By Andy McCue, 10 July 2007 11:53
NEWS
Property asset management company Capital & Regional is evaluating Linux desktops and Apple Macs as a way to reduce its dependency on Microsoft.
The company has around 700 PC users and currently runs Windows XP Pro and Office XP Pro but its CIO Richard Snooks has hit out at Microsoft's aggressive licensing policies.
In an interview with silicon.com, Snooks said: "We are feeling the pinch of the aggressive revenue targets of Microsoft. We are asking ourselves, 'are they [Microsoft] fit for our business?'."
In particular, Snooks isn't convinced by the arguments for upgrading to Microsoft's latest Windows operating system Vista and is actively looking at alternatives, including a small trial of a Suse Linux desktop inside the IT department.
He said: "I feel we are being railroaded and the market generally forced into a corner or even a cul-de-sac. In a free market we have made Microsoft dominant and now we have the collective responsibility to reverse this situation to re-establish balance and competition. If I am being driven down the Vista route then an Apple Mac is smarter money and cheaper."
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Snooks said the browser-based cash tills at Capital & Regional's leisure outlets - which include the Milton Keynes Sno!Zone and The Mall shopping centres - could potentially run on Suse Linux with a Firefox browser, while Apple Macs may be a better alternative to Windows PCs.
A Microsoft spokeswoman said the company offers a range of licensing agreements for different business needs and cited security and energy-efficiency as benefits of moving to Vista.
She told silicon.com: "Vista is the most secure, reliable and flexible OS available from Microsoft and is easy and cost-effective to deploy and maintain. The reduced complexity facilitates maintenance and support, which allows IT management time to be deployed more effectively elsewhere and the in-depth security ensures protection of sensitive data at all times."
Comments
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1. anonymous
"She told silicon.com: "Vista is the most secure, reliable and flexible OS available from Microsoft and is easy and cost-effective to deploy and maintain."
How about that Vista is the only OS available from Microsoft. Hmmmm....
2. Tom B
These days, with Vista such a disaster and the Mac better than ever, we will be hearing CIO's talking about upgrading from Windows to Mac. For some, the goal will be to get a special deal from MSFT. In a few more years, people will actually start dumping Windows in earnest, as Apple's server-side products look increasingly compelling and get infused with 64-bit goodness (OS 10.5) -- a feature MSFT has only delivered in a half-baked manner.
3. anonymous
So, do we smell another company trying to get MS to provide massive discounts to keep them 'in the fold'??
4. anonymous
Anyone with any sense already used a Mac.
5. zahadum
This CIO is to be commended for doing what most F500 CFO's refuse to due out of ignorance or fear: demand a rational accounting of the wintel "investment" using proper metrics like TCO & ROI.
However, he is profoundly mistaken about the cause of the problem: it is NOT free markets; just the opposite!
windows did NOT become a dominant force on the desktop because customers freely choose to buy it!
as the DOJ lawsuit firmly established, microsoft broke the law at almost every turn to eliminate competition that was technically superior to it .... to the detriment of its customers.
estimates of the damages (due to lost productivity, increased inefficiency, stifled innovation, misallocation of capital, higher prices) are staggering - $100B is a VERY conservative figure. The true figure of the hidden costs over the last 10-20 years might exceed $1000 per user.
So yes ... while I do agree that CIO's now have a (belated) responsibility to correct their complicity in what has amounted to the cyberspace version of ethnic cleansing .... it would be the grossest kind of historical revisionism to play dumb & say "the free market did it".
As for his pilot .... here is my two cents: he will that the best value for money is to picks macs ... at least they can also run legacy apps (linux & windows) as well as the line of business stuff on osx.
6. anonymous
Microsoft spokeswoman really said that about Vista? Obviously she doesn't use it.
Vista is a mess. To gain minimal internet experience you have to shut down almost all security functions, or lots of sites won't work.
Network setup is a pain. XP was better in this (just imagine).
Most of my clients ask to downgrade to XP as they discover scarce compatibility of Vista with older apps.
A mess.
