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.
'[it] was commissioned by Microsoft to HP Consulting for internal purposes only.'
Which of course is why they publicly claimed the 43.7M Euro figure.
Apparently wizard is not a legitimate career path, so I chose programmer instead.
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.
Probably contains pricing information that they don't want anyone to see. If they disclosed it everyone would want those prices.
It's gotta be true because they say that they have the facts.
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.
Looks like it's a selling point that sales reps can use with the hope that their buyer's may not poke holes in their study like slashdoters can. Seems like a good move to me.
They all will claim that paying millions of dollars on Microsoft royalties and licensing fees is always better than paying zero dollars for a Linux deployment. They will always state that Microsoft products somehow have a lower TCO than Linux. The claim they make is that it costs more to hire Linux engineers than Windows engineers, which is a bunch of nonsense.
They saved 10M
They spent 33.7M on the switch
Ergo the would have saved 43.7M if they didn't switch!!!!
Microsoft can't release the study. It has deep proprietary data about how much they would have reduced the price once they learned City of Munich is going Linux.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
And the OS is just the tip of the iceberg.
The project is creating a common IT infrastructure, with client administration, helpdesk ticketing, centralized solutions instead of every department doing its own thing, ...
the report is meant to give the die hard microsofties something to believe in.
Although it won't stand up to scrunity by the outside world it doesn't have to. It will keep the faithful, faithful
Maybe the year of Linux on the desktop is coming after all. Slowly, but eventually.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I have an excerpt from the report's abstract:
"For the purpose of this study, Microsoft assumes Munich will be installing Fedora 18..."
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I commissioned my own study that says Microsoft is full of shit. I'm not releasing the study itself or the details of our methodology. But trust me on this, it's true.
That's clearly an excuse!
At the best the study is not fake. HP just fooled MS around and they don't want everyone to know.
At the worse, the claims by MS are false, the study is fake and they just got uncovered!
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
Went something like this:
Dear Bill/Steve,
We have spent 6 months evaluating Linux in the Munich offices and have found the following issues:
1) IE is not installed so many of compatibility webpages you wanted us to evaluate did not work correctly.
2) The accounts which were created in Active Directory to allow for LDAP logins in Linux have a schema different from the documentation you provided and did not work correctly.
3) The Excel spreadsheets saved in the Open Document Format were not compatible with LibreOffice's Open Document Format and did not display all sheets corrrecly. Apparently the format is different than what was specificed in the standard you provided.
4) The Macro virus attached to the Excel spreadsheet *did* execute correctly and damaged one of the exported NTFS filesystems on the SAMBA server.
In closing, for the 6 months of screwing around trying to get your proprietary solutions to play nicely via the advertised specifications we've found none of them worked as advertised (except for fore-mentioned virus) and are billing you €40.7 million for our lead times and €3.7 million to cover anger management therapy for our support personnel.
Yours truly,
Meg W.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Newsflash: sponsored study shows results that favor sponsor. Truly shocking.
----- obSig
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!
they tried to advertise Windows and .NET with one of their "studies" years ago when the London Stock Exchange started using their products for it's trading system and they even made a nice video about it:
Get the Facts: The London Stock Exchange
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwSM55bsCrM
but it looks like it didn't turn out that well..
London Stock Exchange to abandon failed Windows platform
http://blogs.computerworld.com/london_stock_exchange_to_abandon_failed_windows_platform
London Stock Exchange dumps Windows for Linux
http://www.linuxtoday.com/high_performance/2009100702835NWDPSV
The London Stock Exchange moves to Novell Linux
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/the-london-stock-exchange-moves-to-novell-linux/8285
maybe they learned their lesson now
So were they just trying to make themselves feel better?
Stick to printers that actually support Postscript... There is no reason to ever buy a printer that doesn't support postscript...
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
MS may not have been telling a lie, just not the full truth. This is just clever phrasing by MS marketing. If Munich decides to go back to MS products then it will cost them 43.7 million Euros. By that logic (as faulted as it is) it is true that they could have saved that amount by staying with MS products.
