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Mexit, not Brexit, is the new priority for the UK
The Register ^ | Fri 8 Aug 2025 | Rupert Goodwins

Posted on 08/08/2025 1:48:48 PM PDT by nickcarraway

A Microsoft Exit strategy isn’t just a good idea, it’s vital. It must go a long way beyond a farewell to Redmond

Opinion One of the dangers of stories based on big cash numbers is distraction. The numbers get all the attention, the bigger story behind them gets missed.

The fact that at the current rate the UK state is likely on the hook for nigh on £9 billion over five years in Microsoft licenses is a sterling example. How we got here, and where we're going if we don't start planning a Microsoft Exit, is much more than a $12 billion question.

The numbers look horrendous, and they are. This year's UK State Of Digital Government Review (SODGR) says that the country spends £26 billion ($35 billion) year on digital technology, so Microsoft gets one pound of every 13 spent. It's a truism that moving to open source doesn't save much money, as proprietary licensing spend is replaced by training, support, and local development costs, but reliable data is hard to come by in a field dominated by financial and political interests.

In any case, Microsoft is so deeply entrenched in state digital infrastructure that it seems a practical impossibility to do anything about it. The company has a good 20 years' lead on its competition in bending the ears and getting its feet under the desktops of enterprise and state decision makers. While the UK government has had spasms of promoting open source — most recently in 2017 — these have seen little enthusiasm and less adoption. As SODGR notes, UK state IT lacks co-ordination, leadership, funding, talent and executive influence. 55 percent of personnel budget goes on outside contractors, analysts and consultants rather than full-time staff.

This state of play explains much. Lacking these things, individual departments are big game for the professional hunters of corporate IT suppliers. It's not so much a matter of signing contracts as dividing the carcass' meat after the kill. Why do so many big state IT projects fail? Much better to ask why some slip through the net and succeed.

SODGR has to be positive, and it duly notes the move to off-prem and AI as positive. It's not strong on how these counteract the structural flaws, but it seems the way is clear for Microsoft and the hyperscaler-led private sector to continue to up its fees even as its previous promises have led to public sector productivity decreases. Ladies and gentlemen, it's all in SODGR.

Perhaps we could all live with that, as we have done forever, were it not for two facts and one inescapable conclusion. The cloud and AI, as currently configured, imply and require huge data flows into American owned datacenters. Those datacenters, even those within UK jurisdiction, cannot prevent US government access. Therefore, the UK cannot consider them suitable for state data.

This might seem hyperbole, but the facts are indisputable. The US is not trustworthy - Trump's tariffs break existing World Trade Organization-governed treaties, a cornerstone of international regulation. Likewise, Trump supports the removal of regulatory or legal barriers to AI development, so what would happen if the AI lobby asked for access to national data from outside the US? SODGR is silent on this, because it seemed fantastical even six months ago. It doesn't seem fantastical now.

You don't have to look too far to find how deep that blind spot goes. Ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair's think tank has just opined that the UK should leave AI model development to China, the Gulf States and the US, because they’ve got all of the money. That none of them has a rule of law which respects the data we'd have to send to them for training doesn't factor in Blair's thinking, let alone the strategic competences the UK would cede. Plus, we have common interests with the well-regulated EU, even if Brexit makes that hard for politicians to admit. This is breathtakingly dangerous thinking.

The current UK government isn't much better, mistaking a fondness for magical AI and datacenters for a digital strategy. A proper one would be built around three parallel and interdependent goals.

The first is to identify where critical data is flowing to untrustworthy entities, and set a deadline for all such data to be held and processed in legally secure locations. As a necessary part of this, a unit with sufficient expertise to get full visibility of all such systems and provide guidance for implementation, both inside the government and with suppliers. This implies a third goal, being the creation of a national digital infrastructure that is structured to be resilient to any supplier owning the full stack.

None of this can happen without involving all IT professionals that SODGR says work in the state sector. Their knowledge and experience is the ground truth without which nothing can happen. An expensive start to a very expensive process, one with a hugely valuable result.

The talent, leadership, influence and unified vision this would provide will be ideally placed to manage the next stage. The evolution of a 21st century digital infrastructure answerable to the people of the UK and nobody else. If that true vendor independence means an internal market and mindset where open source can be deployed freely and a final goodbye to gargantuan bills, that’d be a good side effect.

