 starter, which is limited to say the least.
I think you have it backwards, You need a patch to open docx in 2003, But I have a DVD of 2007 that with a fresh install can open .doc files from 2003...
So... [citation needed]
Also word had the ability to save as the old format, So maybe you just some ID10T users? Granted the Compatibility Pack really did make life easy.
I've run Windows 7 on a nv9400 Mac mini and I am not sure I would classify the performance as "fine".
Hell, I wouldn't even consider running XP in anything less than 1G. Nevermind something newer.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Microsoft really DOES have good enterprise tools. If you don't know about them all that means is you haven't worked with it in a large enterprise. That is not useless. It makes things easier to manage, which means less support costs. Never underestimate how much personnel can cost. If you save $1 million per year on licenses going open source, but have to hire 20 new support staff costing $70,000 each (remember people cost more than just their base salary, have to account for benefits, taxes, and so on) to support it you've lost money, even if there is no retraining/productivity loss.
I'm not saying that would be the case here, I haven't studied their setup and don't care to, but then neither have the knee-jerk "OSS is cheaper!" folks. Sorry, but it may not be. It is complicated. In any setup you have to study what they have, what they need, what it would take to change, and so on. ALL costs have to be considered. You can't only look at license or hardware costs and ignore staff or training costs.
So just because OSS doesn't have upfront costs doesn't mean it is free.
We've seen that where I work. We do Windows, Solaris, and Linux. It isn't really optional, we do education and research that needs all of them. Fair enough, but let me tell you getting a central system that works with all three has not been easy. It cost a fair bit of money (in the form of Sun Directory Server and IDsync) and a lot of development by our staff. It was worth it, since we need it, but there was real cost, and ongoing cost to support it. On the other hand Active Directory just works. Does what we need right out of the box. In fact the Windows side runs all on the AD, that just syncs to LDAP. Yes, we have to pay for Windows licenses, but there is something to be said for the features that come with it.
I'm quite sure that OSS can work for a large enterprise because there are plenty of examples where it does. However glibly assuming it is easy or costs less is stupid. The needs to the organization have to be assessed, and you have to factor in ALL costs. You may discover that in some situations the answer is it actually costs more. What you save on licenses you lose in other areas.
in less than 5 years i bet Minnesota declares bankruptcy and they are forced to change the name of the state to MSMinnesota then microsoft subsidizes the state government providing the state advertises and uses the MS logo on all state signs and official state documents & stationary.
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
They buy support for Microsoft as well. And not just the crap support that comes with the licensing, but actual support contracts with MS or 3rd parties.
Get real.
You are assuming incompetence in others that isn't there, when it looks like you are the one that isn't thinking things through. They buy support with MS. They buy support with UNIX. They buy support with Linux. You don't pay for Linux support and rely on free support from MS for critical issues.
Learn to love Alaska
But how much does that per server fee cost? I don't know, as I work for a university and we pay way less than normal, but I'm going to guess from what I've seen it isn't cheap. Now compare that to what it costs for patches and updates for Windows. You pay for a copy of Windows and you get 10 years of guaranteed patches from the date of release. Not too bad over all.
Personally I've found that when you want a company-supported Linux, it generally costs as much or more than Windows. That's fine, license/support costs really aren't as big a deal as many make them out to be (shit we pay over a grand a year for hardware support on Solaris servers) however if that is going to be needed it has to be factored in. You can't say "We'll save a bunch on Windows licenses!" and then say "We need to purchase Red Hat support on all these systems." Wait, you aren't really saving anything there are you?
If you want to claim savings on OSS that's fine and I'm sure there are cases it does save. However you've got to be honest. You have to account for all costs. If the Linux you need to use requires a support contract, that has to be factored in. If Windows help desk problems could be solved by $10/hour people where as Linux ones require $40,000/year salaried people, that has to be factored in. If you need a development staff to write the programs to make the Linux systems work in your enterprise, that has to be factored in. Still may well be a money saver, but you have to account for all the costs. You can't say "We saved money because we stopped paying for MS licenses," only to then spend even more money on other costs.
