14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft seems to be losing ground in various cities around the world in a fierce fight against open source and Linux, but is it really?
I would have expected for Microsoft to put up more of a fight before losing the support from various city administrations around the world, but that isn't the case. Sure enough, the losses are not all that big for a company like Microsoft. Not having several tens of thousands of machines with Windows is not a big problem in the grand scheme of things, it's more like a PR issue.
Microsoft and its products are still present in lots of places around the world, and most of the governments (not local) have proprietary solutions in place, whether we're talking about operating systems, databases, or other custom built software. They are not going anywhere, but Microsoft is losing a little bit too graciously and that could mean that they have the confidence of a return or of a solution to this problem.
Financial problems, the driver behind ditching Windows
Many city administrations have decided that they have to cut some non-essential costs if they want to have more money for various other projects. One of the obvious domains that are first to get under the scalpel is the IT infrastructure. If it's a large city, they will have millions of dollars invested in all sorts of proprietary software. Some things can be replaced, like operating systems or office suites, for example, so you start cutting those and you adopt an open source solution.
The economic crisis that doesn't seem to go away has been a good catalyst for the adoption of free software, as you might imagine, but we are not the only ones to see this. Microsoft is observing the same thing, so they are preparing (in the long term) to make all their products a lot cheaper and the upgrades free.
If Windows is free, where will Microsoft get the money from?
We are now exiting the shareware era. Applications have costs and companies have to make money. This is simple arithmetic, but it no longer works. You can no longer charge too much money for something, because people will not buy it. They will look for something cheaper or even free to do the same job. Unless you have a product that is so good and doesn’t have any real competition, you can no longer ask a lot of money for it. Windows, Microsoft Office, and all the other Microsoft products are not in this category.
The only recourse for Microsoft is to make the products really cheap and the upgrades from one version to another free. They will still make a lot of money, but how? The reason Windows has such a large market share is that it's getting shipped with PCs from all over the world. Microsoft will sell its products to big companies like Dell, HP, Lenovo, you name it, and it will provide upgrades for free.
Regular users will be able to pay a really small price, less than for a game, for example, and get the latest Windows right away, and with free updates it will look like a bargain.
From time to time, when the hardware is no longer able to support the current Windows generation, users, companies, and governments (local or otherwise), will buy better hardware. The same applies for Linux, to a lesser degree, but it's true nonetheless.
Microsoft is playing the long term game and they have a plan. That's why they are now releasing operating systems at a much faster pace and why the company believes in its future. Microsoft doesn't really care if some cities will ditch Windows now and get Linux instead because, at some point in the future, the cities will have to make a hardware upgrade and the new PCs will arrive with Windows pre-installed and with free upgrades.
What is happening right now is not really a battle between Windows and Linux paradigms; that fight has yet to come. The real battle will be between PCs with free Windows and an already free Linux.