Australia cuts Microsoft bill by AU$100m
Australia has reduced the amount of money it pays for Microsoft products by AU$100m (£66m, $103m), according to the nation's Chief Technology Officer John Sheridan. Speaking yesterday at the Kickstart conference, Sheridan explained that consolidating contracts from 42 to one and working through a single reseller has enabled the …
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So how much are they paying?
Were they paying 101m before the cut or 1bn? Because 100m sounds like more than enough to throw at devs to add whatever's missing from Libre Office and give it a polish, and you'd only have to pay it once.
Hey, why not ask around, maybe there's a few other governments that would be interested in drastically reducing their Software spend by sharing the dev costs, with enough partners you might even get commitments down into the single millions.
Yes, I am aware of the numerous reasons this will never happen, and also that even if it did happen it would become an almighty train wreak, but it's still annoying to see money pissed away year in year out because the people in charge of spending it are without exception, a bunch of fucking muppets.
Re: So how much are they paying?
$100m at $250k a staff member, equals 400 staff. You could do some amazing work with that many people. It would be interesting to see where LibreOffice falls down for use in the government compared with Microsoft Office and seek some indicative quotes on how much to fix the areas.
Better still rather than money being shipped straight overseas it would remain in the hands of Australian developers.
Anyone know how much tax Microsoft pay in Australia?
Re: So how much are they paying?
This area - namely user organisations (and specifically governments) paying for oss development hasn't really got off the ground, probably because purchasers are happy just to negotiate a price reduction on the renewal of an existing contract, they either don't see it as their responsibility to make strategic invests of the savings in alternatives.
The funding of oss is a tricky area as effectively we've just got to get used to the fact that oss isn't free and has a price just like commercial products such as MS Office. Although as you acknowledge the first hurdle is to get oss offerings such as Libre Office and Calligra Suite up to a level that makes them viable products for the enterprise.
Re: So how much are they paying?
> Because 100m sounds like more than enough to throw at devs to add whatever's missing from Libre Office and give it a polish, and you'd only have to pay it once.
F*ck me, that's a really good idea. :D
Re: So how much are they paying?
>Because 100m sounds like more than enough to throw at devs
But that is part of the problem, how does someone throw 100m at the [LO] devs and ensure that results are delivered?
I appreciate that this is a problem that some projects and their sponsoring organisations (such as the Document Foundation) would love to have, but at the present time these projects just aren't geared up to having serious teams of developers working full-time on them. It is this permanent development and support capability that is really needed if some projects are to be taken seriously by business.
Yes it is a bit of a catch-22, but as I said previously, we need to move away from the idea that oss is free to all.
Re: So how much are they paying?
>But that is part of the problem, how does someone throw 100m at the [LO] devs and ensure that results are delivered?
A "bounty"
Alternatively one might choose to develop the code in-house and then, at your discretion of course, contribute it upstream.... or... well that's the thing about OSS... anyone can do pretty much as they please with it. Cool eh?
John Sheridan, eh?
Must be a relative (ancestor?) of one Capt. John Sheridan, who also proved his acumen for financial finagling by working the books so that EarthGov ended up paying rent to itself for his command staff's use of the officers' quarters on Babylon 5...
Re: John Sheridan, eh?
If you want to negotiate with Microsoft, it must help to bring the Starkiller.
Re: John Sheridan, eh?
Yes, he sorted out the Shadows and the Vorlons too, so Microsoft should be a walk in the park (unless they have those nasty laser things)
Re: John Sheridan, eh?
Most of the savings come by adopting Minbari technology but when you see the UI you'll be longing for the return of the ribbon.
So how much are they paying? Simple: ask for an open tender next time
The Ministry of Education (MoE) in NZ initially wouldn't disclose how much tax payer money they were spending on Microsoft. So they were asked to do an open tender next time, they did, the MoE paid Microsoft $30,000,000 last time, WOW that's just the MoE, in an incy wincy country. Based on extensive experience with working with both Microsoft and open source software I am confident that if schools switched to open souce software it would save $30,000,000 with additional savings due to less support costs. The Microsoft thing is a and quite simply a lot of people are too scared or inexperienced to do what is right. Which Australian group will request to get this changed to an open tender next time?
Then when you know how much can be saved, some can then be invested elsewhere...... when you read some of the pro Microsoft comments in articles like this, it's like MS have paid staff making comments. It is true we know they pay people to do this, what's their patent bloggers name?
And when various departments choose to not use Microsoft do they get a rebate?
