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.
I already said applications require more support, go back and READ. As far as operating systems though, age should equal stability, take a look at Unix, Windows, even Linux is much more stable than it was a few years ago. As for LDAP, yes, I was fighting an issue with that earlier this year. We didn't call Microsoft though, we found a config change on our own that corrected our problem. Took us a couple of weeks, but it took you that too. BSD? Isn't that free for anyone to use?
You are spot on about corporate accountability. One simply
can't not have an official escalation path for IT and SW
issues when one is a buisness, especially one with BoD oversight and shareholder scrutiny.
They're not anymore, haven't in about 10 years as was shown on the other thread. Why, wasn't everyone using a Unix stack back then? If you don't expect others to use it, don't give it away. At least BSD does actually give it away, without some sneaky license designed to steal your IP.
We're debating whether as a customer I should be obligated to sign on for expensive yearly support contracts from one vendor, when another vendor offers reasonably priced "per incident" support. Hey I'd like to have the expensive support bought and paid for in advance, would make my job easier if/when there's a catastrophe ongoing. But I find that wasteful, since we don't typically need that level of support despite being a large operation, and would rather save those dollars in emergency fund that could be expended on other items at end of year.
So 400$ per year for an enterprise server you consider 'expensive support'? Thats RedHat who also, BTW, offers support in the form of 'X' number of incidents with call times averaging about 20 minutes from ticket creation.
Personally if I have to choose between paying for an OS and hope I don't need support on it or pay for the support and get the OS the choice is pretty simple. Then again I actually make these kinds of decisions..
What, FTP.EXE?
Heck yeah, if you got a couple hundred. You Linux guys sure do pay a lot for your "free" software, LOL.
^^^^^^^^^^It's funny watching you guys claim both you and your software products require constant vendor support^^^^^^^^^^^
At some point all software requires some sort of an update.
^^^^^^^^^^^^but to insist that everyone will need it is ridiculous^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Where did I insist that everyone will need it?
^^^^^^^^^either are going to see that income level off if not reduce, or their product is a poor one.^^^^^^^^^^^^
Not true. Just because *YOU* are willing to give up the support having deemed it unneeded, doesn't mean others are so willing to do the same.
As companies get larger, they'll want to know they have a support base to build upon. Some will, some won't sign up. Did you see Red Hat's newest numbers?
^^^^^^^^^^There's plenty of evidence on mature prodcuts that proves this, from Microsoft changing the pricing for its support plan^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
MS isn't the best example. Their product has been in beta for the past decade.
Why are you so threatened by Linux? And/or "us linux guys"?
Seeing equivalent windows software from CDW runs 1,300$ the 340$ red-hat offering will last three years until you catch up to windows in terms of cost..
Because the DNC here in the US and communists the world over are backing it big time. I generally don't support anything they do, nor do I think that all software should be free like the radicals do, who lie on it's behalf. If you want to just be a simple user of it then fine, but don't spend every waking moment pushing it on everyone and denying these obvious ties, like some on here.
That $400 (per year per copy) is for support, not for the software. And yes, it is an uneeded and unnecessary expense for most users of Windows Server.
And yes, it is an uneeded and unnecessary expense for most users of Windows Server.
And you are more than free to get all the apps on the distro and run it for free do you have a point?
My choice is 1,300 for just the software or 1,400 for the next four years of software *and* support. So windows saves me 100$ but provides *zero* support.
In addition to this if Redhat releases a new distribution, say RHEL5 my current license automatically provides an upgrade at no cost though I am not committed to take it as Redhat provides full 7 year support for their releases.
All this, of course, gets you away from answering the question. is 1400$ a significant part of the cost for a server?
"Software Assurance" ..... does this mean Microsoft bleeds you on a monthly basis?
Thats why we keep telling him to give up breathing, those dang communist in China are using the CO2 he exhales to nourish their plants. He might even be getting the O2 from their plants, maybe thats how they get into out bodily fluids.
nor do I think that all software should be free like the radicals do
Nor is he capable of finding anyone on FR who thinks all software should be free. All I have ever heard from the folks on my list is that OSS and Closed Source both have a place in the ecosystem.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.