[wellylug] Microsoft cornering government market

[Stephen Judd]

Quoting Danny Poulson <dannyp at clear.net.nz>:

> Looks like Microsoft NZ is moving early to prevent what happened in
> Australia in NZ. Not that the NZ government really cares about Open
> Source...

Having been involved in bidding for work in NZ government in two organisations 
in the last couple of years, one big reason for MS success is that many of the 
vendors who have built relationships with government departments happen to be 
MS shops - eg Intergen. The trust placed in a known vendor is worth an awful 
lot. Kudos to MS for nurturing some dev shops with their products... 

Public servants tend to be extremely risk averse, since their decisions are so 
often torn to shreds in public. As long as there is a perception that an MS 
choice is the safest choice, you will see public sector jobs built on MS 
solutions.

Solutions I have seen proferred that were "safe" and non-MS were very 
heavyweight Unix/J2EE ones with all the licensing and hardware costs implied.

So MS is in the sweet spot of low-cost, low risk as far as the public sector 
goes.

I would think that successful open source bids in New Zealand will depend on 
effectively positioning them as the lowest-risk option. Appealing to standards-
compliance doesn't work, in that MS claim to support standards. A successful 
open source bid would probably come from a vendor who's already got a public 
sector track record, for an infrastructure role where open source is on its 
best ground.


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