Re: [Marketing] [Fwd: [newsletter] MS lochs down Scots Police deal]
On Mon, 2005-08-15 at 09:20 -0400, swhiser wrote: Benjamin Horst wrote: Though a solitary wave recedes back into the ocean, it means nothing to the rising tide. Wishful thinking wrapped in denial. The first 10% was easy. They are working every SINGLE migrating account. They are trying to undo EVERYTHING. Which was always predictable. I mean, if I had loads of money and a monopoly, why wouldn't I try and preserve it? Its a classic and easily predictable pattern. Laugh at you, fight you, then you win (ghandi). Well, we are in the middle stage and the win bit remains to be seen but some things are worth fighting for. Certainly here in the UK there has never been as much interest in FLOSS in general and OOo is part of that bigger picture. There is no motivation for volunteers to compete. Give up! Sam, why are you doing this? I'm a volunteer and I'm motivated. I don't see any of the volunteers in my immediate circles not motivated. There are bound to be set backs, don't waste energy on these unless you can turn it to an advantage. -- Ian Lynch [EMAIL PROTECTED] ZMSL - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] [Fwd: [newsletter] MS lochs down Scots Police deal]
I have to agree, bringing people out for dinner cannot be considered bribery. I am in a non-tech distribution company and it is the way business is done. take them to dinner, play golf with them etc. its a great way to listen to what they need and you can discuss you solutions to them in those areas without being hassled. It cannot be considered bribery, what you are simply trying to do is to get their time. And in this article, it seems that Linux did not take its time to talk to the client. MS won this fairly. It simply means open source advocates need to work harder. Following this story, there is a need for better after sales service. Thats how MS won this. Charles On 8/15/05, Mark Harrison [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: - Original Message - From: Lars D. Noodén [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: OOo Marketing dev@marketing.openoffice.org Sent: Sunday, August 14, 2005 12:44 PM Subject: Re: [Marketing] [Fwd: [newsletter] MS lochs down Scots Police deal] Before it was a lobbying organization / political movement, MS was first and foremost a marketing company and still retains that expertise. So I'd expect that there was a fair amount of evening meetings involving all-expenses paid lavish dinners with MS representatives each and every evening preceding a meeting. Lars, Remember that they won this from a StarOffice customer - it would be interesting to compare the track records of MS and Sun in the matter of corporate entertainment. In a previous role, where I was on the end client side, I have been shmoosed be Sun on numerous occassions - they are not averse to the lavish dinner in any sense. As a client, it was a very useful opportunity to talk to them and explain what we were looking for. Every business case I've ever written for a technology strategy has been based around total cost / total value of ownership, and subject to rigorous strategy from the non-IT parts of the business. This idea that IT Directors have a carte blanche to recommend whoever buys the best dinner is completely out of touch. If nothing else, every organisation I've ever worked for has a strict policy that corporate hospitality must be declared, so everyone KNOWS who's been taking the IT Director out to dinner/rugby/opera/whatever. Now I'm a consultant, my own expense account is not short of expensive restaurants as I sell OpenSource solutions! Is it bribery - NO! Does it give me a far better opportunity to LISTEN to my customers and work out what kind of pitch would be succesful - hell yes! You get far more over dinner than you do in a month's worth of weekly one-hour meetings. One of my personal bugbears, by the way, is the subsection of the OpenSource community who go around assuming that every Microsoft gain must be due to underhand tactics. I've bought (and sold) MS solutions many times, and bought (and sold) OpenSource solutions many times - each has a place - and the key to sales is understanding the individual customers requirement, not trying to beat them over the head with rhetoric. Aren't there any privacy laws in the UK? The MS EULAs for 2000 SP3 and XP SP1 grant admin rights to MS. That's a back door by any other name and given MS' track record on security, it's accessible to more than just MS. Are you seriously under the impression that big companies take Windows PCs and stick them on the Internet? Any large scale rollout of ANY platform involves a defence-in-depth security strategy that assumes that ANY product has weaknesses, whether