back to article 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 …

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  1. N2
    Trollface

    Excellent

    Thats all.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Excellent

      I too have nothing to say on this story but would like a gold badge. Go gamification!!

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Excellent

        Comments just to get a badge? Have a down vote from me

      2. Rampant Spaniel
        Facepalm

        Re: Badge

        You do know posts ( and their upvotes) as anonymous Noels don't count towards bronze and silver right :)

      3. Gray Ham Bronze badge
        Pint

        Re: Excellent

        5 people with sense of humour failures .... it must be Monday.

  2. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

    What savings can they expect to see...

    ...by publicly announcing "we will not consider any alternative vendors." Hmm...

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. Androgynous Crackwhore
      Holmes

      Re: What savings can they expect to see...

      Quite. I wonder if anything besides publicly defaming (F)OSS actually contributed at all to these savings. Hmm...

      Unashamedly spewing MS marketing crap like "...replacement for Office may also hamper innovation and productivity..." endorsed with a gov. rubber stamp won't have happened by accident.

      1. Rick Giles
        Linux

        Re: What savings can they expect to see...

        Me thinks John Sheridan must be getting a kick back of some sorts. This is just the kind of crap that MS wants spread around.

        I'm not so disillusion that I don't think switching to (F)OSS would not be a PITA just because of the stranglehold MS has on the business environment. It's going to take a company that has a CIO with big brass balls to make the change and lead the way. Unfortunately, I have yet to find such a CIO as they are mostly whimpering simpletons that really have no business operating a light switch, let alone a computer.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Devil

        Re: What savings can they expect to see...

        The USA's own backdoor babe, Microsoft Orifice?

        NOT land the contract in the 53rd state of the USA, with our grubby shit mongering public servants and politicians.

        Surely this is not possible.

        They should all upgrade back to Win 3.11 and Office 2003, for the next 20 years.

        And LibreOffice - and it's lack of FONT EMBEDDING - technically while I really DO like the software, all it is, is really a knock off joke without FONT EMBEDDING.

        Some 200,000 english fonts in the real world, they have about 50 of them....

        Create a great work, presentation, book, poster, graphics, engineering drawings with artwork, using all your own FREE fonts or commercially licensed fonts - and then transfer your own work off your own machine, to another without those font sets, and the LibreOffice and Open Office software does a shit fit called font substitution and there goes ALL of your work.

        The layouts, the fonts, the margins, the letter, line and word spacing.... all defaults from Cosmos 3 TTF etc., to Arial 12 point.

        What a fuck up - and they are all in there kissing the Free Software Foundations arse, because these idiots wrote the standard, and did not include FONT EMBEDDING, so none of the numbskulls making the LibreOffice or Open Office software, include FONT EMBEDDING either.....

        Which makes the software fucking useless.

    3. S4qFBxkFFg

      Re: What savings can they expect to see...

      Remove the "alternative" and it might have worked...

    4. Vehlin

      Re: What savings can they expect to see...

      Vendors != Products.

      Office is mainly sold by resellers if you have a big enough order you can get the reseller to cut you a deal, if they don't you go to another reseller who will. If I decide to buy a certain model of car I can still shop around for a better deal, changing vendor but not product.

      They could even cut a deal directly with MS to cut out the middleman, MS makes the money either way and the Aus Government gets to to as if it were a reseller itself.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: What savings can they expect to see...

        I have the distinct impression that the resellers don't get much of a markup - certainly I never see more than minimal discounts offered on retail sales. One of the things I've always been baffled by is that a government organization can put out a tender for a specific software product made by the likes of Microsoft or Adobe, and this is considered to be a fully competitive process. But if you try and buy something that is only available from a single vendor, you have to move heaven and earth and, for good measure, get God to pitch in with both hands. It is really perverse how procurement rules supposedly designed to promote competition have the effect of locking one into a single product.

        1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

          Re: Reseller Markup

          I think eGeek is (technically) a reseller for MS software. (I'm pretty sure I did the paperwork at some point...)

          The markup isn't enough for me to give fucks about it. It doesn't drop the cost for my clients of retail by much, so I only bust it out if buying in enough quantity to be worth digging up the e-mail that reminds me what horrid ring of fuckosity is required to be followed to get hold of the damned licences in the first place.

          Same with Office 365. Oh, I *can* sell Office 365 - I think I have a customer still on it - and get some bent pittance back my way in terms of kickback off the subscription price...but is that razor thin amount of money worth screwing over my customer? I'd rather make sure I get the best product for thier needs - which in the case of email is explicitly never Office 365 - than try to cling to an additional point or two of margin on Microsoft's coattails. My long term customer relationships are (quite frankly) worth more to me than the short-term relationship with Microsoft.

