Victorian Government Microsoft's $23 million Vista patsy: consultant

By Stan Beer
Thursday, 25 October 2007 12:52

Open Source

While the rest of the world is shying away from Windows Vista and looking to deploy Linux across schools, the Victorian State Government in Australia is behaving like Microsoft's patsy by side-stepping competition and adopting Vista in schools, according to a leading local IT consultant.

Con Zymaris, the CEO of Cybersource, a company that has specialized in the integration of Linux and Windows sites since the early 1990s, says the Victorian Department of Education, is heading in the wrong direction by adopting Windows Vista in a $23 million deal announced this week.

"The Victorian Department of Education has again neglected the market, side-stepped competition by open tender and signed yet another deal with Microsoft - excluding all other platform vendors, to deploy Windows Vista - an operating system shunned by the rest of IT industry," said Zymaris.

"In the process, the Department is killing platform competition, shunning local software suppliers and depriving school children of a wealth of fantastic educational software."

Zymaris has issued a call to the Victorian Government to open up its IT software purchases to a competitive tender process.

"This disregard for alternatives has gone on for long enough and has to be stopped," said Zymaris. "We call on the Department of Education to ensure that its tenders for computer platform, office productivity and related desktop software are truly open to the market, to give vendors besides Microsoft the opportunity to submit bids."

According to Zymaris, Vista is a problematic platform that is being rejected by the rest of the world.