Dale Vogel <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:dalevogel@verizon.net" target="_blank">dalevogel@verizon.net</a>></span> wrote:<br><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
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<div>Nice post.</div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div><div>This is not only happening over and over (yet the latest, nothing new [1]), but I've been "on-the-front-line" in both government and at household name companies.</div>
<div><br></div><div>The ultimate irony is that I don't even have to say, "I told you so." My bigger issues has always been, "You now have inertia that is pushing you to port to yet another, soon-to-be-abandoned, solution. So you're going to go through this again and again unless you make a _strategic_ decision to align to open standards as much as possible."<br>
</div><div><br></div></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div text="#330099" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><div>Do yourself a favor, and dump Microsoft, and you won't have to
worry about conversions in the future.</div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>You don't even have to say "avoid Microsoft" or use the phrase "use open source."</div><div><br></div><div>
The reality is "risk mitigation." Microsoft has a huge wake of tens of billions of dollars of lost IP at major entities. From industry-leading firms like Boeing to most divisions of the US Federal government, organizations that must maintain 20+ years of document and interface compatibility, that Microsoft tends to be the _least_ viable solution of even alleged "proprietary" vendors. It is because Microsoft is poor at even maintaining a proprietary standard that they are a non-option.</div>
<div><br></div><div>If you deal with Microsoft Solutions Providers, the entire approach is to get enterprises upgrading every 24 months if at all possible, and within 36 months "worst case." It's their model, based on the end-consumer superstore model where 90% of home consumers just concede 24 month upgrade cycles of their entire PC, apps, periperals, etc... It's a very, very _profitable_ model, especially in the vertical space. It's also one of the biggest wastes of human capital and time.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Open standards, real open standards, are what should drive things based on mitigating risk. I'm really waiting for the ISO to put the ultimate "smack down" on Microsoft over MS Office alone.</div>
<div><br></div><div>-- bjs</div><div><br></div><div><div>[1] <a href="http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/05/04/0224248/uk-benefits-claimants-must-use-windows-xp-ie6">http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/05/04/0224248/uk-benefits-claimants-must-use-windows-xp-ie6</a></div>
</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>--</div></div>Bryan J Smith - Professional, Technical Annoyance<br>b.j.smith at <a href="http://ieee.org" target="_blank">ieee.org</a> - <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/in/bjsmith" target="_blank">http://www.linkedin.com/in/bjsmith</a><br>
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