Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Minnesota Moving To Microsoft's Cloud

Posted by Soulskill on from the take-the-twins-with-you dept.

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?"

68 of 345 comments (clear)

  1. We see what you did there... by Ethanol-fueled · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Summary:

    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.

  2. DiNiro said it best in Ronin by xtal · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "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
  3. Re:Foo by mangu · · Score: 4, Informative

    What guarantee does OSS make that will save taxpayers millions of dollars?

    Just a wild guess, but I'd say that it's because you don't need to pay to use it.

  4. Re:That's Life by bcmm · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    Use MS software, and your boss will see it as MS's fault when it breaks. Use alternatives, and it'll be your fault. It's the 21st century analogue of "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM".

    --
    # cat /dev/mem | strings | grep -i llama
    Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
  5. The thing the article doesn't tell you in detail.. by pedantic+bore · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?
  6. What do you think, Slashdotters? by Hope+Thelps · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
    1. Re:What do you think, Slashdotters? by Hope+Thelps · · Score: 3, Funny

      You have extraordinary powers. Can you tell me lottery numbers?

      Easily. The numbers are:

            01
            05
            06
            24
            27

      Now all you have to do for a guaranteed win is to pick the right lottery and the right draw date.

      --
      To summarise the summary of the summary: people are a problem. ~ h2g2
  7. Initial cost is a small piece of the cost by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    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

    1. Re:Initial cost is a small piece of the cost by mangu · · Score: 2, Interesting

      What are the on-going support costs?

      Same reasoning applies: not having to pay for it is cheaper than buying it from a commercial software vendor.

    2. Re:Initial cost is a small piece of the cost by postbigbang · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Although you're probably an AC Microsoft shill, there's precedent that says that open source systems fail-- see Project Limux that was thwarted in Munich. That said, Minnesota takes a huge chance on untested infrastructure, and indeed binds themselves to Microsoft's hosted products-- when many others might do the job. Let's see how the TCO for taxpayers actually amount to in five years.

      --
      ---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
    3. Re:Initial cost is a small piece of the cost by slashqwerty · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

      The governor could get better support from his own in-house staff. My employer uses BPOS. We have 20,000 people on it, yet we have terrible support. The state of Minnesota has 36,000 employees. Something tells me the difference is not significant enough to get better support.

    4. Re:Initial cost is a small piece of the cost by HisMother · · Score: 4, Funny
      > What FOSS advocates never seem to get is there is a reason why companies like MSFT get these contracts,

      Hookers and blow, is what I've heard.

      --
      Cantankerous old coot since 1957.
    5. Re:Initial cost is a small piece of the cost by espiesp · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Lets be clear about this though, the cost of Microsoft licences are a drop in the bucket in any large organizations IS budget. The big money goes towards specialty applications, 'consulting', and support contracts for said software and 'consultants'. I'm speaking with a primary experience in the health care field mind you but as a consultant I am pretty confident it applies elsewhere.

      And the bottom line is, even though the OS and much of the productivity applications may be free to use, they are by far not free to implement, free to support, or free to train to use. In health care at least, good luck finding any specialty application suite that would run natively in Linux. The particular application set I'm familiar with (Siemens Soarian, et al) are so Microsoft encumbered as to use not only all Windows Servers on the backend, but ActiveX Webpages as a front end. WHAT.A.NIGHTMARE. Good for business though :D

    6. Re:Initial cost is a small piece of the cost by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      A few numbers to back you up:

      Where I work in local government, our IT budget is $90 million. A little under $2 million of that goes to Microsoft directly. Our Unix/Linux guys start at a pay rate that's probably 20% or so higher than the Windows guys that get hired.

      Sure, we could save some up-front money to Microsoft, but some of it would still go to Red Hat (all production Linux servers run RHEL, as CentOS is authorized only for test environments), and the admins would have to be retrained or replaced at rates that run higher than the existing ones. It would get ugly very, very fast.

      Note: I spend about 70% of my day on a Linux notebook.

    7. Re:Initial cost is a small piece of the cost by dbIII · · Score: 4, Informative

      because someone at the MN governor's office can pick up the phone and say "WTF? HELP" and they WILL get support.