But a lot of people forget how much of his money actually goes to help others through such programs as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation..
It likely goes against laws of the state related to government procurements and agreements. Most states have such laws and policies in place for good reason.
I think this agreement needs to be examined from as many perspectives as possible. It is clearly inappropriate for a vendor to say that a customer cannot do certain things as a condition for any given deal.
They are a cuckoo that has pushed its way into the "nobody gets fired for buying IBM" mentality without providing the service that gave IBM the reputation.
The reality is such stupid stuffups as not even getting ping right when they had the source coded as a gift, divide by zero errors when they tried to go mission critical, devices that shut down due to leap years and the malware swamp we suffer from today. If you ask ME it's not a good Vista to look at.
I still use their stuff but there is no point pretending that it is the best available.
Talking about the stuff not mentioned. How about the biggest thing of all, now that Minnesota's data is in M$ cloud every company that wants to do business with it and every government department that needs to access it will also be forced into M$ permanent proprietary connections and data never stop paying for cloud.
Basically the whole state will end up bleeding hundreds of millions of dollars for ever, adjusted for inflation because of the short sighted distorted thinking of the current administrators. What will be the biggest lock in to keep it permanent, "Oh my God, what about the cost of converting data, Oh My God what about the cost of retraining, Oh my God what the administration costs", same old same old lock in crap. Hint pay the cost once and the licence fees are gone for ever, as for the administration costs they are much the same excluding endless forced upgrades and the associated data conversions and retraining.
That state has just locked every other company out and grossly ant-competitive contract that should be investigated by the Feds. The cloud is B$, in reality it is just a permanent lock in and a constant source of costs leaving your system permanently vulnerable because you can have no part of it disconnected from the internet. The reality is kept it local, don't connect to the internet unless it absolutely has too, power supply backup (due to absolute necessity to keep functioning serious power supply back up).
Now a single corporation ultimately controls the State of Minnesota, if people don't think so than they have no idea how things can be automated, data changed and added too, forced recipients of advertising, creeping competitor lock outs, proprietary protocol access fees, corporate access to all state communications. It really is crazy stuff to trust all that to a single corporation and grossly inappropriate for any government to do so, whether local, state or federal.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
I think the summary is the most self-serving OSS trash that I've read here.
No worse than the self-serving Microsoft trash and astroturfing the rest of us tolerate.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I hate to break it to you, but you do also have to pay to get support with commercial software, too. And pay MORE most of the time.
Microsoft is a monopoly. Nothing wrong with monopolies, per se, but they have to play by different rules.
MS is providing software and services under the stipulation that the client cannot use their chief competitor. That sounds like it it directly opposed to the Sherman Antitrust act.
I'm interested in what effect this'll have on the University system in MN. I work for the UMN and we recently (like in the last 2 months) switched to googles cloud services. If we can't communicate effectively with the state, one of us is going to be pressured to change. I wonder who'll be doing the changing :(
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
A $40k per year Linux admin is unheard of. The average is almost $90k, $10k more than the average Windows admin. That's great if you're a Linux guy, not so much if you're a business trying to save money.
You missed something: A business only needs 2/3 to half as many *nix admins in most cases - a competent admin can automate the vast majority of what is normally required (or expensive via third-party toolsets) in a Windows-only environment (for instance, compare SCCM vs. an in-house YUM server.)
Factor in the costs of re-training all your staff...
More FUD, and for two reasons:
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
A $40K per year Linux admin is pretty much the norm for the midwest, especially for state positions. They don't pay much, but the benefits are great. I used to work for a state university as a Unix/Linux admin years ago, and the pay was horrible.
You also don't need as many Unix/Linux admins as MS admins, or that's what I remember from some of the surveys and reports done comparing a Windows shop vs Linux shop.
I've worked in mixed shops, 100% Linux shops, and 100% MS shops doing admin work since '93. Honestly, I think companies CAN save money ditching MS, but you have to have a competent IT department to pull it off. Staff will use whatever you put in front of them. Custom applications may be a pain point, I'll give you that.