it's MS, Sun, IBM, or Linux. John McCreesh has already posted an intelligent and informed analysis of why this contract might have gone to MS. I'm sorry if this has come over as a rant, BUT the biggest criticism I hear of the OpenSource movement among my corporate clients - people who could change over tens of thousands of desktops if they wanted to - is that the OpenSource movement is full of people who want them to buy because Microsoft is Evil, and aren't prepared to have a discussion about the business requirements they have beyond the perceived need that they have a moral responsiblity to fight evil! I kid you not, the people I deal with use phrases like I don't want to have a religious debate, because of how the some in the OpenSource community tend to portray the alternatives. Mark - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] [Fwd: [newsletter] MS lochs down Scots Police deal]
As I wrote before, but may not have come across so clearly is that there are many factors in the Central Scotland case. However, I still have the feeling that technological obstacles were not at the bottom of this. One fact which is certainly an influence is the change of directors during the course of the project, which John McCreesh mentioned in another message. However, many IT Directors go for the company with the best sales pitch without actually going for an independent analysis. We're still really only getting the MS party line on that and can't do much more than (unproductive) speculation without info from an insider. It would help, though to see a copy of the actual report. The article itself only contains two negative claims, both terribly vague and both filter through the MS rep. 1) What were the actual reasons for staff not being able to file remotely? Recalcitrant MCSEs can easily monkey wrench such activities, though there were probably other factors. Staff with ties to MS win big points for contributing to a failure of the migration. 2) On what did they base the claims of disproportionate support costs? That runs contrary to everything I have observed since 1998 when I realized that MS was being a real problem. To get anything out of the case, it would be necessary to see what really happened in the report and from the Star Office staff involved. I have the feeling that technological obstacles were not at the bottom of this. On Sun, 14 Aug 2005, Mark Harrison wrote: This idea that IT Directors have a carte blanche to recommend whoever buys the best dinner is completely out of touch. If nothing else, every organisation I've ever worked for has a strict policy that corporate hospitality must be declared, so everyone KNOWS who's been taking the IT Director out to dinner/rugby/opera/whatever. Mark, it works on several levels. The IT Director can *recommend* whoever they want and I stand by my statement. However, they are not the only link in the chain. It's not necessary to lay it on too thick on any one level: There is certainly influence, via *their* contacts with MS, on the IT staff reporting to the IT director. They're a way to feed ideas and false rumors (e.g. against Novell) so that when the IT director checks with his staff, they confirm what he heard from the MS pitch. Or, if the sales team is not making progress, they can do an end run around the obstacle and go to his boss or a senior exec in another department and point out the 'grievous mistake' that is about to be made. CYA style career middle managers fear this critique and quickly assume the position. It worked for IBM. It works for MS. I have seen where IT directors have admitted that MS products are problematic, fail to perform, cost too much, etc. I have seen them agree to the metrics and the results. I have seen even their most die-hard MS fanbois also confirm the data presented. And I have seen both groups confirm that MS products don't come anywhere meeting the criteria specified for the activity for which they are used. However, at the end of the day they put in another order for MS even though they freely admit that it does not meet the criteria. Many other places simply have had a core group of MS fans maneuver over time into key positions and they simply will not even hear of looking at any sort of non-MS product, be it closed source or open source. Approaching the whole mess as if it were simply marketing is rather naive in this day and age. MS operates as a political movement or ideology. I agree with Charles that it would be useful to get to the bottom of the Central Scotland. A case study like that would clarify the current tactics and methods. -Lars Lars Nooden ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Software patents harm all Net-based business, write your MEP: http://wwwdb.europarl.eu.int/ep6/owa/p_meps2.repartition?ilg=EN - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] [Fwd: [newsletter] MS lochs down Scots Police deal]
