Posted on 10/01/2005 12:59:08 PM PDT by N3WBI3
The NSW Office of State Revenue (OSR) is taking a tough stance against Microsoft's decision to make an enterprise edition of Windows Vista only available to companies that have signed on to its Software Assurance program. The tax collection agency has declared it would rather switch desktop operating systems than lock itself into Microsoft's licensing regime.
Delivering a presentation at the South East Asian Regional Computer Confederation (SEARCC 05) in Sydney yesterday, OSR chief information officer Mike Kennedy and the agency's manager of client services Pravash Babhoota confirmed they would start scoping for a move to a Linux desktop within six months.
The OSR collects taxes, levies and duty for the NSW government and is the second biggest revenue authority in Australia after the Australian Taxation Office. Answering directly to the NSW Treasury, OSR has about 600 staff, 200 of which it recruited during the past year.
Babhoota said the agency had already successfully bedded down open source on its back-end, running its Oracle 9i and 10g core databases and assorted other transactional applications over Citrix on Dell-based clusters and had guarantees of open source support from key enterprise applications vendors.
While the back-end migration consisted of moving off heavier Unix- and Solaris-based operating systems running on Sun hardware, Babhoota said the emergence of a new version of Microsoft Windows, Office and their commensurate licensing would naturally lead his IT shop to consider consolidating its applications on open source.
"At this stage the benefits have been in delivering [savings through] consolidation and thin clients. In a few more months the focus will shift to replacing Office," Babhoota said.
Asked whether Microsoft's Software Assurance subscription licensing regime - under which volume users pay an annual fee for support, patches and upgrades - was influencing any potential shift on desktops, Babhoota said previous upgrade offers from Microsoft had provided a less than compelling economic case to his organization.
In particular, he said early offers to upgrade from NT to XP under Software Assurance had not provided sufficient value in their initial stages, noting the waiting game had paid off because ultimately prices dropped while stability, functionality and support increased.
"As soon as support ends for XP, we will look at moving to Linux [desktops]," Babhoota said, adding the back-end switch to open source had cost 17 percent of what a proprietary upgrade had been costed at, with the agency doubling the amount of business it processed in the same 12-month period.
The software is mature enough now. People buy support even when they don't need it when they're running a business because things always happen at the worst times.
Insurance(support) isn't there for every day, it's there for those once in a while times.
That was completely uncalled for.
Not much. I cancelled my MS support incident contracts several years ago. If I have a new, severe problem that we can' solve, I can call in on an as needed basis, but so far I haven't had to, nor did I ever need to call in for an O/S issue previously. The few occasions were all application based, such as Exchange or MS dev tools.
Not the same as insurance, since you can call and add support IF you need it whenever you want. Microsoft doesn't even give discounts on advance quantity buys of their paid support calls anymore, you pay the same whether you buy them in advance or the day you need them. We haven't needed any in years, either.
Typical insults from you fanatics. My point stands, as it matures, you shouldn't need constant support. If you do, or they don't offer a pay as you need option, the product sucks.
Your point doesn't stand. Why do people pay for support for any of the other UNIXes?(AIX, Solaris, etc) The maturity of a product is a non-issue, you're only using it to try to make the argument that linux isn't mature.(which is a joke in/of itself)
(a point which was made by another poster, but needs to be repeated for the obvious reasons)
It's funny watching you guys claim both you and your software products require constant vendor support, LOL. I paid for Unix support 10 years ago and I paid for MS support 5 years ago but I don't pay for either now. As the product matures, it should become more stable and lead to less bizarre and unexpected failures. If it doesn't, it's a poor product to begin with. Some people will still need support, for whatever reason, but to insist that everyone will need it is ridiculous, and companies that are basing their future on customers requiring support either are going to see that income level off if not reduce, or their product is a poor one. There's plenty of evidence on mature prodcuts that proves this, from Microsoft changing the pricing for its support plan, to Oracle now changing the support on their products to include what they call "lifetime" support as well. As for Linux, I guess you better plan on paying every single year from here on, since that's the only way those companies can stay alive.
I have plenty of layers of security protecting my systems and their availability, but being on the hook with the vendor for something I probably won't need isn't one of them. Nor do I have to worry since I can pick up the phone on a minutes notice and be patched right through at reasonable cost, although that hasn't been needed in years. If it's been needed for you, I'd try something different, maybe starting with your staff.
And you obviously have no F5K experience. Not to slight you, but this is fairly obvious.
Sorry, don't know that I do. Nor did I say that no one would never need support for any reason, just the logical conclusion that mature products should require less support, if they're worth a flip. It's funny watching you guys argue against the obvious, just because I said it, over and over again.
It's funny watching you attempt to paint me as one of "those guys". I do both Windows and Unix development. I just know both sides of the fence better than you, and can spot your obvious FUD a mile away.
Oh yea, there is nothing like calling in the middle of an issue which is costing you cash and trying to get an SLA right? Some of us who work for serious companies to whom uptime is Key want an SLA with a vendor in advance. With companies like RedHat and IBM you pay for that.
Thats not an inslut to you, its what you have just clearly demonstrated.
Typical insults from you fanatics.
BTW given some of the things you have said to me youre nobody to hapr on 'typical insults'..
Obviously a vendor issue. They need to offer "per incident" support within minutes for a couple hundred bucks like the industry leader does, if they don't already. But if they're sole income is hooking you on those expensive yearly contracts, they may not.
Typical twisting in the wind from you. I've admitted some do need instant vendor support, doesn't distract from the fact that mature software requires less support. Or it should, if it's worth a flip.
Why would ANYONE use CentOS if they needed instant vendor support? Obviously, no one would.
So do most of them. I like Java a lot myself and use it on my own personal website, it's a lot more powerful for graphics than the MS tools. Have a Solaris box in my office at work, and in several critical places on the network. But you don't have to have anywhere near our experience to know that more mature products require less support. To argue otherwise is absurd.
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