Allan Paterson, director of the information systems division in the Manx government, said the move was a "strategic position" with no overarching contract, but just an intention to standardise on the Windows platform over the next five years.
"We could change that tomorrow, we’re not locked down. This is a relationship rather than a hard contract."
When Paterson came to the job, he said, he was struck by "the number of products we had in the same space, each requiring different support skill sets. We had the kind of scenario where a department would phone up a third party supplier for a quote on application outsourcing one week, and another department phoning up a week later for the same thing would be offered a different platform."
Now, the Sun, Novell and SCO UnixWare servers spread across 140 locations will make way for windows Windows Server 2003 running on Unisys ES7000 and Clearpath servers in two data centres. There were many reasons for the move, said Paterson. In the case of SCO, it was that different suppliers would provide different versions of the software, making management a huge headache.
On the desktop, said Paterson, the government had only just finished upgrading to Windows 95 in 2003, but had "all sorts of compatibility problems." Now he is upgrading to Windows XP, with Active Directory.
Asked why other desktop solutions were not considered - such as Star Office - Paterson said he was looking for more than just an office suite. "We wanted a complete management solution around the desktop. This is about service delivery, availability, reliability of desktop services."
"I am a technical person," continued Paterson, "but this is not a tech decision. It is a business decision. Too often it is presented as a technical decision, but really it is about the wow you give to the end user at the end of the day."
Because the Isle of Man is not part of the UK -- it is a self-governing crown dependency that is able to make its own laws -- purchasing decisions can be made independently of the UK's Office of Government Commerce, which recently issued report promoting the consideration of open-source software in the public sector. "We're not covered by the Office of Government Commerce guidelines on procurement. I don't have to look at open-source software every time. I can say, "Guys. we have all these Windows skills, let's go this way. We don't have to comply with UK targets, but we can learn from the UK."
Talkback
We can change it tomorrow. We can! We can! Honestly!
Try telling me that tomorrow.
Too bad they are going be blowing their taxpayer's money on Windows. What a sad waste.
The Isle of Man must've struck oil. I just hope they can get off the Microsoft fix after the money runs out.
"I am a technical person," continued Paterson, "but this is not a tech decision. It is a business decision. Too often it is presented as a technical decision, but really it is about the wow you give to the end user at the end of the day."
No, it should not be a business decision. It should be a political decisnion. Going for closed source software makes it harder to freely share information with the citizens. In the long run this could create democacy problems, or do the intend to give a copy of windows and a computer that runs it to all people that need to access information stored in propriatory Microsoft formats. I think not.
One other thing, am I really getting this right? Did they finish upgrade to win95 in 2003?! If that is the case Microsoft have a problem. If people don't upgrade more than once every 8 year they will not be able to keep their prices at a reasonable level.
The problem might be even worse than that since the once you have upgraded to the NT series of Microsoft OSes, each new upgrade gives less and less return of investment and I would even go as far as saying an upgrade from win2k to XP will give you a financial loss.
If this trend continues we could expect people to upgrade only every 10-15 years. Microsoft will have to compensate for this somehow. Raising the price of the OS is probably not possible, that would make it hard to hook new users. So my guess is that the support costs for Microsoft will go up significantly in the future.
Analysis...
1.A total migration project from a best fit environment to a one size fits all environment. Don't be surprised if many applications and technical processes will need to be re-purchased, re-installed, reconfigured, relearned and rewritten. And in the future all together all at once thanks to opting for a highly integrated and centralized environment.
2. One doesn't standardise on Windows, one opts for lock-in or not (do include the possible investment risk of having to do a total roll-back while maintaning at least two different environments until the roll-back is finished).
3. If your organization has bad internal logistics (eg: who buys what why) then bringing in new technology is symptom fighting not problem solving. A costly mistake.
4. A transition from a decentralized environment (140 locations) to a centralized environment (2 datacenters) will require an organization wide attitude change which is more then likely non existent at the moment so expect huge amounts of learning money to be payed.
5. A very costly mistake many decision makers make is to believe for more then one second that a Windows desktop is the same as a Windows server is the same as a Windows local network is the same as a Windows large network and is the same as a 'put all your eggs in one basket' datacenter environment on Windows.
6. A complete management solution should be build around all the business processes and include more then just technical management issues. Only if you get all the pieces at different levels to work together is when you start building up something. Otherwise you're just that... in pieces. Fragmented. Not to mention an easy target for handy salesmen.
7. Business is not so much about giving users a wow at the end of the day. It's more about giving them tools they can trust and rely on to do their jobs better and more efficiently. The average house isn't build with a Swiss army knife you know. The right professionals need to have the right professional tools in a professional way to get the job done professionally.
8. The average Windows skills are usually the ones practised at home. Summed up as follows: MSN, mailing jokes and pictures, attracting spam, allowing spyware, clicking yes on the popup before reading and understanding what is happening, copying the local harddisk to the server for backup reasons but keeping the latest version of vital documents locally for weeks on end, connect all sorts of (personal) hardware gadgets to the company equipment, download movies, swap musci files, print family photos, disable the antivirus for a performance boost, install all sorts of handy tools and tons more of non work related ways of getting thru one more boring day at the office. The only realistic way to avoid all that (ask any high school administrator) is to not use Windows. Period. So basicly, once you strip away all the unwanted functionalities Windows has to offer users but are not exactly desired within a business environment you end up with a situation that can be made to work on whatever platform with various management tools (otherwise, for one, how did all your users master how to deal with all those enterprise applications that didn't come pre-installed with Windows?).
In short, the Manx has no clue but they're not alone in that. But if I was a voter in the Manx I would certainly would want to know who not to vote for next time around in case this project doesn't turn out to be the succes it needs to be for the amount of tax money required.