It's nice to read what open-source vendors think of open source: it's easy, cheap, and quite possibly the cure for cancer. (That last one is my personal hope.)
However, it's much more useful to get real customer feedback on open source. That's what makes Mercian Labels' shift to open source--with all the benefits and negatives that come with such a move--so intriguing. It's especially useful data, since the company meticulously tracked the highs and lows of its shift to open source on its blog, as its managing director, Adrian Steele, told me over e-mail.
In a summary of the process, which took more than a year, the company celebrates crossing the finish line:
For the first time, we have now shut down our old Windows servers and are now running every possible application we can on open-source platforms. The final "big switch" was done over Xmas by Rich and I, swapping all the main desktops for new Dell machines running Ubuntu 8.04 lts, and crucially the phone system from Trixbox.
But getting there was not easy. Among the problems include a wider-than-desirable variety of Linux distributions to support, file format support, and cost:
The cost of the migration has been significant, the vast majority in reprogramming and improving our old MS ACCESS MIS system into a web based framework. Short term pain, long term gain, it needed to be done for business continuity reasons, but its a cost that needs recognising.
The positives, however, apparently outweigh the negatives, among them:
- We have practically 100% compliance with software license conditions for everything we use in line with our values;
- Open source is, in our opinion, more reliable than windows, and often has better features than the comparable windows software...;
- We get lots of support from the FOSS community and are proud to be part of it.
- Ongoing cash license fees are low [including Zimbra, one of the main open-source products it uses]...;
- We have control of our IT investment future, and are not locked to one vendor with endless upgrade costs over years to come for MS OSs and the MS OFFICE packages.
This last one is the most overlooked benefit of open source, because it's hard to quantify in advance. Until you're out of the clutches of your vendor, it's hard to know in advance that they will raise prices. It's hard to know what your vendors' product decisions will mean for your preferred upgrade cycle; you may be forced to upgrade much sooner than you'd like, for instance. And so on.
Open source is not the solution to all IT problems, but it's an exceptional tool to solve some of its most nettlesome issues. That's what a small business like Mercian Labels discovered, and it's what many of the world's largest companies are also discovering.
Old Microsoft, meet new Microsoft. Best sit down, talk, and work out your story(ies) on open source and its TCO.
Mary Jo Foley points out that Microsoft has resurrected an old TCO study (December 2007), put some varnish on it, and is trotting it out like it's news. Why? Well, you can guess, as Mary Jo does:
So why is Microsoft touting it today? Perhaps due to the recession and desire by companies to find ways to cut costs by using more free software? Or maybe to counteract the press around a former Microsoft developer's new book celebrating the joys of open-source software? Or maybe it's just one more attempt by the Softies to bang the OOXML drum, given a fleeting reference in today's press release to a need to standardize around a single document format?
As Mary Jo goes on to note, Microsoft is within its rights to compete by fair means or foul, so long as it stays within the law. But I have to wonder why Microsoft bothers.
In many ways, Microsoft and open source are complementary forces: both have tended to wrong costs out of bloated markets. Microsoft arguably has additional benefits to offer, too, beyond what community-led open-source projects have traditionally provided, like exceptional developer tools and ease-of-use.
Maybe Microsoft's TCO study is a way for Microsoft to suggest that it doesn't like to lose any battle to open source, be it price or some other factor. Fair enough.
It's not as if Microsoft is alone in this. My own company, Alfresco, just released its own TCO study against Microsoft (and other ECM/collaboration vendors). If it's fair for us, it's fair for Microsoft. But at least we're using current information and data.
No, the only thing Microsoft has done "wrong" here is to send out contradictory messages on open source, which is somewhat normal for any large company, especially Microsoft, which has struggled to figure out what it wants from open source. Its primary message, especially in this economy, is going to be "kill open source," and maybe should be, given its need to serve short-term shareholder interests.
There are, however, signs of change in the company. Microsoft is embedding open source into its products. It is releasing open source as a core strategy for its CRM business. I'm therefore not too worried that Microsoft is having growing pains figuring out how to find a consistent story around open source.
If Microsoft is still recycling this same TCO study two years from now, then we have a problem...as would Microsoft.
(Credit:
Roy Schestowitz)
Microsoft has been a little quiet on the "independent TCO (total cost of ownership) study" front for at least a week now, so it is perhaps not surprising to see the company promoting a new TCO study comparing the cost of deploying Linux and Windows in emerging markets. Vital Wave Consulting, that paragon of research (no, I've never heard of it, either), published the study.
But who wrote it is somewhat immaterial here. The problem is that the research fails to acknowledge the biggest cost of working with Microsoft: the cost of exit.
First, to the research. As Microsoft's James Utzschneider, general manager of Marketing and Communications for Unlimited Potential (Microsoft's euphemism for emerging markets), suggests, the study reveals that Windows is more expensive to acquire but that the cost of Linux-savvy administrators offsets that expense, making it a financial wash over five years.
This may very well be true, but it misses the point, as noted. If the cost is the same, buy Linux. Linux doesn't come with a monopoly attached to it. Sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words, as this one provided by Roy Schestowitz does.
Microsoft, of course, has only dropped its prices to play catch-up with open-source pricing and to stave off piracy, piracy which company co-founder Bill Gates admits helps Microsoft as much as it hurts it in such markets.
About 3 million computers get sold every year in China, but people don't pay for the software. Someday they will, though. As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.
That Gates quote was taken from a 1998 article in Fortune, and should be enough to clearly describe why inbound acquisition cost is the wrong way to measure a financial decision to purchase Windows over Linux. Indentured servitude is not what most IT departments are looking for in an operating system.
In short, I believe Microsoft's sponsored TCO study may have many flaws, but only one that really matters: it overlooks the cost of buying a one-way ticket into Microsoft's walled garden. The cost of entry may in fact be quiet low. But what's the price of exit? Open source makes the cost of exit as close to free as the cost of entry is. It's a software development methodology and a CIO risk mitigation strategy, all rolled into one.
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