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,
I think this is classic flamebait. First: it's seldom as simple as saying "Hey let's replace everything with OSS!", because unfortunately there *is* at minimum a manpower cost when switching all of your existing systems over. There may be a manpower cost here - but if Microsoft is providing tools to make that transition simple, cheap, and/or free , then they're already a step ahead of their open source counterparts.
In addition, what open source options are there for hosted services of this type and scale? I'm not aware of any (but could be wrong). On that basis alone, the fact that they didn't go OSS is completely irrelevant because there are no OSS offerings in the running to begin with. And I suspect that if/when such services come into being, they will cost similar to what MS is charging, because now it's not about the software licensing - it's about the services and convenience of not having an IT staff to do the maintenance work.
Finally, who really thinks so narrowly as to believe that the software platform plays any role at all in whether senior officials "keep their jobs with a new incoming administration"? Software platform is a background part of these people's day-to-day activity - it's a tool that should do its job and stay out of the way. For the administration it's just one more cost in the budget checklist - and probably not a very significant one, relative to all of the other spending a state does on a daily basis.
Unless/until Windows servers are free and as effective at what I need as Linux servers are, I'll be running Linux servers for home and business. For my needs, it's the best solution - changing over would cost me significant money that I had not planned to spend. But for the state of Minnesota, it's awfully hard to evaluate whether or not that holds true on the basis of a PR release, a computerworld writeup, and a loaded slashdot summary.
But you will have to pay when Microsoft comes a knockin' because you have used some patents with your risky open source software. So, this moves has saved the state billions, potentially.
Cost in manpower required to replace every windows server with an OSS server, including configuration for like functions - using staff nnot familiar with the environmetn?
Cost in hours to wipe all desktops and install OSS OSes?
Cost in hours to replace every piece of software that has no counterpart with a custom written version of the same?
Cost in hours to find a way to get all those stupid custom Microsoft Access applications working on a completely new platform?
Cost in hours to fix all of the intranet web sites that were built to run in IE6 only?
Cost in hours to correct formatting issues in office documents that don't display correctly in their OSS counterparts?
Cost in helpdesk support hours for the steep learning curve many users will face?
The equation is often not as simple as "well it doesn't have a licensing cost". While I think that MS"s ongoing "tco' campaign was a bunch of crap, I also think that to dismiss the actual costs associated with a massive conversion of this nature does more harm than good - because if someone buys into it and encounters the above (and the hundreds of smaller issues I didn't list), then it's OSS that comes out looking bad. Presenting a realistic (and honest) perspective lets people make the choice with their eyes open - knowing that if they get past the initial pain, it *does* get significantly cheaper on an ongoing basis.
We've looked at some of Microsoft's cloud computing initiative, such as Azure. One big issue is HIPAA concerns (look online - there has to be a lot added to meet HIPAA). Given that Minnesota's government is going to be putting personal information in their documents, I wonder what their security consists of. I'd personally be scared crapless that somebody could get to the wrong documents and publish them or steal the numbers or whatnot.
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
Trouble Pawlenty, whose Indian name is Chief Tumbling Bridges, does not want to spend a penny, nor help anybody except the 157 million/billionnaires who he caters to. this is not a "big vote" for cloud computing, but he probably thinks by getting rid of infrastructure, he can get rid of more of the state government. it's foxes for the hen house.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
You pay for a copy of Windows and you get 10 years of guaranteed patches from the date of release. Not too bad over all.
Obviously you don't sign the invoices for Microsoft products. You don't just pay for a copy of Windows server. You pay for the sever, then for CALS besides the seat licenses for the products that connect to that server. With MSFT you pay and pay and pay. Their prices, their upgrade schedule, their partners.
With RedHat you pay for annual service at the level you want. Or you can go with something like ClearOS and get updates and patches handled for you for less than $250 year or go with CentOS and do it yourself.
You don't get those options with M$. Stop apologizing for greedy corporate fucktards.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
"Not to mention that for the same performance, you need three times the hardware to run Windows 7 vs Linux or BSD."
You're probably a OSS shill, but if you haven't noticed 6 core processors were less than $200 six months ago and Windows 7 will run wonderfully on a third of that.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Excuse me, but I had thought the discussion was about how easy it is for average people to use the system.
