Thursday, October 20, 2005

The Declining Value of Microsoft

I believe Microsoft has a growing problem with their value proposition. For years Redmond has been able to extend their franchises by delivering additional value, in addition to creating new and exciting product lines. But since the XBox, things have not been so rosy. In particular, if you or your firm is one of those who paid for Software Assurance 3 years ago, what have you received? Not much, and now Microsoft wants you to re-up. Where is Longhorn? Where is the next version of Office. Most firms invested in Software Assurance feeling they would receive product upgrades. But such has not been the case, even though the Software Assurance price was approximately the equivalent of buying an upgrade.

The other problem with buying into the Microsoft vision, particularly with increasing integration with Office and the .Net architecture, is that Redmond continues to "nickle and dime" you with the need for client access licenses (CALs). Does SharePoint look like a good deal? On the surface, yes. But dig deeper and determine the full TCO, including licensing for all those application interfaces you plan to deploy.

I will say that Microsoft continues to deliver some of the best development tools and integration points. That is a compelling argument for deployment. The problem is that once you've bought it, it is a gift that keeps on taking. You can't easily change course, and as Microsoft develops new and different ways to charge you, it will only become more expensive.

I'm working through right now with whether to go down a MS IIS / SharePoint / Messaging Server / etc. path or go to Linux / Apache / Java / PHP route for our intranet. Our external site, managed by a third party, is Linux / Apache / Tomcat / Java. Internally our development expertise is Microsoft, although that is largely in VB and Access. We're at a point where we can change, and I'm pretty close to concluding that we should. Yes, we will need to retrain and retool, but we're already managing our external site hosting. In a world where, to trot out that old, tired phrase one more time, we have to do more with less, the open source route is beginning to look more and more compelling.

We won't be able to unseat Microsoft totally; they will still own the desktop and some of our application servers.

So the question is, "Where do you want to go today?" While I'm not totally set yet, I'm pretty sure I know where we're going. Do you?