If not, why not, this should be catered for for transparency. e.g. netbooks, and now tablets and smartphones.
Go Linux
If they went Linux they could cut the budget to 10% or less.
Microsoft is no longer relative to computer needs, it's now simply a choice and an expensive one. It's not even the best for speeds and functionality in many areas.
Re: Go Linux
There haven't been any major migrations to Linux that have shown such a cost saving - The poster boy linux migration is Munich, they're currently in their tenth year of migration, the cost savings are touted at 1M euros PA IIRC, but they're way over budget. They've converted 13k workstations and still have at least another 2k to go. A million euros is a pitiful saving on an operation which have 15k workstations and could have easily been had by making more efficient use of the existing systems, which were by all accounts truly awful.
One other thing you have to consider is that if you move from an incumbent supplier to a rival, the incumbent stops giving you discounts (what incentive do they have?). This means that you end up with dual skilled staff, or twice as many staff - you just have to look at Windows/Linux flamewars here to see to what lengths IT guys will go to slag off a system, rather than learn a new one.
Re: Go Linux
They might be able to cut the licensing budget, but the support, training and engineering budgets would climb massively. And have you seen how many security patches there are for a Linux distribution these days? At least 10 times what Microsoft OSs require. All of those would need evaluating and deciding if they are relevant to the environment or not - you probably need a full time employee just for that...
Just look at Munich, it has cost them millions overs ten years of pain and they still havnt fully migrated off Windows onto Linux. Hence why they are pretty much the only large organisation to try to go in that direction...
Re: Go Linux
Munich is running at a massive loss if you include the full costs of the migration.
Re: Go Linux
I know what you mean.
It used to be that smoking fags used to be what everyone else did. It was hard being the one non-smoker, you were an outcast, derided by your peers.
Not so these days.
Someone has to be the first.
Quit your MS habit today, for the sake of your children.
Re: Go Linux
@AC 13:31 - typical FUD.
Bottom line - Munich have already saved 11 million euros! And in the future, with switching overhead over and done with, they will save even more even faster.
So I am not sure how saving 11 million euro's means they have gone over budget. They have saved money, how can that be over budget?
Ha ha ha ha ha you desperate AC microsoft apologists are hilarious!
Bottom line - a pubicly funded body saved a fortune of tax payers money by switching from Windows to Linux. And these days it would be much easier than when it was when Munich started porting, because both Linux and Libre / Open Office have improved dramatically in the mean time. Whilst Windows and MS get worse. (Ribbons, DRM, Metro, bloat).
Re: Go Linux
But it cost 50 million Euros in subsidies from IBM to be at that figure, and it has been over a decade at it still isnt finished. And a recent HP study placed the true cost excluding that IBM money at over 30 milllion Euros lost.
Hardly an attractive prospect to get people to adopt an Open Source platform - spend minus 30 million Euros (or minus 80 million in the real world) in a decade and still not be completed....
Fantastic, absolutely fantastic
So, Australia has a CTO, and there is also Glenn Archer, the Australian Government CIO, all together with LinkedIn entry.
Now what a sparkling example of a couterweight to the might of global IT suppliers! And look at the results:
Cost reduction through defragmentation; further cost cuttings by using open source software - may be a threat for now, but good tactic; throwing cold water over the latest craze; loudly attacking inflating prices for hardware
Fantastic - absolutely fantastic! Now, what can the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland announce and present in that respect:
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2013/01/08/tech_firms_avoiding_corp_tax/
Er...
Set up Switch-to-Open Source government projects
And implement them in a serious way.
By "moving" to open source, Governments then have a choice. Governments can then can accept increasingly large bribes that MS will offer them in "discounts" for delaying the transition to the open source alternatives (Linux desktop + Libre Office for many workers, say).
Alternatively the Governments can follow through and actually switch to the open source solutions. Munch council did this and saved 11 million euro's. It will continue to save money indefinitely now that it is free from having to pay MS licences. The TCO of linux based systems is lower than for MS based systems.
Corporations can do the same. The best way to cut your MS cost overheads is to move away from MS towards open source systems. Not everyone needs Excel-specific macro functions and those that do can run Excel within a VM. It's not rocket science.
Re: Set up Switch-to-Open Source government projects
A discount is not a bribe.
IBM contributed 50M euros to development of the Linux build for Munich in order to get it up to spec. Is that a bribe too? No, didn't think so.