Romulan Senator Vreenak said it best:
It's a faaaaake!
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
I commissioned a study which proves that Microsoft beats 200 puppies with a spiked club every Tuesday and Friday.
Sorry, I cannot show the study; it's for internal use only. You just have to take my word for it.
Table-ized A.I.
Please tell me, oh wise ones in Microsoft and HP how Munich could stay with XP, given that it is rapidly reaching EOL and support for newer hardware is likely to be problematic?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
The savings probably would've come from not having Microsoft billing them for the $43 million it cost to hire HP to do the study...
What does Microsoft do? "Promote" people who design clunkers like Windows Millennium and Vista into their PR department?
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
echo "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.'" | sed s/study/bullshit/g | sed s/internal/sexual/g
The G
This is one of their best, and related to the topic at hand.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRO9Uwm1tes
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
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.
I doubt this study even figured in the cost savings they could get now by using Samba 4 instead of paying for Windows AD servers...
"Now is the time on Surface when we dance!"
This just in - bacon prevents hair loss!
Man, I love those Jack in the Box ads.
#DeleteChrome
I'm shocked at how many people here are saying bad things about Microsoft. Shocked.
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Well, except for the fact that they cost 2-3 times more than ones that don't...
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But liars figure....
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
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.
I commissioned a study "for internal purposes only" that proves that day is night and that night is day and that all astronomers have been totally wrong to this point. But after spending millions making sure that the press prints summaries of my study I will not be releasing the study to analysis (and ridicule).
Microsoft full well knows that at this point the whole Microsoft vs Linux you must appeal to the faithful of their religion who will studiously ignore the ravings of the pagans and will hang on to every word coming from Mt. Olympus in Seattle. So microsoft doesn't need to publish this study. Its mere existence is enough for the embedded (and often well microsoft certified) IT staff in any organization to counter the 10 Million dollar savings. This 43 million savings not only is much better but will work well when a meta study is done and totals up the averages. So even if 3 other studies confirm the 10 million in Linux savings the average will still accrue to Microsoft.
Personally my experience is that Linux can be a great replacement for most but not all day to day systems. With most corporate software solutions going web it really doesn't matter which platform you are browsing from. Most employees of large organizations are shockingly unsophisticated users of the software so will rarely even notice the difference. Where you often run into problems are when legacy windows based software must be installed on many systems such as some kind of timesheet software. But a linux switch often works well as long as you let those who need Windows continue to use windows (say the accountants because they are extreme power users of Excel.) But there are other huge savings to be had by tossing Microsoft. In an all open source system licensing is really really easy. Then there is the fact that Linux can be so undemanding on the desktops that you can cut way back on system upgrades.
But there can be weird costs such as printer X that might not play well with Linux. That can offset some of the lesser hardware savings. You can be suddenly restricted to not being able to deploy certain windows only solutions.
The key to succeeding that I have seen is to start small. You take a small typical department and start switching the machines over to Linux and see what happens.
The key to failure is to let a small group of senior IT people with Microsoft certifications up the wazoo bring in MS sales people to help them thwart the effort. You can tell when this is happening when suddenly random senior management start protesting the potential switch to Linux armed with bundles of studies proving that the organization will be cursed with locusts if so much as one machine is converted to Linux. These will be people who were asking for an Apple laptop the week before.
I for one will not want RMS and alikes working at my organization.
Twitter: @dainsanefh
Poking your motherboard with a screwdriver does not fix missing dll's. Note that this is according to a unreleased internal study by Microsoft, so I've heard...
KERNEL PANIC -SIGFAULT AT ADDRESS #51A54D07
We all know that every time a nation or large company threatens to go open source, Microsoft sends its army of sales people with large expense budgets to offer 'better deals' to persuade them against moving away. These types of deals, of course mean better pricing and/or other terms along with lots of wining, dining, bonuses, gifts and kickbacks. It is quite likely their study includes these deep discounts which everyone would demand if this type of information was made available.
