Hacker News Reader

While I support the general notion of your statement, I have to correct some facts:

- The recurring costs for licence upgrades are said to be 2.8 Mio Euros every 3 - 4 years. However, there are other cost factors that need to be taken into account: migration and training costs for the new windows and office versions and cost that are now saved since they took the opportunity to unify some of their document management. That's not 10 mio pounds per year, but still a sizable amount.

- In the original document, no amount is given for the cost savings for the hardware that's not replaced.

- There are no statistics given for the number of support queries in terms of linux vs. windows. There is anecdotical evidence but they response explicitly states that full and valid statistics will only be available in two years. The number cited is the total number of support queries for the linux workstations over time. It is cited as proof that the pain points from the beginning of the migrations have been resolved and that the number of support queries is dropping sharply even though the number of linux workstations is rising. The number is also said to include all kinds of errors, including network, server and database errors.

Still, the cost savings are totalled at somewhere around 3.8 Mio Euro for the whole period and since most of the up-front investments have been done now the number can be expected to rise. It's not as huge as you make it sound, but it's still big. And most importantly its a proof that this can be done without disrupting everything.

(most numbers taken from the original statement at http://www.muenchen.de/rathaus/dms/Home/Stadtinfos/Presse-Se...)

Don't forget to add the man-hours related to the licenses:

1) Navigate the licenses

2) Talk to the 3rd-party re-sellers (their response time varies)

3) Approval to purchase

These are "hiccups" that will slow down all projects were you had to go through them (and it is uncommon situation in Microsoft shops).

It's good for them that they haven't caught the "SharePoint" (and soon, InfoPath) wave yet cause if they do, the migration cost will rise quite significantly.

Most offices these days do use SharePoint heavily and some of the BAs started their hands on InfoPath to make forms for data entry to SharePoint.

To make matter worse (or sweeter, depending your POV), these whole thing can be acquired cheaper by using Office 365 (their cloud version of Office) plus certain Office 365 offerings automatically gives you Office 2010 Professional Plus for free. Sweet deal if you ask me.

Some of us would like to see Linux to win the battle especially when it comes to cost perspective. Unfortunately, Microsoft took notes and they had adjusted their licensing cost as well.

For example: in the K-12 sector, I heard schools are getting 90% discounts. Ninety percent discounts.....

edwinnathaniel:

You're absolutely right about Microsoft Sharepoint (and InfoPath): it makes switching away from Windows much more painful and costly. FWIW, I have no doubt there are a lot of smart people at Microsoft thinking 24 hours a day about how to increase switching barriers for customers.

As to Microsoft's licensing discounts in key markets, they're not new. Ballmer traveled personally to meet with Munich's mayor and reportedly offered similarly crazy discounts to prevent them from switching to Linux. (See http://www.infoworld.com/t/platforms/microsofts-ballmer-figh... and http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http://www.heise.de/... for some details.)

Regardless, the important question (for budget-strapped cities and governments) remains the same: can they save a lot of money by switching to desktop Linux? If the savings claimed by Munich are accurate, the answer is a resounding yes.

> It's good for them that they haven't caught the "SharePoint" (and soon, InfoPath) wave yet cause if they do, the migration cost will rise quite significantly.

You must not forget to factor in the huge pain of living with SharePoint. A good friend of mine, heavy Microsoft user (and advocate) regularly complains about downtime and data loss because of their SharePoint install. They were forced into it because Microsoft is one of their most important clients and demanded that they use it (or they'd move their business to a competitor)

Most of our clients are using SharePoint and while I'm not working in SP-related projects, I have not heard complains from them regarding downtimes or data loss so far. In fact, they're all happy using SharePoint.

I can't comment on that particular issue.

I've worked with corporate SharePoint and never heard any complaints about downtime; I've even manage a messy SharePoint environment that was left to "rot" with insufficient maintenance (both on SharePoint and on the servers) and it never went down.

Where we did have big problems was finding developers to work with it; we actually found a few that had worked with it but deliberately avoiding listing it as a skill because they did not want to ever work with it again. (in Sydney a few years ago)

"For example: in the K-12 sector, I heard schools are getting 90% discounts. Ninety percent discounts....."

That makes plenty of a sense. If you force people to use Microsoft products while they're young they are much less liable to switch to another platform while they're older. They're use to their tools and people are lazy. So heavily subsidizing educational uses of software makes plenty of sense.

God forbid we ever lived in a hacker culture where kids in K-12 were forced to learn how to code and actually understand how computers worked as part of the curriculum, then Microsoft would be in real trouble.

"Forcing kids to learn how to code" is a sure way to make them hate coding. But I'm sure you meant "encouraged" instead of "forced".

Just like forcing them to learn how to read is a sure way to make them hate reading? Forcing them to learn history is a sure way to make them hate history?

Would forcing them to learn how to drive be a sure way to make them hate driving?

Same with the MSDNAA project. As a student i was able to download almost every software from MS for free (even Enterprise versions, etc.). Since many people start to learn coding in university, you catch them with Visual Studio, perfect timing..

For example: in the K-12 sector, I heard schools are getting 90% discounts. Ninety percent discounts.....

If I recall correctly, according to the director of IT of a large, local non-profit, they get access to the full suite of enterprise Microsoft products for something on the range of $1000 per year.

At that price point, saying 'open source can save you money' is meaningless, because they have already made investments in Microsoft IT expertise.

Maybe I read the article wrong, but my spidey sense went off when reading the article. They're comparing the maximum_complaints_per_month quantity before and after switch. i.e., the peak value of complaints_per_month. Not average or annual.

I agree with your other points.

FTA:

    The maximum number of complaints was 70 per month
    before the beginning of the switch to LiMux. After the
    number of LiMux workplaces increased from 1,500 to
    9,500, the maximum number of complaints per month
    dropped to 46.

Actually, that's a misinterpretation in the article. The original document mentions those figures, but in a different context: Those are the total number of complaints for limux workplaces in the beginning and in the end and it includes all kinds of errors - application errors, user errors, database and network connectivity so it's nothing but a rough upper bound. It's given as rough indicator that most problems have been solved.

"Most surprisingly, the city claims its IT department is fielding HALF as many (!) user complaints with Linux than with Windows, reducing another major cost forever."

Uh, what? Complaints can change at any time and due even to "small" changes. Also, there could be changes in the opportunity cost of running Linux vs other operating systems in the future which could be realised/visible to ordinary users and thus cause a rise in complaints. But yes, for now, if the facts are right, they have saved themselves significant support cost.

Rest of your summary deductions are sound.