By Graeme Wearden, 16 August 2004 17:25
NEWS Officials at the London Borough of Newham have denied they had faked an interest in deploying Linux to force Microsoft to dramatically cut its licensing costs.
Speaking at an event to launch a partnership between Newham and Microsoft, Richard Steel - Newham Council's head of ICT - insisted that a recent assessment of the various merits of Windows and open source had been fair and above board.
"We weren't playing around. We gave Linux a very serious look," Steel said. Microsoft has said that Newham can look forward to saving £3.2m over five years thanks to this new deal, under which it will deploy 12 different Microsoft products ranging from Office 2003 Professional to SQL Server 2000. Tablet PCs are also being trialled by the borough's social services arm.
The software giant is now citing Newham as proof that its software can deliver greater value than Linux.
But open source advocates claim that Microsoft made massive concessions to avoid the council taking the open-source road. The phrase "doing a Newham" has even been coined, to describe the act of threatening Microsoft with a defection to Linux in order to drive licence fees down.
Speaking at a press conference on Monday, Steel acknowledged that the competition from Linux had helped to get it a better deal from Microsoft.
"You'd be insane to think otherwise," Steel said.
Consultancy firm Capgemini examined Microsoft's proposed solution last year and concluded that it was a better bet than the open-source proposal submitted by netproject, another consultancy.
Leslie Burr, Capgemini executive consultant, told the press conference that "open-source software has more security issues" than Microsoft's software.
"We established that Microsoft had invested considerable time and energy into the security of their systems," Burr said.
Given the torrent of viruses, worms and Trojans that are taking advantage of security vulnerabilities in Windows, it is surprising to hear Microsoft billed as a particularly secure choice.
Many of these pieces of malware use holes in Internet Explorer. Steel, though, didn't accept that he'd sleep better at night if Newham Council was using Mozilla, the open-source browser.
"I have technical people to worry about that," said Steel.
Graeme Wearden writes for ZDNet UK
Comments
There are 14 comments. Join the discussion
1. Richard Barrington
I kept looking to the date of this article thinking it must be April 1!
Still, if you're Microsoft with $50 billion in the bank it can be any date you want it to be...
PS
Just what does "he who pays the piper calls the tune" mean?
PPS
Given the ongoing re-negotiation of the OGC Microsoft MOU, would it be reasonable to assume that the prices paid by Newham will be the starting point?
PPPS
Of course I would say the above, I'm IT literate and a tax payer (Oh and work for Sun Microsystems )
2. Michael Fischer
Steel had better start worrying himself if he accepts 'independent' advice regarding Microsoft from a from a company whose website promotes headlines like 'Capgemini and Microsoft Expand Global Alliance', celebrating the expansion of their 7 year relationship promoting Microsoft solutions. What does Steel expect to hear?
(July 20, 2004) URI:
http://www.nl.capgemini.com/actueel/nieuwspers/2004/juli/capgemini+and+microsoft+expand+global+alliance.htm
His technical people cannot fix the staggering number of security issues with Windows regardless of how much they worry. And, given Capgemini's other speciality, out-sourcing, they might just be worried about other things.
3. Nic Jordan
"We established that Microsoft had invested considerable time and energy into the security of their systems,"
- Well they had too didn't they!....Windows is/was full of security holes so it took them ages and cost them a fortune to attempt to plug them !!
4. Jeremy Chatfield
Where can we see the report?
This is your (my) tax payments at work. Local government typically is given at least 75% of it's income from national taxation. I want to see this report.
5. Linus T.
I would post a comment, but I can't stop laughing.
6. anonymous
The only security holes in Linux are the ones you choose to put there. Windows forces you to install its flaws, Linux gives you the chance to read about them and decide which ones you can live with.
As for costs, Windows seems to allow you to employ cheaper staff until you realise that 2 Unix admins at 30K cost less than 10 Windows ones at 20K.
This whole debate is utter madness. It all depends on whether you want technical control over what your servers are doing or you trust a supplier to do it for you. The larger your IT function, the more beneficial an in-house *nix operation will be.
7. Alex McLintock
Leslie Burr, Capgemini executive consultant, told the press conference that "open-source software has more security issues" than Microsoft's software
How did he figure that one out? fewer security patches released by Microsoft than Open Source does not mean fewer security issues. It just means that Microsoft don't tell you about them.
8. Alex McLintock
The next story in the Silicon.com newsletter was this
"XP Service Pack 2 kills over 40 programs"
Who needs to worry about lax security when Microsoft itself will stop your system working.