In a corporate environment, or any situation where trained people are available, Linux is so much easier to use that the comparison loses all meaning.
"A $40k per year Linux admin is unheard of. The average is almost $90k, $10k more than the average Windows admin. That's great if you're a Linux guy, not so much if you're a business trying to save money"
So, on average a Linux admin gets about 12% more than his Windows counterpart.
Now: what happens if your single Linux sysadmin is able to manage, say, your servers, mail services and network routing while you need to hire a Windows admin, an Exchange admin and a network guy? What would that say to those "business trying to save money"?
Per hired person wages is only part of the equation.
"while Microsoft's prices and licensing schemes are ridiculous, they are a drop in the bucket compared to the real costs of doing business."
The front cost of the cart is a drop in the bucket. You should count on the driver, the horses, forage and the two months it takes going coast to coast... Or you could buy a truck.
One should consider how big the bucket becomes precisely because of depending on the Microsoft way of doing bussiness and its ecosystem.
OK, so this is a US state, buying services from a large US company. Nothing to see here, please move along...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Why is anyone surprised by this? It's the safe thing for the state to do. Just like buying IBM mainframes used to be. You never lost your job for buying IBM, you'll never lose your job for going with Micro$oft. And don't kid yourselves. If MN wants to void that contract sometime down the road, they will find a way. And you know bureaucrats - they don't give a fat rat's ass about saving taxpayer money. It's not real money to them anyway.
It's the fact that the contract would seem to Exclude the government from running it's own choice of systems should departments want to. I would assume Microsoft would be attaching a strict SLA to the services and would not want to be responsible for the state's administrators screwing things up... that's how these contracts are justified to management in corporations when they sack the IT staff.
On the other hand it would be interesting to see if this is specifically open source, or simply "other" solutions being banned. The thing is that when other solutions are "banned" it's hard to get new things "approved". You can get the big ticket software packages approved easily, if you want Blackberry support, or IBM, Oracle, etc. Microsoft will be happy to take your money in license and consulting fees to hook you up. It's hard to include Open Source in that situation because the Microsoft support staff will simply refuse because there is not a big-ticket software firm involved for support. Add to that the fact that the original IT staff is "let go" or employed in different departments... either way they have no access to the "cloud" to implement anything for "everybody" anymore. But that's the whole reason Management and Outsource company make these deals.
I'd be interested to see how they've worded that contract. An agreement to exclude any other vendors could run afoul of the Sherman Antitrust Act.
Have gnu, will travel.
And there's the millions that OSS will save the state. Not in s/w aquisition, training or support costs, but in defending the sole source contract.
Have gnu, will travel.
Biased summary
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?
I honestly cannot think of a more charged way of asking that question that doesn't involve out and out stating conspiracy theories (rather than just hinting at them), or vulgarities.
./ ferchristsake. It's not like it'll be hard to get support for anti-Microsoft OR pro-FOSS, let alone both of them.
This is
I needed a sig so people would know who I am, but I was too drunk to make something witty, so you get this instead.
You could always open and save 2003 documents in 2007, just use the drop down combo box in the common dialog and change the file type to an older format (like for Word, select *.doc instead of *.docx). Microsoft had to introduce the new file formats to clean them up and introduce new features. Microsoft has admitted that even they have trouble parsing doc files as they have grown over many Word versions and increased in complexity. So they introduced the new better designed file types in 2007 and it got a bad rap while people transitioned to them. Office 2010 uses the 2007 formats with no conversion, and future Office version will probably work the same way.
Unless OSS software has some magic model where document formats never need to be updated then they will eventually encounter the same problem. You have to transition users somewhere.
The clash of honour calls, to stand when others fall.
Why use inferior software?
Using only Closed Source or only Open Source guarantee you'll be using some inferior software as neither has all of the best software.
Some Open Source is better than the Closed alternatives, some Closed is better than the Open alternatives.
Also MS requires a bit of retraining. Look at the transitions in the past few versions of MS Office, big retraining needs there. VS Open Office which has been much stabler at least as far as its interface from one version to the other.