      That's not how it worked out for an Australian airline's outsourced booking system a few weeks ago. The millions they paid didn't include the sort of redundancy that can withstand the failure of A SINGLE DISK, and they'll be arguing about the outsourcing contract in court for probably about the next five years.
      You have to be very careful what you outsource the closer it gets to the core functions of your organisation, doubly so when it's going to an obfiscated platform where you have no choice other than trusting a single vendor.
      Also reputations of vendors matter. I would not touch Microsoft as a hosting vendor with a very long pole after a University near me lost their Microsoft hosted student email for over a week. The failure was blatantly obviously caused by a typo in the DNS records for a Microsoft Exchange server farm but it took over a week to get that information to a person at Microsoft, who probably fixed it in under a minute of being informed. The problem is the vendors you outsource to often JUST DON'T CARE, so you have to consider whether you can afford to lose what you outsource for what should be ridiculous amounts of time.
      The choice of platform matters far less than the choice of what control you hand over.
      Also "retraining" for office software is now a complete bullshit argument since a large number of office staff really don't know how to use the Microsoft products either. When was the last time you saw somebody that isn't actually a programmer write a macro? Give these people any of a dozen or more word processing programs and they'll find the few things they need in minutes.
      As for Excel, the macros need to be converted to the new version of MS Office anyway which is why so many people are still on MSOffice2003.

    8. Re:Initial cost is a small piece of the cost by turbidostato · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "Sure, we could save some up-front money to Microsoft"

      Of course, you would save 100% of use licences since using open source software you don't pay use licenses *at all*.

      "but some of it would still go to Red Hat (all production Linux servers run RHEL, as CentOS is authorized only for test environments)"

      Not some money, but some *other* money. Well, if you want support from Microsoft, you still have to pay it apart from use licenses too. Rates from Microsoft and Red Hat regarding support are basically the same, so you are at odds here -and you are still in front since you didn't pay for use licenses.

      And then, public government is there to think about overall society benefit, isn't it? Even if now only Red Hat could bring proper advanced support for their products, if they are taking too large a profit margin what do you think that would happen? Support contracts at the State level are not peanuts and everybody is in the position to give proper support on Red Hat. Or any open source program for that matter. And then again, being Red Hat both open source and unix-like, it works lightyears better on integration with other solutions and with lightyears less risk of lock-in. You don't like Red Hat? OK, there's Suse, or Debian, or Ubuntu, or even FreeBSD and you can change to them with only minor transition costs.

      Now, who can give advanced support on Windows but Microsoft? Where can you go appart from Microsoft when you don't like Microsoft without incurring large migration costs?

      And that's exactly the point: Microsoft's basic strategy is based on lock-in, which being a variant of monopoly we all now what it does to the customers. And it's obvious both from common sense and past experience that it won't be any better tomorrow, so while meaning a large and expensive exercise, the sooner you break Microsoft's lock in, the more money you will be saving long term.

      "the admins would have to be retrained or replaced at rates that run higher than the existing ones. "

      You mentioned that rates were about 1:1.2 but, what about serviceability? Because if each Unix/Linux guy can bring to the table more than 1:1.2 when compared to Windows ones (and that's usually the case in my experience), you are getting savings *even* at a higher individual hiring costs. And then again, why do you think Unix/Linux guys get better wages? I'll tell you: on one hand because they diserve it (or else no one would hire them at such cost mark) on the other hand because of relative scarcity. Well, what do you think that will happen -and happen *fast*, with regards to scarcity if it's acknowledged that Unix/Linux guys are wanted in big numbers and payed over market average, specially if Windows guys needs start to decline?

    9. Re:Initial cost is a small piece of the cost by turbidostato · · Score: 3, Insightful

      "The problem is the vendors you outsource to often JUST DON'T CARE"

      There is ALWAYS one thing a manager must take into consideration when outsourcing a service that I haven't seen pointed out almost NEVER.

      * The goal of an external provider is always offer as little as it can go with and ask for as much money as it can go with.
      * The goal of an internal provider is always offer as much as it can asking for as little money as it can.

      Somehow a lot of managers don't seem to get this simple fact straight.

    10. Re:Initial cost is a small piece of the cost by mabhatter654 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      OSS is really no worse that something like SAP installs... those have permanently damaged fortune 500 companies far more spectacularly than OSS projects.. yet SAP has suckers lining up around the block.

      Really, implementing OSS (or ANY large scale Information Systems change) amounts to having a centralized understanding of what your business really uses computers for. As the users are more "empowered" by off-the-shelf software, management has no clue what's really going on. Most of the time management doesn't really care... but then they try to cut "business" deals rather than "Information Technology" deals without knowing all the facts.

