Microsoft has been a sleeping dragon lately. Those who haven’t been around for more than, say, 10 years probably don’t remember how ferocious and predatory they were. Still, to mangle a metaphor, the dragon hasn’t really changed his scales.
For years, CERN was counted as an academic/research institution—which it certainly is—by Microsoft, and as such were granted favorable terms in the licensing fees they paid for Microsoft software. But just because Microsoft has put on a friendlier face lately doesn’t mean that much has changed. Last year they informed CERN that they were revoking its academic/research status and that going forward per seat licensing would apply. That left CERN looking at a ten-fold increase in what they paid to Microsoft.
CERN did two things. First, they negotiated a ten year ramp-up in the fees but more importantly, they initiated the Microsoft Alternative (MAlt) Project. The idea was to migrate CERN off of Microsoft, and other proprietary, software in favor of open source. Their objectives were to
- Deliver the same service to every category of CERN personnel
- Avoid vendor lock-in to decrease risk and dependency
- Keep hands on the data
- Address the common use-cases
Keeping costs under control is vital for any institution, especially a public institution, of course but to my way of thinking the big win is keeping control of their data. They own it, can store it locally, and don’t have to worry about what some vendor may decide to do in the future. That goes hand-in-hand with avoiding vendor lock-in so it’s an important thing.
If Microsoft thought they were going to be able to squeeze a few more Euros from CERN, they were mistaken. Instead of more Euros they will be getting fewer customers.