Just a wild guess, but I'd say that it's because you don't need to pay to use it.
That's only one part of the cost of software. Granted, with a lot of mainstream commercial software that initial cost is not insignificant, however then the maintenance of it comes in to play. With a few notable exceptions, OSS systems tend to be far less implemented, leading to difficulties in finding staff to maintain the systems, and maintenance often can take longer.
At one volunteer organisation that I used to maintain some of their IT systems (on a volunteer basis, I should add) I recommended we ditch the Sendmail/Dovecot/DSpam email system and replace it with Exchange - simply because it was impossible to train any of the permanent staff on how to properly create and delete new email accounts and I got sick of getting calls every few days because someone had dome something stupid and the person whose duty it was to do this couldn't do any troubleshooting. The organisation already had a Windows domain and had Office throughout the organisation, which reduced the cost a bit further.
Microsoft BOPS... Seriously?
No, Slashdot got it wrong, in a move that has surprised literally nobody. It's BPOS.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
Minnesota cannot 'move'.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_drift
Be seeing you...
Are you retarded, or just trolling/FUDing?
The article you linked to doesn't mention any OSS alternatives, nor any support costs/availability of anything. (Also, Mashable is the best you could come up with for a source?)
What the article you linked to (titled, "Major University Dumps Gmail Over Security Concerns") actually discusses is that the University of California in Davis just stopped their pilot roll-out of Gmail due to concerns that it wasn't secure enough. In actuality, its not clear if Davis would even be allowed to use Gmail at all, as the article notes, "[school officials said] outsourcing e-mail may not be in compliance with the University of California Electronic Communications Policy."
Later in the article it mentions that other organizations (such as the City of Los Angeles) are adopting Gmail. The whole thing is hardly damning of Gmail, and doesn't even mention OSS.
Mods: Don't just assume that someone's citation backs up what they're saying. Parent is off-topic and not particularly insightful.
For me, I can say that when my previous employer switched over to Gmail for our email it was a huge boost to uptime, and a dramatic drop in cost compared to the (unfortunately) poorly supported in-house Linux-based OSS email server and the Exchange server we were quoted.
Bill
You say support is anemic in FOSS alternatives -- and link to an article about GMail and Google Apps (which aren't FOSS) in which a university doesn't mention even once having any issue with their support.
Don't even get me started on the sand-pounding you do to get help with issues in a proprietary product (e.g., IIS) vs. the totally transparent and much more effective support available with well-run FOSS products (e.g., Apache).
"Ahh! I see you're in that indeterminate Schrodinger state where - oh, uh
gmail is not OSS. The article doesn't mention any specific vulnerability, just general concerns. There's really nothing there.
I did some searching online, and can't find the answer - do the MS cloud version of Office apps require that the client be IE on Windows? Or does access from browsers other than IE on platforms other than Windows work (even if not as well integrated)?
I have no doubt that at a minimum, MS built it such that the user experience is degraded somewhat on other browsers/platforms (think Outlook Web Access), but if in fact everything functions, it could actually indirectly enable migration of desktops to other platforms, since it addresses the oft-voiced "MS Office compatibility" issue.
Wouldn't that be ironic, if the MS move to cloud-based services finally ushers in the Year of the Linux Desktop?!)
"Ahh! I see you're in that indeterminate Schrodinger state where - oh, uh
Why am I even posting this?
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
I liked the original title better.
This seems crystal clear to me.
-- Linux user #369862
I worked for a startup that used branded google services for email, instant messaging and calendar. It worked pretty well. Not sure how the cost worked out, but it was certainly less headache than maintaining our own mail server. Especially since we didn't have a dedicated IT person.
We do exactly that - it's UK£30/person/annum and includes Google Docs and Sites (though your admin may not have enabled these). At that kind of cost, it's hard for a small company to buy a half-decent server to handle your email on and replace it every 3-5 years - never mind any commercial software if you're not happy with a plain IMAP server. It's even harder if you want a secondary MX offsite.
