Munich Dumps Microsoft
My hometown doesn't make it very often into the headlines, but here is something which is worth a lttle buzz: The city hall has just made the decision to switch 14,000 PCs of the administration from Windows NT to Linux. And this even though the initial costs for the linux soultion are a few million Euro higher.
Before that Microsoft chief executive officer Steve Ballmer came personally to Munich in an attempt to convince the mayor to switch to Windows XP instead. In the end they even lowered the offer by 7 million Euro which backfired as this brought up the question "How much extra profit is still in there?"
Posted at May 30, 2003 11:49 AM | Further reading
Muenchen is a nice city ;-) Is this all about convictions ?
I'm just wondering how much money they will put in support and formation and if it'll be less than actually buying Windows.
About convictions and not letting Bill Gates become any richer :) But seriously, if they can 7 millions... either they have extra margin or they were gambling on how would other european cities and governments react to Munich's adoption of Linux. I'm sure more will follow.
The 7 million cut was probably still quit a bit above margin but they obviously are trying very hard to promote their e-government solutions and get a precedent going ... the EU has just voted on a timeline for e-government schemes to be in place in all its memberstates so this is definately the time to strike for Microsoft.
