find out what they offer. I can't really see any reason why companies tie themselves to Windows unnecessarily. Capita could just as easily have used

They are a "Microsoft Partner" whatever that means. Robin St Aidan's Carlisle

On Thursday 11 July 2002 11:40, Chris Puttick wrote:

...

Is anyone out there seriously considering the alternatives?

Just talked to a deputy in a large 2000+ comprehensive attending a course I was running and they are looking at CMIS as are a few others. I guess quite a lot of people are looking at alternatives but it does take a bit of effort to find out what they offer. I can't really see any reason why companies tie themselves to Windows unnecessarily. Capita could just as easily have used

Partly it's the mentality of "everybody uses Windows". Sometimes to the extent of "everybody uses XYZ specific version of Windows." Too many people miss that Windows is as about as fragmented as proprietary unix :)

one of the free SQL data bases and a PHP scripted front end - that would have

Capita is an "MS partner", that's probably why.

enabled them to lower the total cost of the system to schools and provide more choice of platform. Maybe their programmers only know a couple aof applications :-).

Probably why they stuck with Dbase. Though this excuse does appear to be used, even with programmers who arn't really qualified to be called programmers in the first place. -- Mark Evans St. Peter's CofE High School Phone: +44 1392 204764 X109 Fax: +44 1392 204763

On Tuesday 16 July 2002 09:56, Kyle Williamson wrote:

But Capita are also working the UK Government, who are also working for Microsoft.

There are more people employed in this country by small and medium sized enterprises than in large corporates and governments come and go. The Civil Service is probably more important. Change is a difficult thing and most people try and avoid it so its hardly surprising that large organisations such as Capita and the Civil Service have become dependent on MS. It will take time but on the other side of the coin, almost every other big player in the IT industry IBM, Oracle, Sun etc would love to see M$ take a fall and there are other Gs around the world who are less M$ friendly than ours. Its a bit like a damn with ever building pressure from all sides with the volume of free software just growing and growing and the number of users increasing with that growth. You get the odd leak here and there and eventually a bit of a flood and then suddenly the whole thing collapses. Predicting the point of that collapse is very difficult. How many people predicted the iron curtain coming down a year or to before it did? And look at how swiftly things happened when it did. IT standards are either agreed worldwide or built on confidence. As soon as the confidence wanes, there is nothing really preventing change. Even shifting applications to a different platform is not that big a deal these days and probably stimulates a new market for the companies involved. What is needed is for those that can implement and demonstrate success of much lower cost alternatives to do so and publicise it. The rest will just happen but who knows exactly when. For M$ it must be like sitting on a time bomb not knowing how much is left on the clock, hence the rush into Xbox etc. Regards, -- IanL