I haven't even looked at the man-hours required to set up and manage the thing. A properly setup mail server requires practically zero management, but your users certainly do. I can't count the number of times I've been asked to chase down an email that went "missing" only to prove that the recipient just hasn't found it in their inbox with about 5,000 unread emails.
BPOS has had an awful track record when it comes to reliability. I hope they have a backup plan for those days the service is gone. Im also curius about how they will handle the data breach problems? Dont they have a responsibility for keeping stuff private about their citizens? Good luck with that on BPOS.
HTTP/1.1 400
While I know for a fact it's possible to have a whole farm of Windows servers run well - I've seen it happen - I haven't seen it recently.
I've seen Windows systems go wrong, I've seen admins who show no interest in figuring out why that is - let alone actually fixing it, but instead go with the old "Retry, reboot, reinstall" mantra. I am 90% sure that the reason Windows admins are cheaper is because the incompetent morons are pushing salaries down for everyone, and hiring managers can't tell the difference between an incompetent moron and someone who knows what s/he's doing.
Probably less than the cost of being locked into no-shop clauses in an MS agreement.
Such a non-compete clause is most likely an anti-trust violation if TFS is correct.
It wouldn't surprise me if it is. Certainly Windows desktop licensing, you are obliged by the terms of the license to count every x86 desktop PC regardless of what OS you propose running on it.
Obviously you don't have to buy a site-license for Windows desktop OSs - you could just rely on the OEM license the PCs ship with - but the OEM license terms preclude using the copy of Windows that came with the PC to roll out across all your PCs, even if they all have OEM licenses. Only way around that is if you are the OEM.
You'd think one copy of Windows is as good as any other, but it turns out that every OEM thinks different things should be installed on a PC from the factory - and those things change every few months. Same's true of drivers - HP ship the PC with version X of the Broadcom ethernet driver, three months later they ship version X+1 of the driver (and both versions are at least one major version behind what Broadcom have on their website). I tried supporting that, what you tend to wind up with is a bunch of PCs that are subtly different enough that they all show issues, and every issue is different and hard to reproduce on any other PC. The only solution is to buy all your PCs at the same time and spec them identically - and by the time you're large enough to do this, chances are you need to image your PCs anyway if only to get all the software you need on them.
I don't know if Microsoft's license terms would stand up in the event of an anti-trust case actually focusing on them, but I do know that very few companies are lining up to be the test case.
The Kentucky school system switched to MS's cloud email last June. It has been a pain in the ass for most of the stuff that we have to do. Most of the administration of the system has to be done in Powershell instead of a nice GUI. They have had frequent crashes and issues with the service and we experience slowness working with it daily.
Also if you use IE to work in the OWA interface it is horribly slow, which is funny since you would think that is the one that MS would work on. Chrome and Firefox help quite a bit.
MS has routinely screwed things up by not entering licenses in load balancers, or servers and I get really tired of clearing the cache in our browsers so that our users will get bounced to another server.
Also it only works with Outlook 2007/2010 and some of the online collaboration tools won't even let you print out of them.
As a "more OSS than Microsoft" person, I agree & cannot argue with the business logic.
Moving stuff to the cloud probably means the local IT department can be fired, thus making an additional cost saving - no, I'm not saying it's right or I agree with it, but that's the fact of life.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Note that everything after the first sentence in the summary is not backed by any cites to any sources. It is purely the speculation of the anonymous submitter.
Our company attempted to use BPOS for a few months, but its shortcomings were evident very quickly. We gave BPOS the boot about 4 months into the project and moved back to hosting our Exchange in-house.
Just to echo the issues others have posted: Unable to configure many critical options, administrative system is unreliable, outlook can't stay connected to their cloud a full day without being knocked off at least once for an annoying 30-60 second reconnect time, their inability to let you configure forefront to meet your needs beyond "safe/evil sender list", etc.
I hope this post allows anyone who might be considering a switch to this to reconsider. It's only useful in the most basic of applications, i.e., small mom+pop shops that can't afford an exchange admin.
Just a wild guess, but I'd say that it's because you don't need to pay to use it.
You're forgetting about Total Cost of Ownership. (Duh!)