On Sun, 14 Aug 2005, Charles-H.Schulz wrote: certainly yes. But I'm reading the official reasons the Scottish police had to migrate back to MS and I have some trouble seeing only fake reasons to it. It seems that somebody didn't do his/her job at catering the Scottish Police StarOffice users in their daily use and (even more important) the overall change management of the office suite infrastructure. I don't see *only* fake reasons, but I am saying that they are going to be there in a big way. Any slips are likely to go poorly, since MS execs have mandated that staff not lose ANY customers to open source. Related to that is the fact that MS seems to be on the back foot right now. SO and OOo can really gain further ground at this point, if things can be handled better. Not only is MS having to fight OOo and SO, since it's already trying to push MS-Office, it will also be fighting its older versions of MSO. There has been very little uptake of MSO2003, around 15 %, which is far lower than what they've needed in the past to leverage market share of the new format into sales. With so little uptake, that's got to be hurting their bottom line in a big way: MS-Windows and MS-Office are its only cash cows, the rest loses money and the whole juggernaut depends on those two to keep alive. MS-Office is the most fragile, because less than 68% of sales come from OEMs, the remainder is presumably people being forced along by file format incompatibilities, once the new versions gain enough market share -- which is not happening. That's compounding the desperation. So it is important to find some way to keep OOo / SO in the news (in a positive way). -Lars Lars Nooden ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Software patents harm all Net-based business, write your MEP: http://wwwdb.europarl.eu.int/ep6/owa/p_meps2.repartition?ilg=EN - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] [Fwd: [newsletter] MS lochs down Scots Police deal]
Hello Mark, John, all On Sun, 2005-08-14 at 21:05 +0100, Mark Harrison wrote: - Original Message - From: Lars D. Noodén [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: OOo Marketing dev@marketing.openoffice.org Sent: Sunday, August 14, 2005 12:44 PM Subject: Re: [Marketing] [Fwd: [newsletter] MS lochs down Scots Police deal] Before it was a lobbying organization / political movement, MS was first and foremost a marketing company and still retains that expertise. So I'd expect that there was a fair amount of evening meetings involving all-expenses paid lavish dinners with MS representatives each and every evening preceding a meeting. Lars, Remember that they won this from a StarOffice customer - it would be interesting to compare the track records of MS and Sun in the matter of corporate entertainment. In a previous role, where I was on the end client side, I have been shmoosed be Sun on numerous occassions - they are not averse to the lavish dinner in any sense. As a client, it was a very useful opportunity to talk to them and explain what we were looking for. Every business case I've ever written for a technology strategy has been based around total cost / total value of ownership, and subject to rigorous strategy from the non-IT parts of the business. This idea that IT Directors have a carte blanche to recommend whoever buys the best dinner is completely out of touch. If nothing else, every organisation I've ever worked for has a strict policy that corporate hospitality must be declared, so everyone KNOWS who's been taking the IT Director out to dinner/rugby/opera/whatever. Now I'm a consultant, my own expense account is not short of expensive restaurants as I sell OpenSource solutions! Is it bribery - NO! Does it give me a far better opportunity to LISTEN to my customers and work out what kind of pitch would be succesful - hell yes! You get far more over dinner than you do in a month's worth of weekly one-hour meetings. One of my personal bugbears, by the way, is the subsection of the OpenSource community who go around assuming that every Microsoft gain must be due to underhand tactics. I've bought (and sold) MS solutions many times, and bought (and sold) OpenSource solutions many times - each has a place - and the key to sales is understanding the individual customers requirement, not trying to beat them over the head with rhetoric. Aren't there any privacy laws in the UK? The MS EULAs for 2000 SP3 and XP SP1 grant admin rights to MS. That's a back door by any other name and given MS' track record on security, it's accessible to more than just MS. Are you seriously under the impression that big companies take Windows PCs and