Ich Bein Ein Aushlander
I love the city of Munich (Sorry Clemens, I know you don’t like that part of Germany). I go there usually twice a year. My good friend Nicole and her awesome hubby Chris live there. Being the History Major, etc I love the history all over Munich, even though it is bad history since the Hofbrahaus was the scene of one of the most important events leading up to Nazism and World War II.
I love the UBhan and SBhan. I love the surfer chicks (I can't resist them!!). I love the proximity to the Alps. Five hours by train to Venice. I love the 1/2 beer 1/2 Lemonade drink in the beer garden. Ok, I will stop now on how cool it is there.
What I don’t love about Munich is the bad business decisions. On May 28, 2003, the city of Munich, Germany, voted to migrate its Windows desktops to Linux. (Sheer coincidence- I happened to be there on vacation that day.) Microsoft came in before this decision and offered Windows at a deep discount. Munich wanted to make a statement and threw common sense out the window. Before you Linux people revive stephenforteFUD.com, remember I am not a religious fanatic on this issue. I make my techie decisions based on finances and TCO. So here is why Munich’s decision is a poor one (from the RD alias):
From: Vinod Unny
Sent: Monday, July 21, 2003 12:58 AM
To: MSDN RD List
Subject: [msdnrd] RE: USA Today Article about the largest Linux desktop deployment
Just some new news I saw regarding this. Extremely funny and interesting:
From: http://www.wininformant.com/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=39614
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Fun Fact About Those Linux PCs in Munich
And speaking about Linux stories you don't hear much from the Linux-loving mainstream press, consider the following. Remember that story about the city of Munich choosing Linux to power 14,000 desktop computers? One aspect of this story that most people don't know about is that up to 80 percent of those Linux desktops will be equipped with VMWare, a virtual machine emulator, under which they will run Windows and Windows applications. That's right, folks: The majority of those "Linux desktops" will be used to run … Windows. I'm not a big fan of Gartner, but they've issued a report, correctly titled, "Munich's Choice Doesn't Prove Linux OK for General Desktop Use," that raises some interesting issues. First, many of the Windows desktops they're migrated are very old Windows versions like Windows 3.1, making the switch to Linux less painful (it would be equally painful to switch to XP). Gartner says the cost of switching to Linux will cost 30 million Euros, or 3 million Euros more than it would cost to switch to XP, not including any steep discounts Microsoft would have no doubt provided. And finally, because most of the Linux machines will use VMWare to run Windows anyway, Linux is really being used as a hosting environment, and not as a replacement. In other words, this isn't exactly a good business case on which other companies can base a decision to migrate to Windows desktops. And, not coincidentally, that's why we're not reading about a lot of other high-profile Linux switchers.
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Also, this seems to be the Garner report he is referring to: http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?doc_cd=115336
With Regards,
Vinod Unny
Enterprise InfoTech
Microsoft Regional Director, North India
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