          Besides, if I ever came up with a decent business model focused around Microsoft's software, Microsoft would take it away from me. Then they'd sue me for something to make doubly sure I couldn't compete. I've learned better than to see being a Microsoft Partner as anything other than a very narrow means to a very specific end.

          It is not an ecosystem sane people become to deeply embedded within. At least not sane people in it for more than the next quarter...

  3. The Dim View
    Holmes

    Free Is Good

    Apparently Australian bureaucraps are not familiar with Open Office

    1. DavidRa
      Paris Hilton

      Re: Free Is Good

      Because OpenOffice is a complete and perfect replacement for Microsoft Office, right? It never gets formatting wrong, understands all the existing 15 year old templates (across Word, Excel, PPT), includes a mail program people actually like (Outlook replacement) which talks Exchange, does offline caching and integrates with the email archive? And Excel formulas are all present with the same names, parameters and results?

      And there's no chance LibreOffice or OpenOffice would be unable to create and edit documents using Rights Management Services? And it also works with the appropriate DMS (which is usually a fragile set of poorly written and undocumented macros which often needs updates even for Office service packs, let alone completely different products)?

      Sorry, but while OO and LO are great for some people, they're not there yet for everybody.

      Even Paris knows the above...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        FAIL

        Re: Free Is Good

        I think you might miss a point.

        {LO|AOO} !== MSO.

        IT is odd in the modern world in that there is a ridiculous near monopoly maintained world wide.

        Imagine if your car had to be a Ford and painted black, unless you were one of those identical rugged individualists who run their white coloured Fords on very expensive hot air or your were a beardie who distils their own fuel for their ...

        Well you get the idea. It is insane that we as members of a global society allow such restrictions to flourish and even encourage them through ignorance, laziness or whatever excuse we don't even bother to conceive of because that is the status quo.

        With your answer you indicate - to me at least - that you are the kind of person who can't be arsed to think for yourself and are happy to live in this sad state of affairs.

        Nice use of sarcasm though.

        Cheers

        Jon

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Free Is Good @gerdesj

          "With your answer you indicate - to me at least - that you are the kind of person who can't be arsed to think for yourself and are happy to live in this sad state of affairs."

          As opposed to your JBINM argument, hmm? And I thought the FOSS fans had grown out of the if-you-don't-agree-with-me-you're-stupid argument. Thank God for free thinkers such as yourself. Your well-reasoned points always put us normals back on track.

        2. Tom 7

          Re: Free Is Good

          To use the car analogy - why does everyone have to pay for a track day car when the 30 year old ford escort does as good a job of sitting in queues?

          The wonderful thing about software is it doesn’t wear out - you have to physically destroy it.

          In almost every company I've worked for only a couple of people have 'needed' any of the improvements to office - the others could have got away with Office Reader for the new versions output and Office95 for their work.

          95% of office communication is in something not much more demanding than twitter - it doesn’t need gigabytes of disk space to run.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Free Is Good

            @Tom 7 - Software does wear out, for instance you can't run Windows 3.1 on modern hardware.

            Anyway, thanks for demonstrating that car analogies to IT rarely work. I still don't know why they're so popular though.

            1. Tom 7

              Re: Free Is Good

              AC 13:09 You might not be able to run 3.1 on modern hardware but then I guess you are MS trained.

              1. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                Re: Free Is Good

                @Tom 7 - You can't natively run DOS/Win311 on current hardware. You can do it through a hypervisor (sometimes) but not on the bare metal.

                I happen to be most things trained, UNIXes, Linux, Windows, Mac OS, etc. I don't limit myself to one OS and then hope that people will think I'm knowledgeable by slagging everything else off as much as I can.

            2. Roland6 Silver badge

              Re: Free Is Good

              >you can't run Windows 3.1 on modern hardware.

              Yes you can, but installing it in a VM is less hassle ...

            3. david bates

              Re: Free Is Good

              Are you quite sure?

              I thought you could, at the very least, virtualise it.

      2. Denarius

        Re: Free Is Good@DavidRa

        David, your second para makes the best point for the opposition perfectly. Any product that requires macro rrewites after a service pack is ripe for decommissioning. And do M$ products have 15 year compatibility ?

        1. DavidRa

          Re: Free Is Good @Denarius

          I didn't intend to say macro rewrites - if that's what you read then I apologise. The reality is though that templates written in Office 95 and Office 97 continue to work for the most part in Office 2010 and Office 2013. So that's a pretty good compat record. (And yes, there ARE things that break and those things are documented). Plus you get a minimum of 5 years support for Office (Office 2007 only just left support). How long is that version of LO/OO/SO (collectively $NEWOFFICE) going to be supported until you're told "Oh that's in $NEWVERSION, you'll have to upgrade". And how much is that pro support going to cost compared to the free MS cases that Enterprises get?

