Hello Mark, John, all On Sun, 2005-08-14 at 21:05 +0100, Mark Harrison wrote: > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Lars D. Noodén" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: "OOo Marketing" <[email protected]> > Sent: Sunday, August 14, 2005 12:44 PM > Subject: Re: [Marketing] [Fwd: [newsletter] MS lochs down Scots Police deal] > > > > Before it was a lobbying organization / political movement, MS was first > > and foremost a marketing company and still retains that expertise. So I'd > > expect that there was a fair amount of evening meetings involving > > all-expenses paid lavish dinners with MS representatives each and every > > evening preceding a meeting. > > Lars, > > Remember that they won this from a StarOffice customer - it would be > interesting to compare the track records of MS and Sun in the matter of > corporate entertainment. > > In a previous role, where I was on the "end client" side, I have been > "shmoosed" be Sun on numerous occassions - they are not averse to the > "lavish dinner" in any sense. As a client, it was a very useful opportunity > to talk to them and explain what we were looking for. Every business case > I've ever written for a technology strategy has been based around total cost > / total value of ownership, and subject to rigorous strategy from the non-IT > parts of the business. This idea that "IT Directors" have a carte blanche to > recommend whoever buys the best dinner is completely out of touch. If > nothing else, every organisation I've ever worked for has a strict policy > that corporate hospitality must be declared, so everyone KNOWS who's been > taking the IT Director out to dinner/rugby/opera/whatever. > > Now I'm a consultant, my own expense account is not short of expensive > restaurants as I sell OpenSource solutions! Is it bribery - NO! Does it give > me a far better opportunity to LISTEN to my customers and work out what kind > of pitch would be succesful - hell yes! You get far more over dinner than > you do in a month's worth of weekly one-hour meetings. > > One of my personal bugbears, by the way, is the subsection of the OpenSource > community who go around assuming that every Microsoft gain must be due to > underhand tactics. I've bought (and sold) MS solutions many times, and > bought (and sold) OpenSource solutions many times - each has a place - and > the key to sales is understanding the individual customers requirement, not > trying to beat them over the head with rhetoric. > > > Aren't there any privacy laws in the UK? The MS EULAs for 2000 SP3 and XP > > SP1 grant admin rights to MS. That's a back door by any other name and > > given MS' track record on security, it's accessible to more than just MS. > > Are you seriously under the impression that big companies take Windows PCs > and stick them on the Internet? Any large scale rollout of ANY platform > involves a defence-in-depth security strategy that assumes that ANY product > has weaknesses, whether it's MS, Sun, IBM, or Linux. > > John McCreesh has already posted an intelligent and informed analysis of why > this contract might have gone to MS.
thanks to you and John for this answer. What you say of course makes sense. My own experience with all this just makes me say two things. Aside NOT knowing the geography of Scotland at all I'd like to point out that: -somebody who is part of the Central Scotland Police IT suppliers didn't make his job at better taking care of the integration of StarOffice inside the police IT infrastructure. I still believe that this migration could have been avoided, but that is just my humble opinion as I do not know the customer's precise need and problems. -I don't think that MS wins customers by bribery, and most of the time it wins them through a good sales pitch. But what MS does is frighten the customer of all kinds of things, and for some key accounts it may bribe them, but I have no evidence of that. So what MS does usually (and I saw that myself)is to bring 10 sales reps on the table and pressure the customer. NB: MS is not the only one to do this. > > I'm sorry if this has come over as a rant, BUT the biggest criticism I hear > of the OpenSource movement among my corporate clients - people who could > change over tens of thousands of desktops if they wanted to - is that the > OpenSource movement is full of people who want them to buy because > "Microsoft is Evil", and aren't prepared to have a discussion about the > business requirements they have beyond the perceived need that they have a > moral responsiblity to "fight evil"! > > I kid you not, the people I deal with use phrases like "I don't want to have > a religious debate", because of how the some in the OpenSource community > tend to portray the alternatives. > I think that we should not forget that the FLOSS movement is several things to many people, and among them, some can take it as a philosophical movement. Nonetheless, meeting a customer and selling him FLOSS solutions should not imply any religious speech, because we're only competing on the true products merits. We can however explain the specificities of FLOSS if the customer wishes to understand these things more deeply, but then, the customer does what he wants with that. Thanks, Charles. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