Mexit means Mexit, and that means more than money. ®


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Government; News/Current Events; United Kingdom
KEYWORDS: brexit; mexit; microsoft; uk
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1 posted on 08/08/2025 1:48:48 PM PDT by nickcarraway
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To: nickcarraway

In two months, I will be performing a personal Mexit for much of my PC activities. There is an option to extend a Windows 10 license an extra year for $30, but it requires using microsoft.com for the login. ESAD, Microsoft.


2 posted on 08/08/2025 1:57:52 PM PDT by CatOwner (Don't expect anyone, even conservatives, to have your back when the SHTF in 2021 and beyond.)
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To: nickcarraway

So, they admit that moving away will NOT save them money as new training, etc will cost them just as much and be less efficient.

But they need to do it anyway. Not a MS fanboy, but this reeks of stupidity.


3 posted on 08/08/2025 2:04:13 PM PDT by packrat35 (Pureblood! No clot shot for me!)
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To: nickcarraway

I imagine most of the fees paid to Microsoft are for desktop computer licenses, and there are alternatives for the desktop without hanging up most of the desktop functions they are running, because in addition to the desktop operating system, there are alternatives to most all the important Microsoft desktop apps as well; and usually the old data files are portable over to the non-windows apps. The U.K. (and the U.S. as well) would be well making the one time expense of ending the MS desktop addiction.


4 posted on 08/08/2025 2:06:14 PM PDT by Wuli (uire)
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To: CatOwner

I have one desktop PC on Windows 7 which I am considering a Mexit for. It is more my actual working PC than a Windows 11 Laptop I have (used only when I travel away from home). Once I have all the alternative apps I want on the desktop PC, I will download versions of them to the laptop and kill Win11 on the laptop as needed.


5 posted on 08/08/2025 2:10:32 PM PDT by Wuli (uire)
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To: nickcarraway

Run giant data centers with myriad business applications, you can pay Microsoft or IBM.

Your choice.


6 posted on 08/08/2025 2:10:42 PM PDT by Mariner (War Criminal #18)
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To: CatOwner

“I will be performing a personal Mexit for much of my PC activities”

As just a dumbass end user, I am well pleased with the Microsoft/Intel/Dell combo.


7 posted on 08/08/2025 2:12:24 PM PDT by Mariner (War Criminal #18)
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To: Wuli

re: Alternatives to Microsoft

As a tech PM, recently retired, I can tell you there is no cheaper modern computing infrastructure than Microsoft on Intel everywhere.

Pay enormous bucks to them yearly and focus on your business. Think of it as electricity.

The alternatives will bleed you to death, with no visibility and no idea how to fix it. And it’ll cost nearly twice as much when you include all the roll out failures, outages and personnel costs.

Oh, and let Cisco rape you too. It’s cheaper.


8 posted on 08/08/2025 2:18:08 PM PDT by Mariner (War Criminal #18)
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To: Mariner

The why do so many techies here in this forum push Linux???


9 posted on 08/08/2025 2:29:47 PM PDT by Wuli (uire)
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To: Wuli

“The why do so many techies here in this forum push Linux???”

Most have never even comprehended the complexity of an enterprise environment.

You can go Linux as an individual, it’s getting easier every day. But when something goes wrong, and it will, you better know what you’re doing.


10 posted on 08/08/2025 2:34:32 PM PDT by Mariner (War Criminal #18)
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To: Wuli

following


11 posted on 08/08/2025 2:35:04 PM PDT by Chickensoup
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To: CatOwner

“ In two months, I will be performing a personal Mexit for much of my PC activities”
***********************************************

I did my Mexit years ago when I moved to Apple. For the most part I’ve found perfectly good substitutes for everything that I used a Microsoft application for. The most difficult thing for me to move from was Excel, of which I was very fond. But I’ve now developed equivalent expertise in Apple Numbers so while I have fond memories of Excel, I surely do not miss the usurious terms required to keep it.


12 posted on 08/08/2025 2:43:14 PM PDT by House Atreides (I’m now ULTRA-MAGA-PRO-MAX)
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To: Wuli; CatOwner; Mariner
"The why do so many techies here in this forum push Linux???"

Go Woke, Go Broke

I don't always bring up Linux any time there is an opportunity to do so, but Linux is in fact the only option to where I can do exactly $0 dollars in subsidies for the woke agenda; at least on the software side. - and of course not be a thief.

Microsoft, Apple, and Google are all blindingly and frustratingly woke.

For those planning to get away from Microsoft, that is one heck of a very sensible choice. If I can help, please let me know.