    11. Re:Initial cost is a small piece of the cost by Compaqt · · Score: 2, Insightful

      How did users ever manage to transition from DOS to Windows 3.0 ?

      Then to the totally-different Windows 95? (Not to mention WordPerfect to Winword.)

      Then to NT with its Ctrl+Alt+Del "secure logon sequence"?

      When people were shown KDE4, they just thought it was the next version of Windows with yet another interface that they had to learn.

      --
      I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
    12. Re:Initial cost is a small piece of the cost by Anne+Thwacks · · Score: 2, Insightful
      It would be just as difficult to migrate from FreeBSD to AIX as it would be to Windows.

      Its quite obvious you have never tried it. I have been involved in enterprise migrations from Windows to Suze, Suze to FreeBSD, FreeBSD to Ubuntu, and FreeBSD to OpenBSD (Different organisation, not my choice of OS). None of the above was more of a problem that moving from Win2k to WinXP. However, I have to admit that it was the infrastructure I migrated, and not the workstations.

      As has been said by previous posters, 90% of users could not tell a migration to Ubuntu from a Windows upgrade. The other 10% would probably recognise it as an improvement.

      As for the argument that Linux support people cost more, you need far fewer of them. I believe the industry standard figure is in the order of 1 Linux person where you had 4 MCSEs. They also probably deliver more, because "support" in a Linux environment means providing additional facilities. "Support" in a Windows environment means reimaging machines. Support from Microsoft means "Jack Shit". Personally, I have never heard of MS support being an improvement on RTFM.

      --
      Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
    13. Re:Initial cost is a small piece of the cost by JonJ · · Score: 2, Informative

      I would think he means that his employer only permits the use of CentOS in a testing environment. Are you going to try and force them to put CentOS in their production environment with the GPL in hand? They're gonna love you.

      --
      -- Linux user #369862
    14. Re:Initial cost is a small piece of the cost by erikdalen · · Score: 3, Interesting

      In my experience at least you need fewer admins per server with Unix than with Windows. Largely because it is easier to script and automate stuff and to some extent because those Unix admins with 20% higher pay rates actually know more about computers and can therefore fix problems faster than the corresponding Windows admins.

      So you can't say it is more expensive to admin Unix than Windows just because of higher wages.

      --
      Erik Dalén
    15. Re:Initial cost is a small piece of the cost by Ironhandx · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Thats the unfortunate thing about MS. Its all politics on the inside. There is no "Big Microsoft Machine"

      In general I've found that much better support was to be had(when necessary) if you got the person that was in charge of making the decision to buy the licenses to call the SALES office. Not the support office. I had one of the managers in the tech support department call me back inside 2 hours with a solution to the problem we were having once I went that route. If anyone else had called in it would have taken 3-4 days minimum, if we ever got anything at all.

    16. Re:Initial cost is a small piece of the cost by turbidostato · · Score: 2, Insightful

      "otherwise he would know that with volume licensing from Microsoft, the support is included"

      Unless you pay extra, the only support that comes with volume licensing from Microsoft is:
        1) Support on the volume license procedure itself
        2) Telephone support -on office hours, about install issues
        3) Everything else is subjected to further charges
      Maybe I'm mistaken and there's adittional support for free under basic volume licensing agreements. Can you, please, point me where can I read about it from an official source? Or else I might think you are just trolling.

  8. Re:Foo by shentino · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  9. I smell a lawsuit by micromegas · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

  10. This is the Cloud space we're talking about by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

  11. Re:Worthless summary by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    How could switching to an entirely incompatible platform have saved taxpayers millions?

    I'm sure you're just trolling and I'm going to look silly for biting, but OBVIOUSLY it saves money because none of the staff would know how to use Linux so they'd all leave to get other jobs and you'd save millions by not replacing them.

  12. Re:Worthless summary by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    If you RTFA, they are switching from existing Novell and Exchange Servers and consolidating to Exchange. Moving from on-premise to the cloud for Exchange should be seamless and reduce the cost of local administration and on-going hardware maintenance and software patching.

  13. Bad move for Minnesota by slashqwerty · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  14. Re:An idiot wrote TFS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

  15. Re:Foo by mangu · · Score: 2, Informative

    It's interesting how you ignored the other points raised, such as retraining staff and converting documents between formats.

    You mean like training people to use Windows 7? Converting Visual Basic stuff to "dot net"?