Here's a link to an independent study about that to help you out:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver/compare/default.mspx
--
I Have a Master's Degree.... Innnnnnnnnnnnnnn Science!
> Project Limux that was thwarted in Munich
Er, you got that backwards. The Munich transition is going more or less OK if not on time, however, there have been quite a few other failures: an internationally obscure Swiss canton failed, and also the city of Vienna.
After Munich actually finishes its transition, we will get to see whether the long-term TCO is smaller. It will be very interesting, assuming that Microsoft won't manage to somehow corrupt the flow of objective information about it. Unfortunately, it won't necessarily prove anything about the profitability of future migrations, since Munich hadn't even bought XP licenses (they were running NT!) at the time it decided to go for Linux, yet even like that they had a horrific amount of lock-in via Office macros. They also used the transition as an opportunity to "clean house" and prevent every department independently writing its own Office macros for shared tasks, which will also save them maintenance costs in the long run.
He is doing everything he can to position himself as a GOP presidential candidate. He likely did this because he knows that certain hard-core conservatives view free software as a stepping stone to socialism. Costs to the state are irrelevant if the decision improves his stance in the eyes of the GOP.
He has already shown a willingness to crap all over the state constitution in the name of keeping up conservative appearances, so this really should surprise anyone.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Hey, it's in the cloud right? It's safe! Everything belongs in the cloud! All the cool kids are smoking the cloud! Now governments are in the cloud! You know..where everything is safe from things like outages...no wait Google's had several outages. Safe from lock-in! No wait, by virtue of the fact you're in a cloud and not keeping things in your control you're actually locked-in. The point is the cloud is GOOD!
Seriously, this is even worse than locking all of your software into one vendor. Now you're giving them the data too!
Whoever wrote the TFS doesn't fucking live in Minnesota, that's pretty certain. The DFL has run Minnesota for the past eon.
No, what is clear is that you don't live in Minnesota - or haven't for the past few decades. The current conservative idiot ("Teflon" Tim Pawlenty) is just the latest in a string of ever-more-conservative governors going back to the 80s. Look at the past three governors:
Based on the trend it is likely that the next governor of MN will be Pat Buchanan, as a late write-in. Really there are few states excluding Texas that are more conservative than Minnesota currently, and Pawlenty has worked hard to change that.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Most companies who gross over $500 million per year are Microsoft Shops. Open Source is for the other 95% of small businesses (rule of thumb, not always). Microsoft has the advantage of history (both good and bad) and longevity. I run Microsoft WSS 3.0 (the free version) inside of an Ubuntu Virtual Machine in my lab. I share my WSS 3.0 deck on slideshare at http://wss.gregrank.us/ Like it or not Microsoft, Amazon and Google are buying property on all the big rivers and dams and plugging directly into the power grid at the source. This is their business model: cloud and collaboration services for a hand held and ipad future world order. Another good resource for evaluating the move to the cloud: http://www.cloudsecurityalliance.org/guidance/csaguide.v2.1.pdf
Minnesota isn't just a company, it's a frigging STATE.
That a corporation actually has enough power to push sovereign entities around scares me.
Equally possible that they were sent a bog-standard contract and they decided that particular clause wasn't worth haggling over.
After all, if you've already decided to standardise on one company's product, it's probably not a particular hardship if the contract you sign with that company essentially forces you to do that. You were going to do it anyway.
Managing IT in large organizations there are many other considerations than just the license cost. In fact the license cost is small part of overall cost for liftetime in product. Some things that are also important - available support (many open source projects have none, or through forums/email only) - usability / user training (many open source projects unfortunately are more difficult to use than the commercial products. Comparing Office 2010 for example to OpenOffice, in terms of ease of use I think Microsoft Office is miles ahead) - on going maintenance (Most commercial products have limited number of updates and updates mainly focus on security/bug fixes until a major release every 1-3 years. Open Source projects tend to add features rapidly with major releases very frequently) Now in this case they are also moving to cloud which eliminates need for many of their backend infrastructure which was probably very expensive to maintain, and now will just pay for the amount of users on the system. Unlike having your own infrastructure were much of it may be under utilized and you are just paying for electricity/hardware/data centre space that is wasted. So I think this is probably more cost effective option the route they are going.