          The problem is when you move to $NEWOFFICE it's not a tweak, it's a complete rewrite - assuming that the new product even has the right hooks and triggers for macros.

          As for throwing away ... er ... replacing the DMS - let's look at that option.

          1. Find a new multi-million $ DMS that works with $NEWOFFICE.

          2. Write or port all functionality from $OLDDMS to $NEWDMS

          3. Migrate all content, version info etc from $OLDDMS to $NEWDMS

          4. Run both side by side for 10 years because no-one has the cojones to decomm the old one.

          5. ???

          6. Rewrite macros and integration for each new version of $NEWOFFICE.

          It's really not that much better is it - even assuming you can find this near-mythical $NEWDMS?

          1. Mike Pellatt
            FAIL

            Re: Free Is Good @Denarius

            I will observe that whilst the things that break in M$ Office between releases may well be documented, you need a brain the size of a planet to determine which (if any) of these changes might impact your systems. In which case, the "upgrade" is in reality as much effort as a new product.

            And please, can someone explain to me why the Office UI at Office 2007 and beyond completely ignores the UI standards of Windows ?? Why it's interface is utterly different from, say, Internet Explorer, let alone Office 2003 ?? If the Ribbon was the way forward, it should have become the Windows UI standard and ALL apps should have been updated. Otherwise, don't make the change. Human factors 101.

            And my immediate PITA - why does Office 2010 OEM not have downgrade rights ??...

          2. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge

            Re: Free Is Good @DavidRa

            Thanks for explaining why LO doesn't meet your needs. I use LO myself and have always struggled to see where it comes up short. But now I understand the problems some people of have.

      3. Rampant Spaniel

        Re: Free Is Good

        Theres always

        http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_trksid=p5197.m570.l1313&_nkw=lotus+smartsuite&_sacat=0&_from=R40

        $10 a shot is decent!

      4. ps2os2
        FAIL

        Re: Free Is Good

        And you think MS is any better?

        I think you have misplaced 20 or years of MS exposure.

      5. BillG
        Paris Hilton

        Re: Free Is Good

        Just buy MS Office 2000 for $20 and download the free MS Office Compatibility Pack.

        Now you've got a cheap office suite with no compatibility issues.

      6. John Sanders
        Linux

        Re: Free Is Good

        "It never gets formatting wrong"

        in your irony you missed to include 'when opening old documents made in MS Office'

        Because you probably know that when using LibreOffice with its own native formats never messes up the formatting.

        And if you migrate to another office suite why wouldn't the helpdesk/IT keep a copy of office to aid in the conversion process?

        You know, like fixing the formatting (Usually because the person who did the original did not format it correctly) and saving it as native.

      7. oldcoder

        Re: Free Is Good

        LO is at least as good as MS office... if not better.

        It doesn't screw up earlier documents... and MS office does.

        MS office screws up its own files for that matter, and it also screws up older MS office files from earlier versions.

      8. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Free Is Good

        And Microsoft Office never gets the formatting wrong lol LO and OO have their issues but please do not white wash MS issues

      9. Anonymous Coward
        Devil

        Re: Free Is Good

        Yeah and LibreOffice and Open Office DO not have FONT EMBEDDING either...

        Despite the relative merits of the software, if you use any one of the 200,000 other fonts in the english world, in your work, besides the 50 or so in the "Libre Office" suite, your work immediately becomes NON transferrable to any other machine without those font's, your work is NOT of an archival grade etc., etc., etc.

        The committees - the Free Software Foundation, and Libre Office and the almost expired Open Office, are full of shit.

        Without FONT EMBEDDING - the product, commercially, educationally and more or less beyond just personally, it is utterly WORTHLESS.

        And the numbskulls on these committees just don't get it.

    2. BlueGreen

      Re: Free Is Good @The Dim View

      Here's why: "as big bang upgrades are costly and complex".

      Add to which LO isn't as good as MS office, regrettably. Not yet anyway.

      1. Rampant Spaniel

        Re: Free Is Good @The Dim View

        LO\OO are alright, but not really fully fledged alternatives yet (although they can be ok depending on your needs and I hope they continue to get better) but seriously these folks need to get on fleabay and buy a shed load of office 2007 or 2003 and just use them forever. MS haven't really added much by way of features that you seriously need since then.

        I also don't like on principal the new idea of forcing people onto subscriptions by making normal licences as restrictive as possible. If you are finding that a cashcow isn't as attractive anymore (like office) then forcing people onto subscriptions is an admission you don't have new ideas that people want. Maybe it would bring in more money overall if they simply dropped the price to the point where it was less of an issue for people and make it back in overall volume.