  16. Ugh, I unfortunately am a Minnesotan. by gone.fishing · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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).

    1. Re:Ugh, I unfortunately am a Minnesotan. by gagol · · Score: 2, Funny

      Take a trip to Montreal, QC, Canada... you will find your roads to be pristine and mint conditions...

      --
      Tomorrow is another day...
    2. Re:Ugh, I unfortunately am a Minnesotan. by znerk · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Take a trip to Montreal, QC, Canada... you will find your roads to be pristine and mint conditions...

      Or perhaps Louisiana, where it is easy to tell when you've crossed the line from another state into Louisiana, because where you were doing just fine driving the speed limit a few miles ago, now you need to drop 15 miles an hour from your velocity just to maintain control of your vehicle... Ah, Louisiana...

      This is the same place that doesn't seem to have an issue with spending billions to rebuild a city with an average of elevation of several feet below sea level after it flooded (surprise!), but then doesn't even acknowledge that there was a hurricane on the other side of the state that was, by all accounts, a worse storm that arguably caused more damage, if not (thankfully) more deaths... Rita was a stronger storm than Katrina, but no one seems to notice. There was Federal assistance available (in states on the other side of the country from where the "disaster" occurred) 5 years after the event, if you could prove you resided in an area affected by Katrina during that particular event. I don't mean just public assistance, I mean "free money" and job placement and housing assistance and all sorts of other things - handouts for having lived there at that time, regardless of whether you were actually affected by the storm. I don't mean to downplay the plight of those caught in the sixth-strongest storm in recorded history, but please read on.

      Most people don't even know that Rita happened - in the same state, in the same year, and actually the fourth-strongest storm in recorded history. There was discussion of changing the classification systems, which would make Rita a Category 6 Hurricane; Katrina would still have been a Category 5 Hurricane. There were mandatory evacuations; the police came to my house to make sure I had evacuated. Driving away from my home, it took nearly 10 hours to go 38 miles, due to traffic (and the police stopping everyone to tell them not to go east because all the shelters were already full - we had arrangements to stay with friends in that direction, but whatever). They closed the borders of my city and I was nearly arrested for coming back two weeks later, once the "all-clear" had been sounded - the issue being that I was on the road after dark and my truck was full of stuff (I was returning from Baton Rouge for the second time that day, after ascertaining that our pets would be safe coming back with us (3 hours in a vehicle containing 6 cats is *so* much fun)). They were still recommending people stay away, but part of my job was to make sure the local governments could operate - I was the technician for a company specializing in software solutions for municipalities, and so could claim I was part of the "relief efforts".

      Rita didn't drown a "cultural center", it just washed away entire towns. A governmental office I worked in had 3 feet of water in it, and not only is it on the second floor, it's easily an hour's drive from the coast. My neighbor had a tree that was easily ten feet in circumference blown through his house. People still have "blue roofs" (tarps instead of shingles) in some locations in south-west Louisiana.

      There was no federal assistance available for having survived Rita. No handouts, no free jobs, no relocation assistance, no compensation for having been forcibly removed from our homes. All of the things that Katrina victims got handed to them just for asking (or in some cases, without even asking), Rita victims asked for and were refused. Even the damage numbers were skewed, because somehow New Orleans properties are more valuable than the rest of the state. Maybe it's because not as many people died (due largely to the fact that we got out of the way, and our homes were above sea level, instead of below it).

      Katrina only got all the hype because people were too stupid to leave when given a week's notice, and it's a "cultural center", whatev

      --
      This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
  17. Re:Minnesota Values... by Matheus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Excuse me? Please do not relate any of Minnesota's Values to Michelle Bachmann. She is the worst kind of politician who has no intelligence what-so-ever. She continues to be elected by an extremely gerrymandered district that has had no real competition on the right and wouldn't elect someone from the left unless literally directly paid to do so. Minnesota aside, any words that come from her mouth have a tendency to be as hollow as her head and can not be trusted. She is an agitator and a crowd pleaser who we can only hope will somehow manage to lose an election so she can go wallow with her tea party friends somewhere outside of our state. She may make her direct electors proud but the rest (majority) of the state laughs at them and are embarrassed to be represented by her.

  18. Re:Foo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

  19. Re:That's Life by e9th · · Score: 2, Insightful

    In general, you're correct. But here we're talking about civil servants, who never get fired for anything short of criminal malfeasance.

