Where will Microsoft go today?
As most businesses have chosen to stick with Windows XP over the two newer attempts at an operating system Microsoft offers, XP support running out today and no businesses wanting to install Vista or Windows 7 (Vista with a different skin), where does this leave our favourite anti-competitive monopolistic mega corporation? Add the 9 million euro fine to this and Microsoft might be a little bit annoyed at the state of play in IT currently.
There’s also a lot of talk of Microsoft calling in the dogs with licensing checks and audits to collect more cash in times of need.
So what options do businesses have if they want to switch from XP?
They could always just use a virtual machine of xp and restore the vm when problems occur, this will not guard against new viruses and bugs though.
Hopefully a decent chunk of businesses will switch to Linux for stability and also to save immense costs if they go with a truly free distribution like Ubuntu or Debian. The cut over might be pricey but worth it in the end. Also, wine (the windows emulator) can run many windows programs quite successfully these days, so legacy apps might be ok in many cases.
In better times, not switching was an easy decision, just pay the fees and ignore the issue. Now with a severe economic downturn, windows xp unsupported, no suitable microsoft operating systems to choose from, will businesses act to move to open alternatives and save their own butts?
IT labour is now cheaper to get large migration projects completed, as people are fearing for their jobs and will take more pushing around than they would previously. So extra overtime and cheap wages might just get the job done without as big a cost hit to businesses. Such large migration projects will get the tick from management too if large cost savings can be proven. With Linux, you have a double cost saving, stability with reduced support calls along with much reduced licensing fees if you go with a free Linux distro. Ongoing support should be in the form of hiring skilled staff rather than the ignorant approach of outsourcing.
With a good collection of open skilled staff, the sky is the limit with your company and Linux.
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Windows XP support ends today 14th April:
http://www.pcauthority.com.au/News/142013,windows-xp-support-runs-out-next-week.aspx
83% of businesses surveyed won’t deploy Windows 7 next year, citing mistrust of Microsoft to stably run critical systems:
http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/operatingsystems/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=216500331&subSection=News
Microsoft fined 9 million euros over price fixing:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10216195-56.html
What are thoughts on this out there on the interwebz?