stick them on the Internet? Any large scale rollout of ANY platform involves a defence-in-depth security strategy that assumes that ANY product has weaknesses, whether it's MS, Sun, IBM, or Linux. John McCreesh has already posted an intelligent and informed analysis of why this contract might have gone to MS. thanks to you and John for this answer. What you say of course makes sense. My own experience with all this just makes me say two things. Aside NOT knowing the geography of Scotland at all I'd like to point out that: -somebody who is part of the Central Scotland Police IT suppliers didn't make his job at better taking care of the integration of StarOffice inside the police IT infrastructure. I still believe that this migration could have been avoided, but that is just my humble opinion as I do not know the customer's precise need and problems. -I don't think that MS wins customers by bribery, and most of the time it wins them through a good sales pitch. But what MS does is frighten the customer of all kinds of things, and for some key accounts it may bribe them, but I have no evidence of that. So what MS does usually (and I saw that myself)is to bring 10 sales reps on the table and pressure the customer. NB: MS is not the only one to do this. I'm sorry if this has come over as a rant, BUT the biggest criticism I hear of the OpenSource movement among my corporate clients - people who could change over tens of thousands of desktops if they wanted to - is that the OpenSource movement is full of people who want them to buy because Microsoft is Evil, and aren't prepared to have a discussion about the business requirements they have beyond the perceived need that they have a moral responsiblity to fight evil! I kid you not, the people I deal with use phrases like I don't want to have a religious debate, because of how the some in the OpenSource community tend to portray the alternatives. I think that we should not forget that the FLOSS movement is several things to many people, and among them, some can take it as a philosophical movement. Nonetheless, meeting a customer and selling him FLOSS solutions should not imply any religious speech, because we're only competing on the true products merits. We can
Re: [Marketing] [Fwd: [newsletter] MS lochs down Scots Police deal]
Though a solitary wave recedes back into the ocean, it means nothing to the rising tide. - He Jieming --- The Tiny Guide to OpenOffice.org now available! http://www.solidoffice.com/tinyguide/ Free Culture and Open Source: www.solidoffice.com - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] [Fwd: [newsletter] MS lochs down Scots Police deal]
Mark Harrison wrote: I'm sorry if this has come over as a rant, BUT the biggest criticism I hear of the OpenSource movement among my corporate clients - people who could change over tens of thousands of desktops if they wanted to - is that the OpenSource movement is full of people who want them to buy because Microsoft is Evil, and aren't prepared to have a discussion about the business requirements they have beyond the perceived need that they have a moral responsiblity to fight evil! I kid you not, the people I deal with use phrases like I don't want to have a religious debate, because of how the some in the OpenSource community tend to portray the alternatives. At the risk of being too ironic, amen! I get this a lot, myself. The impression really comes off as being one that open source supporters are so partisan about anything anti-Microsoft that they are blind to some of the real advantages offered by some Microsoft products. It's like trying to watch the news on one of the evangelical Christian stations here in the States; the political agenda is such a distraction that it overrides any sense of objectivity, and without objectivity there is no credibility. -- Steven Shelton Twilight Media Design www.TwilightMD.com www.GLOAMING.us - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] [Fwd: [newsletter] MS lochs down Scots Police deal]
Benjamin Horst wrote: Though a solitary wave recedes back into the ocean, it means nothing to the rising tide. Wishful thinking wrapped in denial. The first 10% was easy. They are working every SINGLE migrating account. They are trying to undo EVERYTHING. There is no motivation for volunteers to compete. Give up! -Sam - He Jieming --- The Tiny Guide to OpenOffice.org now available! http://www.solidoffice.com/tinyguide/ Free Culture and Open Source: www.solidoffice.com - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] [Fwd: [newsletter] MS lochs down Scots Police deal]
