In May, the city of Munich decided to switch to Linux from Windows. Microsoft had agreed to upgrade for $23.7 million and the Linux deal was worth $35.7 million. Still why they decided to go with Linux for their desktop machines ? USA Today has an behind the scenes look at what went on.
Though Microsoft underbid IBM and SuSE by $11.9 million in Munich, city officials were concerned about the unpredictable long-run cost of Microsoft upgrades, says Munich council member Christine Strobl, who championed the switch to Linux. And the more Microsoft discounted, the more it underscored the notion that as a sole supplier, Microsoft could -- and has been -- naming its own price, she says.
''What's striking about the Munich deal is the use of Linux on the desktop,'' says Paul DeGroot, tech industry analyst at research firm Directions on Microsoft. ''It's a threat to Microsoft's real source of strength, the desktop, where it has no competition and is used to winning all sorts of battles.''
Comments (2)
Well after all that they are deciding to use M$ Office Suite and other application using VMWare.
Posted by Srijith | July 22, 2003 6:21 PM
Posted on July 22, 2003 18:21
The resason for using MS Office is that most of the public still uses it. Though, the open-source equivalent (OpenOffice) is a neat product, it still has problem reading Microsoft documents. I am sure this will change shortly.
The main reason why many governments are switching to Linux is security. One has the option of verifying every line of code that goes in to your OS before you run it.
L.
Posted by L. | July 23, 2003 4:04 AM
Posted on July 23, 2003 04:04