Munich is not a good example - 10 years into their migration, it's still not finished and they've only saved 11M euros, so about 1.1 million a year. These are not hallmarks of a successful project.
If you're running Excel in a VM, you're still running Windows/Office, you've got an extra layer of hypervisor and more support skills required for the underlying OS as well as the Windows VM. I would agree that not everybody needs the vast majority of Excel specific functionality, but when you have a large userbase the chances are that most people will need something, at some point.
Re: Set up Switch-to-Open Source government projects
Re: Munich, as someone said earlier, this is a government project, so the fact that it even resulted in something is a huge succes. This was a first off at this level, and they even saved money immediately, let alone in the long run. Not being dependant on M$ extortion is a huge benefit for the future.
Re: Set up Switch-to-Open Source government projects
Yes that's a bribe. It might not be a direct brown envelope in the pocket, but very clearly it is money being thrown with the purpose of influencing a decision....
Re: Set up Switch-to-Open Source government projects
Windows is not a good example - its been around 20 years and its not finished.
And as for a large userbase requiring all the functions - no most people don't get past a few functions if that.
Most finance departments cant even get pivot tables working.
Re: Set up Switch-to-Open Source government projects
UNIX has been around much longer and it's still not finished either...
Re: Set up Switch-to-Open Source government projects
@Majorursa: "Re: Munich, as someone said earlier, this is a government project, so the fact that it even resulted in something is a huge succes"
That's a poor argument - I've seen many FOSS die hards claim that government projects only fail because of their reliance on MS, it can't be both, so which is it?
Could you also explain where MS extort? Bearing in mind that extortion is a criminal offence.
Re: Set up Switch-to-Open Source government projects
> That's a poor argument - I've seen many FOSS die hards claim that government projects only fail because of their reliance on MS, it can't be both, so which is it?
The reliance most often quoted is dependencies on outsiders, not internally.
As ever the issue is not dependency on Microsoft's software, it is on Microsoft's (until *very* recently proprietary) file formats. It is a mono-culture and as such is a bad deal for business and government.
Those deriding LO and OO often quote the lack of success in importing Microsoft's formats, but MS Office performs just as badly if not worse at importing ODF.
The issue is nothing to do with quality, it is to do with choice.
I have no objection to any company or government going with Microsoft software if they truly believe and can prove that it is the best choice. However, for many, that choice is based on the strangle hold that Microsoft holds on file formats. We need a freer market to drive down costs and improve quality and (hopefully) remove bloat in software which is the feature-bloat used to justify upgrades.
Re: Set up Switch-to-Open Source government projects
>However, for many, that choice is based on the strangle hold that Microsoft holds on file formats
And that is something the user community gave to them!
Back in the late 1980's much effort was put into various profiles eg. GOSIP, MAP/TOP. Whilst a major part of the battle in the 1980's was about network connectivity hence much focus on OSI (a problem for practical purposes solved by the summer of 1988), there was also significant effort being put into standardising Technical and Office file formats [Aside: there are many who believed that MAP/TOP should of ignored the network and the time consuming battles with the OSI purists and just focused on the file formats.] Which for various reasons just got left behind (or kicked into the long grass) as the world jumped on to the rapidly evolving proprietary file formats: Word, Excel, AutoCad etc. etc. which has resulted in the mess we have today.
Re: Set up Switch-to-Open Source government projects
The havnt really saved money. The actual cost to Munich council currently stands at circa €30 million as per a recent study - and that's not including the €50 million it cost in susidies from IBM to beat a Linux build into shape....
Sub-heading
"CTO John Sheridan wonders why anyone would upgrade Office again"
I couldn't see any mention of that in the article text. Was the relevant paragraph cut in editing or something?
Re: Sub-heading
On the basis that Office is a pretty damn good product already that makes sense.
Savings? Well when you are locked into the proprietary formats of Microsoft, it's really no savings at all. It's Microsofts intention to make it as expensive as possible to get off their software, all at the same time charging more for their products, even though many are technologically inferior to the competition.
You have the option of using open formats if you wish to even with Office. However no one does as everyone who is anyone uses Microsoft Office and there is therefore no point in doing this in the foreseeable future...
Can The Reg publish AC ip addresses please? :)
A definite trend in many Reg articles such as this is that at least when I read the comments most of the AC's appear to be pro Microsoft in one way or the other, often posting unsubstantial claims.
Could the reg start showing the addresses for AC's so we can see if they are from a handful of addresses or maybe do some sort of Top 10 of posters - using ips where no other info is available
Barnie
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