  20. Re:Minnesota Values... by MickyTheIdiot · · Score: 4, Funny

    It's not "wasteful spending" when the money is going to one of you close corporate buddies.

  21. You don't understand Free Software by pikine · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
  22. Re:Foo by saleenS281 · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  23. Re:Foo by Achromatic1978 · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Windows 7 runs just fine on my old P4 1.6 with 768MB of RAM. And my wife's Atom netbook with a 16GB SSD and 1GB of memory.

    I'm not sure your so-called point...

  24. Re:Minnesota Values... by micromegas · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Bachmann isn't from Minnesota, she's from inside Glenn Beck's Love Boat fantasy.

  25. Re:Minnesota Values... by ctmurray · · Score: 2, Informative

    As a Minnesotan I too am dismayed that we would be leading this transition. No matter what the proposed savings might be, it will certainly cost money in the short term. We don't have any money, but a $4B hole in the budget to fill for the next biennium. Recently we had some flooding in the southern part of the state, and it looks like we will have to borrow money to cover any aide we might want to spend on this emergency. Let some other state be the guinea pigs and see if the savings pan out. By then the economy might recover and we can get competitive bids for the services offered. Like many fads in IT or business (anyone remember Six Sigma) it does not pay to be the first on your block adopting the fad.

  26. Re:It's all the same even for alternatives by ducomputergeek · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.
  27. Re:It's all the same even for alternatives by gagol · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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...
  28. Re:Is that you, Mr. Ballmer? by mangu · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Three examples from your claim of "how many tasks" should be easy enough, right?

    1) Installing the system cleanly in one stretch without rebooting
    2) Having working hardware without resorting to CDs (so many notebooks don't have CD drives these days) or downloading drivers
    3) Playing media in less common formats, such as Matroska for instance, right from the start in a default installation
    4) Having a fully working usable system from the start, without having to hunt for applications after you install the operating system
    5) A repository of software where you can easily search for the functions you need and install them with a single click of the mouse
    6) A "start" menu organized in a functional hierarchy instead of by software vendor
    7) ...

    Oh, wait, you only asked for three examples.

  29. Corrupt Slimy Leadership. I live here. by bussdriver · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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
  30. Re:The thing the article doesn't tell you in detai by hedwards · · Score: 3, Informative
    If you read the article, the agreement with Amazon says no such thing. The state had previously agreed to use MS for all their messaging needs.

    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.

  31. Re:What does that mean? by ducomputergeek · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
  32. Re:Wow - two totally separate things by hedwards · · Score: 2, Informative

    True, but open document formats do, and MS has a reputation for being a pain in the ass to access with software they didn't develop recently.

  33. Also by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Also by mlts · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You just summed up one of MS's great strengths -- availability of expertise for the platform.

      Take Exchange. If you get stuck in any phase of Exchange use, be it planning, deployment, expanding, security, backups, archive, availability, or failover, one can find consultants and books with relative ease. If someone needs an Exchange server for home, that is quite easy to do. Similar if someone wants a hub/edge configuration with incoming mail, outgoing mail, OWA, mobile device, and on the inside, multiple mail hubs for redundancy.

      This doesn't mean Exchange is the be all and end all for messaging. It just means that being able to get Exchange working is easy for a lot of businesses. Perhaps Domino might be a solution, but trying to find the Notes experience is significantly more difficult than Exchange brainpower.

      There is no magic bullet. For a small company with 5 people that want E-mail hosted securely, a PC with RedHat Enterprise Linux and POP/SMTP/IMAP might be the solution of choice. For another SMB, a machine running Microsoft's SBS might be the answer. Still another SMB might just use a hosted Exchange provider so they do not have to bother with an always on network connection.

      I worry though... Minnesota pretty much jumped off the diving board and it seems that they didn't even check if there is water below them. If they were moving to a new platform, there are plenty of other options to explore on the spectrum before just going whole-hog with a relatively nascent technology architecture.

    2. Re:Also by crispytwo · · Score: 2, Interesting

      There are 2 things further

      1) The deal - apparently - precludes using OSS. This is bad no matter how you look at it. This means something perfectly useful - and productive - won't be allowed.
      2) I've used the MS Virtualization software and it really didn't work well at all. It was certainly the worst of the bunch.

      Why anyone would really choose that kind of agreement is beyond foolish to me. Good luck to them.

