Re: [ossig] Microsoft Transaction server

[Dinesh Nair <dinesh@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 13/11/2004 08:17 BIGrat said the following:
> mostly FUD from a local MS vendor.  the pointy-haired boss was told
> that the TCO of the M$ solution was approx 50% of the OSS solution. 
> note that the OSS solution was proposed by a certain High Priced mnc
> vendor; hence the disfavoured price comparison.

can't a TCO which favoured OSS be shown instead ? if the hardware's the 
same (or lower in OSS), and as you mention the inhouse tech folk are OSS 
aware, then it should be a clearcut cost difference in licensing alone.

> their techies reacted negatively towards M$ and the pointy-haired boss
> wants a presentation pointing out the specific technical merits as
> compared with the M$ solution.  i've worked with this company for a

the problem with this is that the packaging of the solution would be more 
attractive from MS, even if it were just technical merits. for PHBs, a 
bunch of posts or mailing list messages does not cut it compared to glossy 
brochures and gartner/idc/forrester white papers.

however, as a counter to that, you could use from the following:

http://www.dwheeler.com/oss_fs_why.html
http://www.it-analysis.com/article.php?articleid=12182
http://www.mitre.org/work/tech_papers/tech_papers_01/kenwood_software/

in a previous life, i used the mitre study to convince some folk in MoF 
about OSS investments.

you could also point out adoption rates from netcraft's monthly surveys and 
pull down a number of high profile open source case studies to back this 
up. search on google for "OSS case study" or "open source case study".

> the certain High Price vendor DO NOT have the interest to push OSS but
> instead have told the Pointy-Haired (PH) boss that they can also offer
> the MS solution!  yeap... real committment here...  ;-)

none of them do, they're mere box pushers. the High Price vendor is not 
alone either, it's the same with the other two and three letter acronymed 
companies as well. for all these folk, the malaysian sales & marketing team 
are clueless about open source and quite frankly do not care for it. they 
are only concerned with shipping boxes and the margins they can make from 
it. ditto for the one hundred and one "resellers" who jump on the OSS 
bandwagon.

> the battlefield has shifted from one of cost to technical merits.

cost is never gone from the table, it's just pushed aside to be brought up 
at a later point.

-- 
Regards,                           /\_/\   "All dogs go to heaven."
dinesh@alphaque.com                (0 0)    http://www.alphaque.com/
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