It is hard competing with the world’s largest software company, but it can seem virtually impossible when even giving away your products is deemed too expensive. That is the point made by UK government Chief Information Officer for Hampshire Jos Creese and it throws a spotlight on the huge challenge faced by any company trying to compete with a giant likeMicrosoft MSFT +0.53% or Apple AAPL -0.73%.
“We use Microsoft [and] each time we’ve looked at open source for desktop and costed it out, Microsoft has proved cheaper,” said Creese in an interview with Computing. “Microsoft has been flexible and helpful in the way we apply their products to improve the operation of our frontline services, and this helps to de-risk ongoing cost. The point is that the true cost is in the total cost of ownership and exploitation, not just the licence cost.”
Creese isn’t alone. While OpenSource.com gives an example of the adoption of open source software within the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) it admits the US government does not actively champion open source over proprietary Mac and PC solutions. This despite a government report that said tests prove Ubuntu 12.04 is more secure than both Windows and Mac OS. The US and UK governments have also publicly advised users switch from Internet Explorer after a security flaw blew holes in all versions of Windows which forced Microsoft to issue a dedicated patch to save XP after its support cut-off date in April.
Meanwhile hypocrisy abounds as both the US and UK governments have also agreed ‘survival deals’ with Microsoft to continue support for their PCs running Windows XP.
Hoping to change attitudes is UK cabinet office minister Francis Maude (pictured below), who is championing the adoption of open source software in government. Maude claims the UK could save “tens of millions” of pounds per year by ditching proprietary software and said roughly £200m ($340m) has been spent on Microsoft Office alone since 2010.
“The software we use in government is still supplied by just a few large companies. A tiny oligopoly dominates the marketplace,” argues Maude. “I want to see a greater range of software used, so civil servants have access to the information they need and can get their work done without having to buy a particular brand of software… We weren’t just missing out on innovation, we were paying top dollar for yesterday’s technology.”
Maude says some progress is being made: “One great example of the potential from small businesses was when we re-tendered a hosting contract. The incumbent big supplier bid £4m; a UK-based small business offered to do it for £60,000. We saved taxpayers a whopping 98.5%.”
Francis Maude (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Creese though defends his position saying “I don’t have a dogma about open source over Microsoft, but proprietary solutions – from Microsoft, SAP toOracle ORCL -0.46% and others – need to justify themselves and to work doubly hard to have flexible business models to help us further our aims.”
Creese also warns that using smaller companies isn’t always practical. “There’s a huge dependency for a large organisation using a small organisation. [You need] to be mindful of the risk that they can’t handle the scale and complexity or that the product may need adaptation to work with our infrastructure… A niche application is sensible in some areas, but you need to plan your exit strategy. If you go for a small supplier because you want to support SMEs and you’re not mindful of the risks, you may end up with difficulties later. If we are the larger clients of a small company and it gets into difficulty, what happens if they can’t sustain a system that schools are depending on?”
It is a valid claim, but coupled with the fact Microsoft also recently cut the price of Windows 8.1 by 70% to low cost computers and made Windows Phone 8 free on all sub 9-inch devices it shows the price war ahead. Of course it isn’t just Microsoft. Google GOOGL +0.35% – arguably Microsoft’s biggest rival – has long given away much of its software and services in exchange for access to aspects of user data.
“The point here is that you can have some policy objectives around how you’d like to see technology change in the public sector, wanting to make sure small suppliers don’t get squeezed out, and not having dependency on proprietary software where open source can do the same at lower cost,” concludes Creese. “But you need to do what’s best for the taxpayer, and sometimes that means a space can only be fuelled by a large supplier.”
Needless to say this is a debate which isn’t getting settled any time soon, but it would certainly help if government policies were more consistent and less hypocritical.
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