Imagine. Companies that instead pay X amount pay X*.25 or something. Small cost for the business compared to Microsoft and huge boost in revenue to improve OSS.
B-but a study funded by CCIA Europe (Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta…) says EU cloud sovereignty rules would cost Europe up to €233 billion. (Conveniently, it doesn’t count the benefits of not depending on them.)
So considerate of them, worrying about our wallets out of pure altruism.
I question if the price is really higher, once the transition costs are paid. Those cloud services by US big tech ain’t cheap and are highky profitable.
The price could be in costs, but it could also be in reduced functionality.
A standard response that a lot of Microsoft trained IT ops people give is that the other products are inferior, harder to use, require more administration, etc. And it used to be that this would shut down a lot of discussions about moving away from MS.
But the message I hear nowadays is that this will be a price worth paying, and that disarms a lot of the usual naysayers.
I’m not disagreeing with you on that :)
Personally I’ve been arguing for less Microsoft dependence within my organization for years, and have quietly been doing what I can without without making it too obvious.
In any case, my point is that counter-arguments like reduction in functionality, increase in expenditure, and so forth, no longer hold the same weight like they used to.
Here in the Netherlands, there’s been a much stronger mandate given from top-down to look for more sovereignty. Because the risks that come with the alternative are becoming more clear with every passing month.
That is certainly the case. The big hurdle and investment is the transition. Once everything is up and runnung and mostly walked in, I would not be surprised if costs were lower while the software implementaion being actually better tailored to the specific needs. But it is not easy to get there and there are risks of course.
The Cyber Resiliance Act might actually do that. Because paying for support contracts covering every little piece of free software will be cheaper than the fines.
Now if they also directed the license cost savings back toward funding their newly chosen oss projects, we’d be golden.
Imagine. Companies that instead pay X amount pay X*.25 or something. Small cost for the business compared to Microsoft and huge boost in revenue to improve OSS.
B-but a study funded by CCIA Europe (Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta…) says EU cloud sovereignty rules would cost Europe up to €233 billion. (Conveniently, it doesn’t count the benefits of not depending on them.)
So considerate of them, worrying about our wallets out of pure altruism.
The general message I hear among enterprise architects is that there’s a price for IT sovereignty.
But that it’s a price worth paying.
A price for switching.
Then it’s simpler and cheaper.
It’s even cheaper hardware wise in many cases.
I question if the price is really higher, once the transition costs are paid. Those cloud services by US big tech ain’t cheap and are highky profitable.
The price could be in costs, but it could also be in reduced functionality.
A standard response that a lot of Microsoft trained IT ops people give is that the other products are inferior, harder to use, require more administration, etc. And it used to be that this would shut down a lot of discussions about moving away from MS.
But the message I hear nowadays is that this will be a price worth paying, and that disarms a lot of the usual naysayers.
Given the degrading quality of Microsoft products, I would not blindly believe statements that alternative options are rrally worse.
I’m not disagreeing with you on that :)
Personally I’ve been arguing for less Microsoft dependence within my organization for years, and have quietly been doing what I can without without making it too obvious.
In any case, my point is that counter-arguments like reduction in functionality, increase in expenditure, and so forth, no longer hold the same weight like they used to.
Here in the Netherlands, there’s been a much stronger mandate given from top-down to look for more sovereignty. Because the risks that come with the alternative are becoming more clear with every passing month.
That is certainly the case. The big hurdle and investment is the transition. Once everything is up and runnung and mostly walked in, I would not be surprised if costs were lower while the software implementaion being actually better tailored to the specific needs. But it is not easy to get there and there are risks of course.
Even just a one-time monthly payment equivalent would be massive. I’ve seen companies that spend well over 60k a month on microsoft licenses.
The Cyber Resiliance Act might actually do that. Because paying for support contracts covering every little piece of free software will be cheaper than the fines.
I imagine most of those costs are probably redirected to implementation at first.