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Does anyone have a good explanation on why so many #universities in the #uk use Microsoft as their "everything" solution? Email, office software, instant communication, phone, video calls, cloud storage... And more interestingly what is the average cost per university community member?
@amchagas Universities run a lot of PCs, and Microsoft switched the licencing for WIndows to a subscription basis some years ago, and have then gradually bundled more and more into the subscription. Once you're already paying for Windows it makes reasonable economic sense to then take everything else from MS. Microsoft have a long history of this - they're keen to crowd out competitors.
@drmikepj thanks for the reply. that sounds very ... illegal? (or should be anyway, in economies and societies that claim to be under a free market?)
@amchagas it's certainly monopolistic behavour, and MS has been caught doing that kind of thing before (notably with web browsers in the 90s and then with Teams more recently - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/jun/25/microsoft-facing-huge-antitrust-fine-over-linking-software ). UK government hasn't historically worried about this kind of thing because pre-Brexit it was Brussels' problem...
@drmikepj
Geez! We have just migrated over to even have our phone system be delivered via VoIP from Microsoft. Shouldn't there be something on the procurement of universities that prevents them from engaging with such providers?!?
@amchagas yes, us too. Whilst procurement law requires that universities tender for purchases, it can easily be circumvented by careful drafting of the requirements document. There's no legal requirement for public procurement to be used to fight monopolies - that's the role of government as the regulator of the market. In the UK we've had a government for 10+ years that wasn't interested in regulating.
@amchagas (procurement law and how it applies to universities is a particular bugbear of mine, so I know a lot about how it works...)
@drmikepj
Do you happen to know if there are laws/rules against "signing bonuses" if a company closes a contract with another one? As in, is there anything preventing shady practices that would benefit individuals if they tip the scale for their company to sign services from a specific company?
@amchagas yes, accepting a financial inducement or freebies (e.g. rugby match tickets) in return for a contract award is definitely bribery and is illegal.
@amchagas What is the alternative? We have an exchange server, O365 available for students but not staff, video chat over WebEx, zoom, or BBB, a custom version of nextcloud that breaks every week, and a gitlab instance without any runners. Nothing talks to each other, because SAP sits in the middle. Managed by what feels like three people and a bunch of minimum wage students.
At this point, I would gladly take an all in one Microsoft solution...
@pkraus
Interesting, but seems there is an underlying different problem in your scenario, which is no funding. Here, we might be forking over millions to one provider and everything is concentrated there. If tomorrow Microsoft decides they will jack up prices, we are screwed. If their servers go down (as they have in the past) we are screwed, if we want to export things out, no dice. Etc.
Other than that, we are so clever over here that we have redundancies in cloud providers, with money being spent on box, gdrive and OneDrive...
Another point is that the world runs on open software. So it is not possible that universities cannot crack this "out incredible complex, never faced before problem"
I am all up for hiring companies to provide services, but if possible it would be great if said companies were not profiteering and providing services that are fit for purpose.
@amchagas well, that's the problem - at least in Berlin. There are good open source solutions, but they're not free (as in beer). Either you have to pay a third party to manage it for you, or employ staff to do so, and if you have a €40 mil/year hole in the budget (and in the roofs of most buildings), staff is the first to go.
very strange, we have been using it extensively for one year without any issue. (except for collabora that does not work if more than 5-6 people are on the document at the same time)
@amchagas Same thing in France.