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  From: Richard Sharpe <sharpe@ns.aus.com>
  To  : <LinuxSA@linuxsa.org.au>
  Date: Tue, 29 May 2001 20:52:04 +0900

A view on MS and licencing ...

>Date: Wed, 30 May 2001 18:46:28 +1000
>From: Andrew van der Stock <ajv@greebo.net>
>Subject: Re: [SAGE-AU] New MS Licensing Scheme
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>Software licensing costs are a minimal tax-deductible portion of IT
>expenditure. IT users spend the least amount they can here to obtain maximum
>benefit. At most of the clients I've been to, the expenditure of around $250
>per annum (Select pricing averaged over the two-three year lifespan) per
>desktop on software is completely minimal compared to the income derived
>from the employee (my last client: about $650,000 pa). If training costs of
>(say) $1250 for a two day course to introduce FrizzleWord 23 per employee is
>compared to spending nothing on training and $250 for the next version, you
>can guess what's going to happen.
>
>In the early 90's most temp agencies supplied people proficient with Word
>Perfect. If you didn't have WP, you couldn't use most temp agencies for
>overflow work. Today, the situation is similar wrt Word, Excel, etc.
>Companies do not like taking risks when it comes to using additional staff
>that might cost extra. For example, try and find a contract tech writer who
>is proficient in the superior and more flexible Adobe Framemaker, and then
>do the same costing for a person proficient with Word, and the Word person
>will be a lot cheaper due to more people with that skillset. To
>beancounters, this sort of argument will win out everytime, regardless that
>the Frame person will likely be faster, and the resulting document more
>cohesive and with accurate indexes and so on for the end users.
>
>At most of my clients, the IT function is outsourced, and a visit to reload
>the desktop (regardless of OS: we had several choices based upon make and
>type) was about $250, which is roughly the price you'd expect if you treat
>your time as worth something.
>
>For server tasks, you use the servers that accomplish the business function
>first and platform ideology second. If a server can do tasks a,b,c and do it
>well, then you should use it. If another server comes along that just
>happens to be "free" (as in cost, not "libre"/freedom) and it does a,b,c
>well, then maybe at the next time it comes time for an upgrade or a new
>server, then you should use it. But if you need to do a,b,c, and d, and the
>free version can only do a,b,c then you are costing your company money
>whilst you work around the platform limitations. That's not smart.
>
>For example, Stuart Edwards stated that Active Directory is equivalent to
>Samba + Unix backend. It's not. AD is a directory, not a file store. In
>combination with Win2K Server and clients, AD enables companies to reduce
>the most significant costs associated with desktops: support. AD enables
>remote automated software distribution, remote management (client and
>server), large scale object management, file replication, fast diskless
>automated client installs, global and local lockdowns, enforced security
>policy, reduced WAN costs through more efficient object replication and so
>on. IT users deploying Active Directory over a Samba (or NT 4.0) solution
>will save money, even though Samba costs $0 and AD costs money because the
>support costs are far more than the licensing costs, not to mention the WAN
>savings. And again, the licensing costs are tax deductible.
>
>Yes, Microsoft are abusing their monopoly position to increase revenue from
>traditionally friendly corporates, and expect them to voice their
>displeasure, but realistically, MS desktop and server products are still
>cheaper and more functional than the "free" competiton.
>
>For example, an Exchange server in a small-medium business (single site,
>less than 400 employees) will take approximately 10 minutes to set up. The
>last time I munged through a sendmail compile + m4 munge, it took me more
>than 10 minutes. Try it yourself and see how long it takes to get a workable
>sendmail 8.12 beta10 install going, or if you believe that comparing beta
>software to release sofware is wrong, try sendmail 8.11.4 instead.
>
>Exchange server has more functionality out of the box than sendmail +
>openldap + Cyrus IMAP + PAM LDAP + LDAP gui, and far greater reliability,
>including transaction rollback etc. Exchange costs a goodly sum of money,
>but its administration costs are fairly minimal and can be maintained by a
>monkey, which is unfortunately often the case. But Exchange makes good
>business sense rather than good platform ideology sense. If the "free"
>software camp seriously wish to change this, they must make stuff as easy to
>install, administrate, use and functional as Microsoft do today. It's no
>good slagging software with unsubstantiated rumors as to its reliability,
>scalability, etc.
>
>http://www.arrayservices.com/projects/Exchange-HOWTO/html/book1.html
>
>Right tool for the job,
>Andrew
>

Regards
-------
Richard Sharpe, sharpe@ns.aus.com
Samba (Team member, www.samba.org), Ethereal (Team member, www.ethereal.com)
Contributing author, SAMS Teach Yourself Samba in 24 Hours
Author, Special Edition, Using Samba


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