Slashdot Mirror
MS Won't Release Study Disputing Munich's Linux-Switch Savings
itwbennett writes "As previously reported on Slashdot, in November of last year, the city of Munich reported savings of over €10 million from its switch to Linux. Microsoft subsequently commissioned a study (conducted by HP) that found that, in fact, 'Munich would have saved €43.7 million if it had stuck with Microsoft.' Now, Microsoft has said it won't release the study, saying that '[it] was commissioned by Microsoft to HP Consulting for internal purposes only.'"
Show us your cards, it doesn't matter now Mr. Ballmer.
Have a squat over at the hobo house.
I recall an article from a few years ago that presented an interview with a corporate CIO here in the States. He claimed that Linux itself was actually more expensive for his company in terms of paid support from the company providing the enterprise version they used. However, the overall operational cost was much smaller because fewer sys admins were needed to operate and manage the various node clusters required by their distributed organization.
From the article
Operating the Microsoft software (not including licensing fees) would cost [EUR]17 million, while the alternative will amount to almost [EUR]61 million
(emphasis mine)
Of course if you exclude the cost of buying (sorry- licensing) the software it is cheaper!
Why would anyone ever release a bullshit FUD report?
If they release it someone could criticize it, if not they can keep making claims you can't refute.
Meanwhile, reports from the 1950's showed certain cigarettes didn't cause significant throat irritation. In other studies doctors recommended certain brands of cigarettes.
I guess it's just a matter of finding the right people to .. uh .. doctor your results.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Competent engineers are more expensive...
Incompetent windows engineers are ten a penny, incompetent engineers generally don't even know what linux is so won't claim to know it.
Competent windows engineers are no cheaper than competent linux engineers.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Our company uses MS office. I am a good programmer and a fairly competent computer user. I absolutely hate MS office. The other day I could not delete an embedded picture without deleting the one right below it, even though they were independently selectable. How irritating.
I am not saying libre office is better. I am saying it can't be much worse.
On that note... one place I worked tried hiring HP a couple of times to conduct studies and make recommendations for our network and systems. They tried that because they'd had a long relationship with DEC, and this was shortly after HP bought Compaq (who had bought DEC before that), and they were expecting the work done to be of the quality they'd gotten from DEC consultants in the past.
They supposedly spent weeks doing the study and writing up the reports... and when they came in, they were obviously generic company boilerplate that someone had edited, including many missed instances of things like COMPANY NAME. And - surprise! - all their recommendations were for HP products and services, with the only comparisons being to companies well known for being expensive. For extra fun, a good part of the body of the report was taken from a white paper that had been produced by a group at some university - they'd accidentally left in some of the text identifying the authors and where they were in the first version they gave to us.
We never hired HP to do a study for us again after that. As I recall, my boss also refused to pay them for giving us a report that we could have gotten ourselves from a Google search. Not sure what happened in the end with payment, but their local people, who were former DEC people, were deeply embarrassed.
It totally makes sense for MS to NOT show it. This study is for MS's sale's ppl to go into companies with and make these wild claims. Look at what happened when it was found out what patents were being used for going after the android companies. They were all jokes. The problem is that almost all of MS's studies in the past have been proven wrong.
As such, it is a certainty that this 'study' is more of the same and would be shown to be so. That would be very difficult for MS's sales ppl to counter.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.