Journals are just not doing benchmarks or product reviews anymore, so it gets harder to find anything published that's less than a warmed over press release. Though their review of digital photo editing tools was egregious and heading a step in the direction of MS only product reviews, I think it would be a coup to get OOo, StarOffice, Hancom, and others reviewed by Consumer Reports. Or how about pooling resources or at least coordinating with other groups using OpenDocument? A lot of farmers do this, e.g. dairy council. On Mon, 15 Aug 2005, Steven Shelton wrote: I get this a lot, myself. The impression really comes off as being one that open source supporters are so partisan about anything anti-Microsoft that they are blind to some of the real advantages offered by some Microsoft products. I've seen far more of the opposite. A few MS die-hards work their way into the bureacracy at a company, agency or institution and then turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to anything non-Microsoft be it closed source or open source. That goes even after agreed upon in advance methodology show data which by agreed upon in advance critera show the MS products to be the least viable for that given context. [snip] without objectivity there is no credibility. This is true, but there are relatively few objective sources any more. Pretty much everyone has already either 1) been burned badly by MS' defects or pricing or 2) pine away for a chance to meet Chairman Bill who is so wealthy. Brand recognition cuts both ways. If you make inefficient, defective products and over-charge for them and engage in illegal / predatory business practices (all established facts) for a long enough time, eventually people will remember. -Lars Lars Nooden ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Software patents harm all Net-based business, write your MEP: http://wwwdb.europarl.eu.int/ep6/owa/p_meps2.repartition?ilg=EN - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] [Fwd: [newsletter] MS lochs down Scots Police deal]
On Mon, 2005-08-15 at 09:12 -0400, Steven Shelton wrote: the political agenda is such a distraction that it overrides any sense of objectivity, and without objectivity there is no credibility. And there was me thinking that politics was the art of presenting opinion as objective fact ;-) -- Ian Lynch [EMAIL PROTECTED] ZMSL - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] [Fwd: [newsletter] MS lochs down Scots Police deal]
Before it was a lobbying organization / political movement, MS was first and foremost a marketing company and still retains that expertise. So I'd expect that there was a fair amount of evening meetings involving all-expenses paid lavish dinners with MS representatives each and every evening preceding a meeting. MS oriented vendors might have also refused to sell hardware for evaluation of other systems as well. Who know? We'd need an insider or close observer to sayhow things went down. Aren't there any privacy laws in the UK? The MS EULAs for 2000 SP3 and XP SP1 grant admin rights to MS. That's a back door by any other name and given MS' track record on security, it's accessible to more than just MS. ALso, 2003 is heavy on the DRM stuff. That means vendor lock-in for e-mail and office documents as well as the ability to track which individual officers/departments are working with whom, since the DRM server must grant or deny actions like opening, printing, editing, etc. -Lars Lars Nooden ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Software patents harm all Net-based business, write your MEP: http://wwwdb.europarl.eu.int/ep6/owa/p_meps2.repartition?ilg=EN On Sun, 14 Aug 2005, Charles-H.Schulz wrote: Hi, I'd be interested in having your opinions on this MS victory. I'm sure we can learn from our failures (although that was Sun who was the provider here) in this case. Any idea? Does somebody have more info on this? John? Ian? Thanks, Charles. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] [Fwd: [newsletter] MS lochs down Scots Police deal]
Hi, On Sun, 2005-08-14 at 07:44 -0400, Lars D. Noodén wrote: Before it was a lobbying organization / political movement, MS was first and foremost a marketing company and still retains that expertise. So I'd expect that there was a fair amount of evening meetings involving all-expenses paid lavish dinners with MS representatives each and every evening preceding a meeting. MS oriented vendors might have also refused to sell hardware for evaluation of other systems as well. Who know? We'd need an insider or close observer to sayhow things went down. certainly yes. But I'm reading the official reasons the Scottish police had to migrate back to MS and I have some trouble seeing only fake reasons to it. It seems that somebody didn't do his/her job at catering the Scottish Police StarOffice users in their daily use and (even more important) the overall change management of the office suite