Microsoft has been a sleeping dragon lately. Those who haven\u2019t been around for more than, say, 10 years probably don\u2019t remember how ferocious and predatory they were. Still, to mangle a metaphor, the dragon hasn\u2019t really changed his scales.<\/p>\n
For years, CERN was counted as an academic\/research institution\u2014which it certainly is\u2014by 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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
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<\/a>. The idea was to migrate CERN off of Microsoft, and other proprietary, software in favor of open source. Their objectives were to<\/p>\n 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\u2019t 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\u2019s an important thing.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Microsoft has been a sleeping dragon lately. Those who haven\u2019t been around for more than, say, 10 years probably don\u2019t remember how ferocious and predatory they were. Still, to mangle a metaphor, the dragon hasn\u2019t really changed his scales. For … Continue reading \n