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MS gives New Orleans 'free' systems for City Hall, PD | |
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| Time: 05:13 EST/10:13 GMT | News Source: The Register | Posted By: Alex Harris | ||
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Microsoft is to update the computers of New Orleans' City Hall and Police Department for free, according to a report last week in the New Orleans Times-Picayune, saving the city $100 million, claims CTO Greg Meffert. Work will begin in the next two weeks, and the city's only obligations are that it will be used as a model for marketing the systems to other government bodies, and that it will at some point in the future have to pay a "miniscule" amount of money for the software. So where's the catch? Well, think browser market, and also think about cash-strapped public bodies' readiness to accept donations and subsidy from public-spirited IT vendors, and Microsoft's growing keenness to leverage this. Free to the extent that all of a sizeable body's systems are covered is perhaps a little more radical than what the company has done so far, but in the UK in particular there have been several instances of donation easing the acceptance of the Redmond shilling. | ||
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| #1 By 135 (209.180.28.6) at 8/19/2002 2:14:10 PM |
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No, the Register article is wrong. The original article quoted the CTO as saying that they were getting a bunch of free software, however eventually they would have to pay for software. So it is a gift, it's just not a gift that keeps on giving. It's like Ford donating 200 police cars this year, but next year the city would have to pay for police cars if they wanted more.
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/neworleans/index.ssf?/newsstory/o_microsoft16.html I used to work in the software for small government market. Most of the players are very small, and have limited number of clients. It's haphazard and expensive. It appears as though Microsoft is looking at this from a standpoint that if they can build a generic suite of tools they can sell this to all cities in the country. Will it put companies out of business? Probably. Is it evil? Well I don't know what qualifies as evil. You'll be looking at a city paying maybe $250,000 for a solution instead of $2.5 million. If I was a City technology officer, I think it would be a good move. Although I'm sure the Open Source crowd will declare it as evil, because they don't see the cost savings and think all software should cost $0. |
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