infrastructure. I'm not trying to throw stones away to people but still I feel like these guys have been on their own for the time they've been using StarOffice. It feels like the Scottish police had trouble not just using StarOffice but also integrating it in their overall IT infrastructure. What the MS sales reps did seem to do however, was taking the right approach by answering real questions (with biased answers) and showing that there would be somebody in charge at MS for this customer. Aren't there any privacy laws in the UK? The MS EULAs for 2000 SP3 and XP SP1 grant admin rights to MS. That's a back door by any other name and given MS' track record on security, it's accessible to more than just MS. ALso, 2003 is heavy on the DRM stuff. That means vendor lock-in for e-mail and office documents as well as the ability to track which individual officers/departments are working with whom, since the DRM server must grant or deny actions like opening, printing, editing, etc. This is where things start to get interesting. This customer is the Scottish Police; not a candy retailer. They certainly have some very sensitive data on their documents or somewhere on their servers and they'd let MS Office 2003 and XP, that is, an alien company take control over their data? Now think about that one: Sun has some manufacturing plan in Scotland. What SO/OOo offers is invaluable: a truly open document file format; and besides, by buying at Sun you help foster the local economy. I can't imagine the Scottish police CIO/IT director being lavishly bribed by MS. It's way too simple, and there must be other reasons to this drawback. Best, Charles. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] [Fwd: [newsletter] MS lochs down Scots Police deal]
On Sun, 2005-08-14 at 12:40 +0200, Charles-H.Schulz wrote: Hi, I'd be interested in having your opinions on this MS victory. I'm sure we can learn from our failures (although that was Sun who was the provider here) in this case. Any idea? Does somebody have more info on this? John? Ian? I last spoke to Jim Jarvie back in October 2002 (the driving force behind open-source in the Central Scotland Police). From memory, he had the usual mix of Linux on servers and a few hundred desktops with MS-Windows and Star Office. His successor, David Stirling has reached a different conclusion as to the value of Star Office on the desktop - but then no-one ever got fired for buying Microsoft. John - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] [Fwd: [newsletter] MS lochs down Scots Police deal]
On Sun, 2005-08-14 at 13:57 +0200, Charles-H.Schulz wrote: [snip] This is where things start to get interesting. This customer is the Scottish Police; not a candy retailer. They certainly have some very sensitive data on their documents or somewhere on their servers and they'd let MS Office 2003 and XP, that is, an alien company take control over their data? Now think about that one: Sun has some manufacturing plan in Scotland. What SO/OOo offers is invaluable: a truly open document file format; and besides, by buying at Sun you help foster the local economy. I can't imagine the Scottish police CIO/IT director being lavishly bribed by MS. It's way too simple, and there must be other reasons to this drawback. It was Central Scotland Police - just one of the police authorities within Scotland. I'm not sure of their exact geographic boundaries but it probably does include Sun's facility at Linlithgow. Sun wouldn't view them as a particularly large account though. The UK police forces have traditionally been very protective of their independence, including their IT departments. This has led to some very public failures of communication in recent high-profile cases. So put yourself in David Stirling's position - you're the new boss and you find your department is running something different on the desktop to every other force in the UK. It's not a question of bribery - the cut-price deal for MS software has already been signed with the OGC (a central UK government purchasing body). All you have to do is sign up - a simple piece of risk mitigation. If there are issues with MS - OGC takes the blame. If there are issues with SO - or one of your officers emails an urgent document in .odt format instead of .doc and some other police force calls foul - then it's your neck on the line. Classic risk mitigation, I'm afraid. David won't get fired for choosing MS. John - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] [Fwd: [newsletter] MS lochs down Scots Police deal]