13 posted on 08/08/2025 2:57:10 PM PDT by ProgressingAmerica (We cannot vote our way out of these problems. The only way out is to activist our way out.)
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To: packrat35

This is a casualty of tariffs, or so it looks like it.

You are correct its not fiscally sound in this very moment. But the UK is seeming to take the idea that if the UK government can promote UK software providers, it’ll all start coming back to them.

They have a point. If Trump’s tariffs are true in that US based providers help the US, then its true. UK based providers help the UK - or else Trump is a liar.

It can’t go both ways.


14 posted on 08/08/2025 3:01:25 PM PDT by ProgressingAmerica (We cannot vote our way out of these problems. The only way out is to activist our way out.)
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To: nickcarraway

I was hoping “Mexit” meant Muslim Exit.


15 posted on 08/08/2025 3:45:28 PM PDT by Greg123456
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To: nickcarraway

Microsoft is like a bandaid. It sticks easy, and remains stuck to you, as long as you need it, and then another need comes up and you need to seek the sticky little thing again. You know how the stickiness works and are not willing to learn any other way to fix the problem.

To undo the Microsoft sticky thing, you need to go back some 30 or so years, but you will, in the end, seek the sticky thing that the whole world understands and is easy to get stuck to and easy to use.


16 posted on 08/08/2025 4:09:11 PM PDT by adorno ( )
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To: Wuli
I imagine most of the fees paid to Microsoft are for desktop computer licenses,

Not really. Over 25% of Microsoft's revenue comes from Azure (Cloud Computing), which is mostly borne by business and government. Another 10% is non-Azure server products and tools. Only 10% come from Windows desktop licenses,

A lot of Microsoft's revenue (LinkedIn, Gaming, Advertising) at 15% is not presently purchased by UK government, so there is nothing to quit there. Office/Microsoft 365 is a percentage of a 31% stake of Revenue, which includes LinkedIn, Dynamics, etc., so the total amount will be well under 25%.

I don't know what hardware the UK buys (Surface, Mice, Keyboards), probably not much. Microsoft successfully pivoted after kicked out Ballmer, which is why Amazon and Google are no longer eating their lunch. Heck, even Hyper-V is enjoying a resurgence because of VMware price spikes. Going MS-free is NOT easy, and many other companies simply assume MS is part of the mix, which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.


17 posted on 08/08/2025 4:46:00 PM PDT by Dr. Sivana ("Whatsoever he shall say to you, do ye." (John 2:5))
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To: Dr. Sivana

LibreOffice is well rated alternative to the MS desktop apps and it runs on Mac and Linux as well. And there are good alternatives to the MS browser and Email apps. So there is a place the UK government could start to unbundle its MS dependence. And there are cloud alternatives to MS cloud, as well as to MS network server OS, ect. And some top network server OEM’s offer preloaded server operating systems besides MS, at customers choice.

I think the UK could become less MS dependent, with a carefully scheduled transition process, and with that process, cost-wise, maybe dovetailing with equipment, systems, due to be replaced anyway.

With different systems in place some of the keys are necessary points of inter-connection and cross-platform use of the same data. If data connectivity is maintained across platforms, application transitions can be accomplished with less loss of operational efficiency.

Some of the big enterprise application systems like Oracle and SAP can run on multiple different platforms and have cross-platform interoperability. If they are among the big systems already deployed in the U.K. government, those systems can support a transition away from MS. Lo and behold, the U.K. government has systems using both Oracle and SAP.


18 posted on 08/08/2025 5:18:58 PM PDT by Wuli (uire)
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To: ProgressingAmerica
For those planning to get away from Microsoft, that is one heck of a very sensible choice. If I can help, please let me know.

I may take you up on that offer of help, in addition to the help from Freeper 'Openurmind'. I've been making a list of applications I run on Windows 10 Pro and looking for suitable substitutes with Linux. Too many routes are ending up at the dead end street known as "Run the application under Wine," and sometimes "Good luck with that!"

19 posted on 08/08/2025 5:49:55 PM PDT by CatOwner (Don't expect anyone, even conservatives, to have your back when the SHTF in 2021 and beyond.)
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To: packrat35

I am still stuck with that crap OS. When I started engineering everything was on Unix based OS. I hate MS. BUT. That’s what I get. I am not upgrading to 11 because I am sure if I do I will be forced to spend 20-30k of new software licenses and move to subscription based software rather than my permanent licenses I currently own.


20 posted on 08/08/2025 6:44:35 PM PDT by Organic Panic ('Was I molested. I think so' - Ashley Biden in response to her father joining her in the shower. )
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