7. ReginaldW
Operating systems by themselves do nothing, other than seperate the application from the computer hardware. It is the application that does the work and makes the OS worth something.
With the increasing number of applications being written for OSX, the Mac OS becomes a better alternative. With the move to Intel processors and the ability of a Mac to run OSX and Windows and Linux and Solaris and BSD and whatever else, Macintosh computers allow the user to run whatever application they want to, thus making it easier for the user and improving Apple's marketshare.
Microsoft writes software that is so-so. It isn't the best of what exists, but it usually gets the job done, sometimes with user screaming and ranting, but it is a known quantity. As Windows was such a dominant OS due to a number of reasons, defaulting to Windows and MS products was easy.
It is a different story now and will be for some time to come. We do live in interesting times, and the times they are a changing.
8. anonymous
Finally, people are waking up to the facts. Apple has always been a better solution, even in the 'beleagured' days. They brought nearly all the innovation to the industry. It was laughable to hear MS talk about innovation in it's series of ads awhile back, I think even the PC diehards saw that.
Microsoft has been great at building and leveraging their monopoly. But compared to Apple, they are not even a technology company. Ditto for any of the PC manufacturers--they don't really DO anything. The only real innovation in the 'PC' industry is with the chip makers such as Intel, AMD, ATI, nVidia, etc...
Now that Apple's are actually less expensive than some similar and yet painfully generic PC hardware, and they are open to any OS, things are going to change vastly for the better. It's just going to take awhile for people to catch on.
People thought Apple was nuts to let users run windows, but I applaud them for having the conviction of knowing that their OS is better.
Windows is destined to be merely a layer in the Mac OS. Just wait until this fall when Leopard ships. It's going to rip the guts out of Windows.
Microsoft will do well for awhile. But they are definitely on the decline. What options do they have really? Sure, they are trying to change the game again, changing document formats just as open source programers finally get these proprietary formats figurred out, using Exchange to tie peolple to their OS, etc... but they are in the end going to completely lose control of the industry.
9. anonymous
Funny that their website runs under IIS (WIndows)
10. Roger Huffadine
I'm writing this on an Apple Mac - for me a Mac with OSX is a robust platform. Folk say Apple applications cost more - BUT they don't 'cos you don't have to pay HUGE support bills associated with MS - software written for OSX WORKS [you get what you pay for :) ] I have used microprocessors since they were first invented and MS have NEVER written any robust code. Unix [underlying OSX] is robust and secure. sadly whilst I enjoy everything that I do with my Mac - I spend huge amounts of time sorting out MS products for friends, family & cash strapped businesses. I could work full time just sorting out MS software without having tossers like Orange rolling out useless implementations of Broadband. One REAL skill shortage that is hurting the UK is the lack of skill @ MS in Redmond - it must cost UK businesses £billions in support fees.
11. Richard Marshall
"This is the strongest, most tear-proof and bendiest thing we have ever made," said a spokeswoman from the Acme Wet Paper Bag Co.
And "Vista is the most secure, reliable and flexible OS available from Microsoft," she added as if to emphasise her point.
12. Cheezmonkey
I don't think that MS spokeswoman has ever actually tried to use Vista. She certainly hasn't had to troubleshoot it...
13. Mike Ross
Brought up on a Fortune (remember them?) with Unix - got a pile of work done. Then spent 15 years trying to get something equal out of a PC - well, it sort of worked, dribs and drabs, spent ages trying to fix faults in hardware and cope with awful install proceedures. Now Iv'e got a Mac, and Widows XP and 98 -and it all works and it installed itself and I'm getting some work done again. Pity about '92 to '07.
14. Henry
The real stranglehold Microsoft has is not Windows but the Office Pro suite and they know it. Employees and IT staff demand Word, Excel and Powerpoint running on Windows (it is all they know). At SME companies there are millions of VB and Access coders. MS Access is the only game in town as smaller companies can not support enterprise databases and applications. The future could swing Apple's way now that many Linux apps are being ported to OSX. All we have to do is get people to start using Open Office and MySQL.