      I have to agree that a mix of different software makes tons of sense. AD is hard to beat -- and makes sense to use it. Exchange is hard to match, but there are reasonable alternatives... and I think everything else is a question mark.

  34. It's manipulation and using another's reputation by dbIII · · Score: 2, Insightful

    People are used to microsoft. Its a recognised brand name - irrelevant of how good/bad it is.

    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.

  35. Re:Foo by Penguinisto · · Score: 2, Informative

    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:

    1. re-training is a fact of life anyway. Ask any Exchange Admin trying to turn his/her Exch2k3 server farm into an Exch2k7 or Exch2k10 one. You'll be spending the money on training whether you like it or not. (and in Exchange's case, you have to train these folks to use a CLI anyway - like it or not)
    2. Any sysadmin who isn't at least passingly adept at Linux by now is likely incompetent and/or ROAD ("retired on active duty" - i.e. lazy beyond belief). Either condition is useless to a company, and detrimental to the admin's own career.
    --
    Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
  36. MN is run by a no-tax no-government slave by swschrad · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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?
  37. Re:Foo by HangingChad · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
  38. Re:That's Life by l3v1 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    this 'new-fangled' leenux

    Not just Linux, even this argument is getting really old now.

    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.

    Unfortunately this is very familiar. Yet, this "rubbish system" question can sometimes be eased by rasing attention to the rubbishness-list of Windows itself. There are several annoyances that people don't even realize since they have grown more and more tolerant towards Windows, given they were never given the option or the opportunity to use anything else. Awareness needs to be raised that blind acceptance is not the way to go anymore. Of course this is a harder task than it sounds, still, I'd really want to see those countless open source "evangelists" (what an idiotic job description) make a freaking better job.

    --
    I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
  39. Re:MOST ASININE HEADLINE EVER by Nyder · · Score: 3, Funny

    Minnesota cannot 'move'.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_drift

    --
    Be seeing you...
  40. Re:It's all the same even for alternatives by Bob+The+Cowboy · · Score: 4, Informative

    That is unless someone cal tell me how a move to an [open source alternative] would be better. Even these OSS alternatives have to be supported. The last time I checked, their support was anemic! Just ask the University of California.

    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

  41. Microsoft ushers in the Year of the Linux Desktop? by daboochmeister · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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 ... never mind." Dave Bucci
  42. Re:Minnesota Values... by Jethro · · Score: 2, Informative

    Michelle Bachmann is the representative for a very specific part of Minnesota. This part does not include the Twin Cities metro area. The VAST majority of us Minnesotans are routinely horrified by her words and actions.

    I'd love to vote against her, but it's just not worth moving to St. Cloud.

    --


    In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
  43. Re:Foo by jimicus · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

  44. Thank The Teflon Governor by damn_registrars · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.
  45. Wrong, wrong, wrong by damn_registrars · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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:

    • Arne Carlson - Registered Republican, more conservative than his predecessor by a long shot
    • Jesse Ventura - Registered "whatever", several orders of magnitude more conservative than Carlson
    • Teflon Tim - Registered Republican and GOP presidential hopeful. Several orders of magnitude more conservative than Dick Cheney.

    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.
  46. Re:Limux is doing OK, others have failed by Mathinker · · Score: 2, Insightful

    > The Munich transition is taking ages.

    As it should, or rather, must. At least one of the failures which I listed appears to have been caused by bad planning and not having a reasonable goal --- in the case of Munich, the goal isn't hitting a given finish date, or immediate savings of money, but rather, independence from lock-in. Whoever got that to be understood to be the goal of the project was a genius, because it's one of the only goals for such a project that I can think of which Microsoft couldn't possibly undercut.

    > It's been thwarted

    You keep using that word. It's a bad choice for such a discussion, because a search of meanings using Google gives a list which varies from "blocked, obstructed" to "defeated, disappointingly unsuccessful". I can agree that Microsoft blocked the transition for at least a year with FUD about Linux infringing its software patents, so the first definition would be OK. But for sure the transition isn't "disappointingly unsuccessful".

    > The other failures are a problem that shows that the FOSS community

    Actually, I think a very good case can be made about the other failures not involving the FOSS community whatsoever, but rather being the result of bad management on the part of the organizations thinking about transitioning. In fact, I think if your transition plan depends on the FOSS community doing anything specific for you, it's obvious you're doing it wrong. Very wrong.

  47. open source does not mean cost savings by chentiangemalc · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.