9. anonymous
Ok I'm not a great fan of the power base MS has no company should be able to wield that sort of power. I seem to have missed the articles in the news about all these flaws being exploited and legions of businesses in serious trouble, I think to a point the flaws from MS are being over exaggerated by alot of people who probably are a little jealous of the amount of money the "No. 1 techie" has made. Granted flaws are flaws but how many have actually been exploited, example, how many Nokia Users with Bluetooth have actually had all their contacts ripped off or abused.
Linux is great for servers and the few that like that level of control, most want an easy to use system that doesn't scare them and frankly so do I as I know it's the only way mass adoption of technology is gonna happen.
Lots of products have faults when they come off the production line, cars get recalled, mobile phones get s/w patches, my cooker even had a flaw that was repaired by an engineer for free, it happens everywhere we just pick on MS as they have larger saturation of products.
I personally would not like to see the government change it's systems to Linux as I'm not prepared to foot the bill for another IT project that overruns it's allotted time and budget.
Project Management needs serious addressing all over the world, in particular those that do government projects, all these sort of things have a knock on effect. The power base needs to be balanced not shifted another way only to encounter a whole new raft of problems.
10. P Nikolic
It Is high time we stopped pussy footing about on this issue once and for all i could not give a monkeys F*** about who says what except for one thing it is universeally (SP) know that Linux is so far ahead of M$ Corp as far as security goes there aint no challenge so why these councils keep insistin on payin M$ Corp with our UK Tax payers money and getting away with it just makes no sense except for one thing i wonder how big the BACK HANDERS ARE hefty oyu can bet maybe there needs to be an investigation into where/what these Council hiups do/go and are they spending more than they earn you can bet they are .
Either that or they are bieng run by a bunch of brain dead mouse jockeys .
11. anonymous
Maybe I misread this. Is the company that did the evaluation, Capgemini, the same company that just made a US$50m deal with Microsoft?
See http://www.computerworld.idg.com.au/index.php/id;1980155694;fp;16;fpid;0
12. Julio McTavish
There is a difference between "Linux" vs. "Windows" and "Linux" vs. "MS".
When you compare apples to apples (Linux OS to Windows OS), perhaps Linux IS more secure.
But that's not what they're talking about. They talking about MS vs. Open source solutions (Windows/Office/SQLServer, etc. vs. (something like) Linux/MySQL/StarOffice, etc.)
"Open Source" is more than just Linux. Who's got the details on how secure MySQL is, or how about Star Office, how about whatever other little Open-Source utility that ends up being needed as Middle-ware to connect all these Open source programs by different creators?
When you can't get your database made in program X to work with server Y who do you call? Company X or Y? How much time/money is wasted when one company simply blames the other?
Then it turns out you need middleware C to connect A to B, and C is written by two guys on the other side of the world who don't have time or resources to write proper documentation.
Some of you people need to get beyond the Windows vs. Linux fight and appropriate some experience in dealing with enterprise size setups before you open your yaps bashing things you don't understand.
13. George Mitchell
Or perceived lax Linux security? After all, there is a whole lot of subjectivity on both sides of this OS debate. My personal perception is the the truth will ultimately be established in the trenchs of business and government. The big hacks and infections will make front page tech news and wide publicity to the victimized OS. And as more and more agressive Linux deployments are launched it will be ever more difficult to assert that Windows suffers more attacks simply because of its ubiquity. There is a real competitive game going on here and corporate and government IT people will be paying attention to performance as well as politics as they plan their software deployments. And when it comes to performance, I am quite confident personally that Linux and all of its free software application payload will be able to cut the mustard. Over the next five years or so we will all find out whether Microsoft is up to the challenge. The eventual outcome will likely make or break their OS business.
14. Michael Fischer
re: McTavish - Security is the issue
This thread arose because of a claim regarding security issues favouring Microsoft Windows over Linux, derived from a report by Capgemini, a long time affiliate of Microsoft. McTavish is correct that Windows is not Microsoft, Linux is not Open Source. However, where security is concerned, Microsoft has not often been seen as the champion, even by Microsoft. Windows is an inherently insecure system. Software that runs under Windows is likewise insecure. This is not meant as an insult. It was designed that way to encourage automation. Unfortunately Microsoft was not thinking of networks when they finally got Windows off the ground. And thus they have an architecture that needs radical revision before it is safe to use in any institutional environment.
While the more or less complete shift to the NT model helps a lot, this is still less than perfect, because the underlying concepts are the same. NT mainly achieves internal security between competing processes, but has all the interprocess pathways remaining in the original Windows architecture. Thus it remains externally insecure.
It is this insecurity that has led to an unacceptible number of downtime due to viruses, trojans, and just general mischief of external breakinging and manipulation.