- Original Message - From: Lars D. Noodén [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: OOo Marketing dev@marketing.openoffice.org Sent: Sunday, August 14, 2005 12:44 PM Subject: Re: [Marketing] [Fwd: [newsletter] MS lochs down Scots Police deal] Before it was a lobbying organization / political movement, MS was first and foremost a marketing company and still retains that expertise. So I'd expect that there was a fair amount of evening meetings involving all-expenses paid lavish dinners with MS representatives each and every evening preceding a meeting. Lars, Remember that they won this from a StarOffice customer - it would be interesting to compare the track records of MS and Sun in the matter of corporate entertainment. In a previous role, where I was on the end client side, I have been shmoosed be Sun on numerous occassions - they are not averse to the lavish dinner in any sense. As a client, it was a very useful opportunity to talk to them and explain what we were looking for. Every business case I've ever written for a technology strategy has been based around total cost / total value of ownership, and subject to rigorous strategy from the non-IT parts of the business. This idea that IT Directors have a carte blanche to recommend whoever buys the best dinner is completely out of touch. If nothing else, every organisation I've ever worked for has a strict policy that corporate hospitality must be declared, so everyone KNOWS who's been taking the IT Director out to dinner/rugby/opera/whatever. Now I'm a consultant, my own expense account is not short of expensive restaurants as I sell OpenSource solutions! Is it bribery - NO! Does it give me a far better opportunity to LISTEN to my customers and work out what kind of pitch would be succesful - hell yes! You get far more over dinner than you do in a month's worth of weekly one-hour meetings. One of my personal bugbears, by the way, is the subsection of the OpenSource community who go around assuming that every Microsoft gain must be due to underhand tactics. I've bought (and sold) MS solutions many times, and bought (and sold) OpenSource solutions many times - each has a place - and the key to sales is understanding the individual customers requirement, not trying to beat them over the head with rhetoric. Aren't there any privacy laws in the UK? The MS EULAs for 2000 SP3 and XP SP1 grant admin rights to MS. That's a back door by any other name and given MS' track record on security, it's accessible to more than just MS. Are you seriously under the impression that big companies take Windows PCs and stick them on the Internet? Any large scale rollout of ANY platform involves a defence-in-depth security strategy that assumes that ANY product has weaknesses, whether it's MS, Sun, IBM, or Linux. John McCreesh has already posted an intelligent and informed analysis of why this contract might have gone to MS. I'm sorry if this has come over as a rant, BUT the biggest criticism I hear of the OpenSource movement among my corporate clients - people who could change over tens of thousands of desktops if they wanted to - is that the OpenSource movement is full of people who want them to buy because Microsoft is Evil, and aren't prepared to have a discussion about the business requirements they have beyond the perceived need that they have a moral responsiblity to fight evil! I kid you not, the people I deal with use phrases like I don't want to have a religious debate, because of how the some in the OpenSource community tend to portray the alternatives. Mark - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] [Fwd: [newsletter] MS lochs down Scots Police deal]
On Sun, 2005-08-14 at 17:20 +0100, John McCreesh wrote: On Sun, 2005-08-14 at 12:40 +0200, Charles-H.Schulz wrote: Hi, I'd be interested in having your opinions on this MS victory. I'm sure we can learn from our failures (although that was Sun who was the provider here) in this case. Any idea? Does somebody have more info on this? John? Ian? I last spoke to Jim Jarvie back in October 2002 (the driving force behind open-source in the Central Scotland Police). From memory, he had the usual mix of Linux on servers and a few hundred desktops with MS-Windows and Star Office. His successor, David Stirling has reached a different conclusion as to the value of Star Office on the desktop - but then no-one ever got fired for buying Microsoft. I wouldn't get too down about MS wooing people back. We recently had a customer go back to MS from linux but MS had to give them everything for free and we made some money migrating them back. We'll be there to make some more money migrating them back to Linux at some point in the future :-) Seriously, this is going to happen a lot more, but in the long run OOo will just keep getting better and remain free so while there will be a lot of turbulence along the way the pressure is in one direction. -- Ian Lynch [EMAIL PROTECTED] ZMSL - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