        1. Rol

          Re: Free Is Good @The Dim View

          Using "old" software forever works just fine until you encounter the ever burgeoning growth in "new" formats.

          Once the software house has dropped all pretence of support for your product the obsolescence clock starts ticking down to its eventual demise.

          Sure, in-house work goes on unabated, but when your clients start passing you work saved using the latest shiny thing, you're stuck.

          I use Office 2000 and am acutely aware of its limitations, that's why I also use a gamut of free-ware alternatives to massage the latest evolutionary abominations back to usable formats, with, I might add, no loss of detail, so showing the new format is just another scam to get you on the upgrade path.

        2. Glen Turner 666

          Re: Free Is Good @The Dim View

          That might have been an accurate view five years ago, but LibreOffice these days is solid (I wrote a book using it, the publisher didn't even notice that I wasn't using MS Office).

          What LibreOffice needs to do now is to get ahead of Office. Office has always had half-arsed templates; its flowing of inserted drawings is just bizarre; its graphs are PR-oriented toys; presentations are overly constrained to MS's layout; it treats meta-data as a incidental; and it doesn't play well with others.

          The LO user interface needs work -- the colour selection is a user interface disaster. But in general it is solid.

          The SVG import in LO has improved a lot, and this makes it very easy to pull vector images into documents and presentations. LO is still the simplest way to produce a PDF.

    3. Denarius
      Meh

      Re: Free Is Good

      Some are. Many are not, mostly PHBs who work with the (surprise, surprise) USA based oursourcers who especially cant think of alternatives, because of contract conditions. Having suffered thru the change to Orifice 2010, Open Office and brethren are much easier to migrate to IMHO. Finally, this is a country \with a leadership convinced they need to be a colony. Does not matter who, old Poms, Older USA centric and still many true believers in the old USSR. So nothing that might annoy the home country can be considered. {S}

      The true cynic has noted that word 2.x and Excel 3 do 80% of whats required in clerkland still.

    4. Ole Juul

      Re: Free Is Good

      And free of formatting would be even better. It seems that the formatting takes considerable precedence over content. Once upon a time government documents were judged on their content, now it seems that is less the case, and I for one would like to see text files mandated for all government use. Yes, I'm serious. It's time to get rid of all those amateur typesetter wannabes.

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Free Is Good

      LO might not be quite there yet but my Missus works for an "org" that has shed loads of MS Publisher docs and she needed to work on them on a Mac, after faffing about with VMs and Wine installs, enter LibreOffice 4! Loaded the manky old Pub docs in perfectly formatted. LO might not be a perfect substitute just yet, I know it has some niggles but it's certainly helping people with old doc formats that MS couldn't give a rat's arse about any more!

      Hate to break to you FOSS haters but there are some out here who simply want to get work done and are not looking to replace the latest MSO with the latest OO/LO, due to lack of money or bad decisions made by precessors in certains jobs, FOSS is helping to keep the world ticking over and keep people working.

    6. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Free Is Good

      Apparently they ARE familiar with Open Office: "using open source software is not his preferred tactic, as big bang upgrades are costly and complex. A mandated replacement for Office may also hamper innovation and productivity"

      1. Mike Pellatt
        FAIL

        Re: Free Is Good

        You seem to miss the point I made up there (yet to receive any downvotes....), which was that upgrading MS Office is, in practice, no different from a complete change of package - i.e., a "big bang" upgrade. So that argument is moot, unless you plan on never upgrading MS Office.

  4. banjomike
    FAIL

    ...(Apps) selected and sourced by staff

    ...that can be deleted at a moments notice, and for no reason, by the iTunes police. VERY intelligent planning.

  5. jubtastic1
    WTF?

    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.

    1. mathew42
      Linux

      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?

    2. Roland6 Silver badge

      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.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Thumb Up

      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

      1. Roland6 Silver badge

        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.

        1. Androgynous Crackwhore
          Boffin

          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?

  6. Steven Roper
    Coat

    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...

    1. Brad Ackerman
      Mushroom

      Re: John Sheridan, eh?

      If you want to negotiate with Microsoft, it must help to bring the Starkiller.

    2. Securitymoose

      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)

    3. Francis Boyle Silver badge

      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.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    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?

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Meh

    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.

  9. e8hffff

    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.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      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.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Go Linux

        Munich is running at a massive loss if you include the full costs of the migration.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      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...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Holmes

        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.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    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...

  11. This post has been deleted by its author

  12. Beritknight

    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?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Sub-heading

      On the basis that Office is a pretty damn good product already that makes sense.

  13. MrRtd
    FAIL

    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.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      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...

  14. Barnie
    WTF?

    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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