I know that in general, costs are available through open government legislation, but do we usually get to see the terms and numbers and types of licenses or how much is given for 'free'?
They have no desire to show the world just how severely you must torture logic and how much fudge you have to use to make FOSS look more expensive than MS.
And how much TIME recertifying every app at was just fine with postscript? Or even real PCL will do. Every time somebody has to touch the printer you lose TWICE. Once for the employee not working and once for a tech to come fiddle with it. Do that 2-3 times in the life of a printer and you blow $500 easily.
The REAL problem is most companies have nothing they WANT from IT. They are not actively advancing their use of IT to save money. They don't see that $500 as "lost" because that IT person could have been doing something else that GAINED the company $500... So they really lost $1000 saving $300 on a printer.
Who are you kidding? I don't care if Microsoft releases source code for anything, that's their thing. I don't want .NET, Office, or DirectX on Linux.
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
If researchers refuse to publish their data and methodology, their "results" should be summarily dismissed by everyone.
I miss Jack in the Box... went there once in a while for lunch when I lived in the Seattle area... they don't come around Wisconsin at all since a lawsuit many years ago wiped them out of the area...
I tend to advice PCL these days. PostScript support is often slower, buggier and has less fonts available than modern PCL compatible laser printers do. Most business printers are either USB or (wireless) ethernet linked now. Most are able to process and rip their own content, and have support for multiple operating systems and standards. Buying PostScript printers used to be the safe bet since those were supported on all your OSes and they didn't put PostScript on budget printers that weren't properly supported on multiple OSes anyway. Times have changed. I'd advice you to re-evaluate your advice based on new data with modern printers. You just may find yourself suddenly liking the PCL output option of a dual personality printer more than you do the PostScript.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
The other 17% is produced by either cows, or calves that are too young to be counted as a gender?
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
They will also likely last more than 2-3 times as long.
It doesn't pay to buy cheap crap. It will just break sooner. It will also likely have higher operational costs.
Finance is a little more subtle than grabbing the cheapest thing available at Wal-mart.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
This survey from Microsoft is far too narrow minded.
One of the key advantages of Free Software is that once a problem is solved, then it is solved for everyone. What has Munich done that can be shared? What can they share with other cities in Germany? What can they share with the entire rest of the planet?
The net gain of their efforts may be worth orders of magnitude more to the world at large and similarly undermine sales efforts by Microsoft everywhere.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
True, but not releasing the study casts even more doubts on its reliability. A study being paid for by someone who has an interest in a certain outcome is always suspect. Not releasing the details is almost a guarantee that the results are biased and the owner of the study wants to avoid public scrutiny..
That is, if they really did a study and it is not just a number someone pulled out of his ass.
TL:DR:
Never trust a study where the methodology is not public.
C - the footgun of programming languages
Doesnt 10 million euros seem like a very small amount for the city of munich to save?
What is that in percentage to their technology budget?
-I found a reference to their arts budget alone at over 160 million euros:
http://www.muenchen.de/rathaus/home_en/Department-of-Arts-and-Culture/statistics_dates_facts
oldhack: "Security is a waste of money until shit hits the fan. 5 minutes later, it becomes waste of money again. "
'Munich' is how Microsoft (internally) describes the German branch of their company (since it's based in Munich). So, translating the corporate speak, it reads: '[Microsoft in] Munich would have saved €43.7 million if [the city of Munich] hadn't used a bunch of free stuff."
Not really. The difference between a cheap and an expensive laser printer is often just the cost of an extra CPU and control logic. The mechanical parts are identical (and you can use spares from the cheaper ones in the more expensive ones. Or vice versa if you are a bit crazy). PostScript is quite CPU-intensive. You need at least a 100MHz MIPS CPU to keep up with the print speed of a modern printer, and ideally at least a 250MHz core. You also need a PostScript interpreter. Something simpler can be handled with just a frame buffer the size of a printed page. The extra cost is likely $10-20 for the PostScript parts, but once you get there you're into differentiation territory and so the premium is significantly more.
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- Manti Te'o, Microsoft Spokesman
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.