Question:

What do these organizations have in common?

• Allianz
• Avago Technologies
• City of Los Angeles
• Equitec
• Major League Baseball
• New Zealand Postal Service
• Serena Software
• Swiss Confederation (Switzerland)

Answer:

They all used to be "Microsoft Shops" - they used Microsoft software (Exchange Server for email, Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.) and operating systems (Windows). Now they don't.

In the computer world that is almost heresy. Everyone uses Windows and Office (and Exchange). Or so Microsoft would have us believe.

Most computer users don't know that there are alternatives to Microsoft products. Some know about the Apple alternative. Only a few know there are products that beat Microsoft's and Apple's offerings in every way. Here are some examples:

Note: don't get bogged down in the tech-talk part.

Allianz Insurance

Allianz Australia Insurance Limited employs about 3,000. As part of a nationwide program, the company has a target to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 20% by 2012. It replaced an aging Windows Server infrastructure and installed Red Hat Enterprise Linux (a variant of Linux). That's because Linux operates much more efficiently than Windows. Allianz reduced its data center power needs (thus saving money) and saved $500,000 in licensing costs.

Avago Technologies

Avago Technologies' CIO Bob Rudy moved over 4,000 employees from Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Office to gMail and Google Apps - and saved saved $1.6 million by doing so.

NOTE: Google Apps is a web-based system that features several Web applications with similar functionality to traditional office suites, including word processor, spreadsheet, presentations (PowerPoint), Gmail, Google Calendar, Talk, Docs and Sites. All software is online - one can access it from any Internet connection anywhere; all data are stored online - one can access it from any Internet connection anywhere AND the organization does not need servers, high-powered workstations/notebook computers, or server-trained support staff.

The rising cost of storage was one of his motivating forces, he said in an interview. His company's adoption coincided with Google's release of its "Apps Sync" adapter that lets users access Gmail with Outlook. He said of the adapter: "For me, it eliminates the last hurdle or mindset for letting go of [Microsoft] Exchange or the Exchange mentality" said Rudy. "This will help with adoption."

City of Los Angeles

In October, the Los Angeles City Council approved a $7.25 million five-year deal Tuesday in which the city will adopt Gmail and other Google Apps. $1.5 million for the project came from the payout of a 2006 class action lawsuit between the city and Microsoft. Such sweet irony... Microsoft paid $70 million three years ago to settle the suit, brought on behalf of six California counties and cities who alleged that Microsoft used its monopoly position to overcharge for software.

Equitec Group

Chicago-based financial services company Equitec Group, LLC, was running mission-critical, proprietary financial trading software on 100 Windows-based servers. When performance issues hit, the company decided to move to Ubuntu (a variant of Linux) Server . Along with that move, Equitec moved its database from Sybase on Windows to the free - and powerful - MySQL version that comes with Ubuntu. Because the performance problems are gone. Equitec has been running the same workload on just 30 Ubuntu-based servers. Hmmm .... It takes 30 Ubuntu servers to do what it took 100 Windows servers to do - at a fraction of the cost for licenses.

Major League Baseball

Adobe Flash (we all use Adobe Flash) grabbed Major League Baseball's MLB.com Web site from Microsoft Silverlight (a webiste with lots of video) in the fall of 2008. MLB.com had been a marquee account for Silverlight. But the Web site suffered from multi-day video problems at the opening of the 2008 season; that had fans fuming. Adobe made the announcement of the two-year deal with MLB at its annual Adobe Max conference in San Francisco.

New Zealand Postal Service

The New Zealand Postal Service is one of the largest users of Google Apps. NZ Post entered into what it thought was a routine renegotiation with Microsoft to renew licenses for MS Office. The talks didn't go well. NZ Post instead decided to yank out Microsoft Office and roll out Google Apps to 2,100 employees. The deal was expected to save the country $2 million in hardware costs over three years, it said.

Serena Software

Serena Software, a privately owned company with 29 offices in 14 countries and 800 employees, is another flagship customer for Google Apps. It ousted Microsoft Exchange (email server system) over the summer in an amazing cutover which took a grand total of six hours (!!). Ron Brister, senior manager of Global IT Operations at Serena Software explained in the Official Google Enterprise Blog, "Inbox storage space was a constant complaint. Server maintenance was extremely time-consuming, and backups were inconsistent. Then we found that - calculating additional licenses of Microsoft Exchange, client access licenses for users, disaster recovery software, and additional disk storage space to increase mailbox quotas to 1.5GB - staying with our existing provider would have cost us upwards of $1 million. That was a nearly impossible number to justify with executives." Brister says the company saves $750,000 annually with Gmail and Google Apps.

Swiss Confederation (Switzerland)

The government lost a lawsuit, with the court ordering that the Swiss government could not grant Microsoft a no-bid contract for Office when so many other options exist.

NOTE: When put up for open, honest bidding, Microsoft cannot compete. There are other systems that deliver comparable results, with fewer problems, and at a far lower cost. That is the point of this post.

Disclaimers:

1. I own Microsoft stock - and have for years (I'm a glutton for punishment)
2. I have been a Microsoft Partner
3. I have performed work for Microsoft as a contractor.
4. I hold several Microsoft certifications (including Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer)
5. I am a Systems Engineer for a large organization, where I administer Windows AND Linux servers, and support thousands of users - most of whom use Windows (and a few are fluent in Linux as well)
6. I prefer Linux over Windows, and Linux applications over most Windows applications.
   
7. Actually, I prefer open standards for hardware. operating systems, and software.
8. I prefer open source software over proprietary software. But those last two are topics unto themselves. In the future there will be plain-English posts here. Stay tuned.
   
9. I use Google as my primary search engine (but then, outside of people at Microsoft, who doesn't?)
   

Source:
http://www.itworld.com/windows/93258/businesses-dumped-microsoft-and-won?source=ITWNLE_nlt_linux_2010-01-19