MS Windows the cheaper option: City Council pulled the plug on its £535,000 Linux open-source pilot

Criticism is mounting over the termination of a large-scale Linux project in
Birmingham.
As reported earlier this week, Birmingham City Council pulled the plug on
its £535,000 open-source pilot after its analysis concluded that it was
cheaper to upgrade to a Microsoft-based platform than proceed with open
source.

The council planned to roll out Linux software and applications on 1,500
desktops in libraries across the city, but in the end it got no further than
a 200-desktop project. Several industry watchers have voiced their concerns
about the project, particularly around the number of PCs rolled out.
Birmingham's expenditure averaged over £2,500 per PC.

Microsoft's head of platform strategy, Nick McGrath, would not be drawn on
the specifics of the Birmingham project, but he said: "I would always
recommend that the customer took solid analysis, whether it is for
commercial or non-commercial software. But with Linux and open-source
software, free is just not the case. There is support and there is
maintenance, in the same way as there is with Microsoft."

McGrath added that there were significantly more IT professionals with the
skills to support Windows systems, compared with open-source alternatives.
"The skills required to own and manage open-source technology are more
challenging," he said.

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39284758,00.htm

 

£535,000 over 1500 machines comes to £356.66, or in NZ dollars $1016.

That is NZ$7100+, love to see how they worked that one out.

 

It looks like they divided the total amount by the 200 they did
install -> "it got no further than a 200-desktop project".

What confuses me though, if all they were doing was installing open
source equivalents of MS software, then surely it should cost no more
in man hours to install this than it would be to upgrade all those
machines to the more recent versions of MS software, assuming they had
to install the software on a machine by machine basis.

 

The actual number of pcs rolled out was just 200 instead of the
budgeted 1500. So 535,000 divided by 200 = 2675, or about NZ$7600.
Nice work if you can get it.

 

Linux to me is only useful if you neglect to account for your time.
I have a Mac and run Parallels on it. Setting up XP on it was dead easy
and I am no windows person by a long shot, however trying to get linux
to work was a nightmare and I ended up giving up (Ubuntu, Suse).

What I thought I would do is get the free linux version of RealBasic to
play with rather than get the education version for Mac OSX at $105.
However, by the time I take into account my time I have easily wasted
the $105 in my time already, it would have been cheaper for me to buy a
product that simply works.

And there lies the crux of the matter, it is cheaper time wise to use XP
on these machine as that is also what their customers are used to,
therefore there are zero retraining costs associated with it.

 

Here's a story with a bit more detail
http://society.guardian.co.uk/e-public/story/0,,1786068,00.html

OpenForum Europe and the Institute for IT Training, two of the partners
in the Open Source Academy project, have started Certified Open, a
scheme to collect information on what operating systems and application
software are required by specialist local government software. Graham
Taylor, director of OpenForum Europe, says that buying specialist
software can lead councils to suffer "hidden lock-in".

This hit Birmingham city council's attempt to move 134 library staff to
a full set of open source software, including SuSE's Linux operating
system, OpenOffice 2.0 and web-browser Firefox. The city's library
management software, Galaxy, works only on Microsoft Windows. DS, the
supplier, was prepared to produce a Linux version, but this would have
taken too long and cost too much for the trial.

Les Timms, IT manager at the city's IT provider, Service Birmingham,
says niche suppliers understandably focus on their area of expertise
rather than on providing software for multiple operating systems. Staff
have stayed with Microsoft Windows XP, although they have moved fairly
smoothly to OpenOffice 2.0.

The city also had mixed results with public access computers: after
trials in three libraries, it is making 130 all open source, although 66
used for education will use Windows and OpenOffice 2.0.

 

Fair comments. Of course, it all depends what you're used to using.

For me, it would be faster to install a desktop using Linux than
Windows, simply because a) I know what I'm doing when it comes to Linux
and b) it installs almost all the software I need in the 30 minutes or
so it takes to run the installer. After installing XP I still need to
install all the software I need, like an office suite etc. In both
cases I'm going to mess around after the install getting the desktop
working the way I want it.

For other people, moving from Windows to Linux, or Windows to Mac or
whatever else, is more difficult because they don't know where to find
everything and the way the GUI works is a little different between each
OS. Also it can be trickier getting some hardware to work on different
operating systems. For a lot of people it's more or less impossible to
even think about installing an OS... fortunately for them, PCs come
preinstalled and unfortunately for some of us they have children who
end up having to support them ;p

I still believe Linux has a long way to go but it's getting there as
more hardware vendors start making drivers etc for Linux.

 

Doesn't sound like the same project. Or is it? 1500 desktops, 134
desktops -- that's quite a difference. If the 134 figure is right,
then the projected costs were high to begin with. Are you saying then
that the project was canned because they couldn't get a Linux version
of a key application written? And that no one one looked into that
*before* the trial began?

 

The idea that staying with Dimdows and Microsoft Office means no time cost
is a myth. Look at this item
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6165124.stm> about the prospects for
users upgrading to Office 2007--there're going to be major retraining costs
and time involved. Also note that OpenOffice has already got 10% of the
total office-software market--hardly an insignificant chunk.

 

I had never said I was a windows user either....

 

Here's somebody else who IS switching to Linux:
<http://theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=35994>.

 

So ?

 

All sounds bunk to me, PC's for Library applications, lets see, Browser
for general internet access and presumably some Librarian database
application that is most likely (or should be) HTTP based, and perhaps
printing access.

Assuming it is a HTTP based database then wheres the cost differenc
eitherway?

So where is the money, you cant spend that much money eitherway Linux
or MS for a basic PC that has a tied down (ie content restricted )
browser.

Seems its just incompentent financials and project managment that
killed this one.

by the way I sit at four pcs in my office, two MS, two Linux, both have
there positives, not to sure which has more, depends on the day Im
having.

Cyril

 

Wow, someone switches to Linux and it makes front page news?

Your desperation is showing.

 

Most people that actually use both say the same thing, but try telling
the Zealots (that have either not used Windows for years, or don't
know anything about Linux).

 

Actually I think its MS's desperation...but there you go.

regards

Thing

 

So the fact that Linux users all celebrate when one person changes to
Linux, makes front page news, and people feel they have to post it on
Usenet is actually MS's deperation??

You may want to consider opening your other eye.