begin oe_protect.scr
Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> espoused:
> Letter from IT Personnel at Purdue University: No Upgrades to Vista, Office
> 2007, or even IE7
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
>| Purdue University is a Big Ten school with 40,000+ students and a
>| fairly tech savvy campus. But due to bugs, compatibility issues,
>| and lack of backwards compatibility, Purdue is holding off on
>| Microsoft upgrades for now.
> `----
>
> http://www.computers.net/2007/01/letter_from_it_.html
>
> Same policy over here, with regards to IE7 at the least.
I think pretty much every organisation is considering how to get off
Microsoft, it's all about timing and lock-in. Cracking vendor lock-in
is far more difficult than just having an alternative, you also need to
consider what happens during a changeover - this is far from trivial.
Someone mentioned elsewhere that Evolution can only partially synch its
calendar with Exchange - this is a good example; no matter how hard
open developers try to make exit from lock-in easy, you can be sure that
there's a Microsoft team dedicated to stopping a customer from being
able to have that kind of flexibility, by breaking compatibility with
the open work. The same was also mentioned recently regarding Samba, I
think the words f*ck Samba have been used internally at Microsoft.
Of course, if Microsoft wanted to compete on a level playing field, they
could try, but as I've also posted elsewhere, and has been demonstrated
in the follow-ups by our resident wintrolls, they really do lack the
corporate culture required to make such a change. The can only work in
a monopoly; it's the only thing which they understand.
So - to get off Microsoft, a lot of careful planning is required. The
good news for ICT/CIO types is that this will keep them in a job for at
least the next decade, if not more. The time taken to get off Microsoft
is going to be in the years, not months, and those who gain experience
early-on in such changes are going to be highly sought-after for their
expertise, indeed, this is already happening.
--
| Mark Kent -- mark at ellandroad dot demon dot co dot uk |
Jones' Motto:
Friends come and go, but enemies accumulate.
|
|