This is the sort of nonsense that really gives one an appreciation for Debian style Net install images.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Oooh, yeah, MS is afraid of getting punished. Right.
Here's how MS operates: They do whatever the fuck they want, and then use power-lawyers to drag any court case on for years. Meanwhile they are still making big bucks. Then they get "grassroots" organizations to pay off congresscritters (in the USA at least) and eventually most of these cases lead nowhere.
Seriously, do you think they are afraid of *possible* consequences which would likely cost little money, when there are *actual* profits to be made in the meanwhile?
But aside from that, my post is in the context of what the OP was discussing - if they hadn't signed the agreement to begin with. Further - it's still a moot point, as there are no OSS options out there for this that I know of.
While states have different regulations clearly they have to deliver similar services to their citizenry.
According to Wikipedia, Minnesota and its neighbor Wisconsin have about the same population while Minnesota has about 1.5 times the land of Wisconsin.
Now if MS is going to supply all of Minnesota's systems for say $100M, then if they also delivered the same service to Wisconsin it would cost another $100M.
But a huge amount of savings ought to be possible if the two states built their own cloud using freely customizable open source software systems. And if the savings aren't big enough then add in Iowa and the Dakotas for good measure.
This would also keep citizen data out of the hands of a convicted monopoly, create jobs, improve efficiency by code reuse, and possibly it could even create a revenue flow as more states join on. After all, the early adopters will have a head start in building a pool of developers to work on the system and it would be natural to use them for additional clients in the future. If Minnesota was a bit smarter it could run its hardware at a profit through payments from other states.
For closure, I'll respond to my own comment - according to their website, the MS Office Web Apps do in fact support other browsers and other platforms.
Again, irony would abound if availability of Office Web Apps enabled widescale migration to Linux on desktops, by virtue of eliminating the dependency on Office. Otoh, since for businesses that would drive either licensing the apps from MS in their cloud, or adoption of Windows Server licenses (to be able to run SharePoint), it could be a hedge-your-bets kind of move on MS's part.
Of course, until there's a clear analysis of how degraded the user experience is when accessing from something other than IE on Windows, I, for one, have this urge to keep chanting "it's a tarp, it's a tarp". We'll see.
"Ahh! I see you're in that indeterminate Schrodinger state where - oh, uh
Another wild guess:
Storage of PUBLIC data in proprietary formats will cost heavily in future migrations, by which time the PHBs who bought into the proprietary model will be long gone.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
This is very odd for me to say, and support.....
Have a way to replace VBA in excel?
Now it also has to talk to 3rd part DLLs, so that i can use it to automate 3 vendor selection tools to fill out the answers on my spreadsheet that I'm using as my form and inputs. Can you show me where to buy autocad on any platform other than windows? how about solid works? ${RANDOM_VENDOR_SELECTION_TOOL}? It's not just a single company that can make the move, even if they could for all in house stuff, think of what you would hear on the phone if you asked, for a *nix version of a selection tool for the $40 widgets that you want to buy 6 of...
All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
KDE has had a bottom screen taskbar ever since I started using Linux 4 years ago. I'm looking at my desktop right now, I've got 19 apps on it.
And even with Gnome, if one wants a taskbar on the bottom of the screen, all it takes is drag and drop.
Tech Public Policy stuff
feature that is far more important than functionality or cost-effectiveness.
Thanks to the Citizens United decision that says that corporations are people with unlimited freedom of speech, M$ can provide MN politicians who supported the bill with unlimited campaign TV ad support.
With a feature like that, who cares if it works? Or if state employees can actually send and receive e-mail or process documents? Or if a "no-bid" contract is a pointer towards government corruption?
Or if MN has to hire IBM in a few months to clean up the mess, replace M$ with a Google or IBM cloud or Open Source enterprise software, and have IBM help them to hire a shitload of replacement IT workers to replace the ones MN thought it can safely fire over the next few weeks?
Tech Public Policy stuff