Federal authorities of the Swiss Confederation recently launched a pilot program to replace Microsoft 365 tools with open-source alternatives. The Federal Chancellery's plan calls for investing 9...
Perhaps I missed it in the article, but I would be curious to see how much they currently pay and what they expect to pay over a given timeframe for Microsoft software and subscription licensing.
It was not in the article, but let me help you. Swiss bureaucracy is my speciality.
There were two procurements in the past years, where only the minimal amount of data is publicly available. By request, they would release more data, but that’s something that takes multiple weeks. So I can only share what I have found so far.
Years 2020-2024: CHF 161.69m (USD 198.02m)
Years 2025-2027 CHF 139m (USD 170.21m)
In those contracts it is not known how many licenses and which licenses were bought. So they will also include Operating Systems (client and server), and expensive licenses such as MSSQL Server. I’m sorry that I cannot share anything more useful right now.
This is something I was also always saying. The problem is that they are not allowed to hire freely. There is a limit of how many heads you can hire, due to whatever complex yearly budgeting. So to fulfill the requirements, they are looking for third party providers, which also include support and warranty. Usually this route is more expensive and less flexible.
For those public tenders, they are bound by WTO rules. However, in this case, they were able to contract Microsoft freely, which is a huge fucking questionmark. This way you basically shut the door to competition, be it smaller IT companies just reselling Microsoft licenses, or companies able to provide a full set of open source tools including developers for customizations.
Hopefully someone is going to investigate this whole mess.
So they pay two years this year to not pay anything forever? (I know this is not really how this works and I sure hope they will start/continue sponsoring open-source solutions as many governments seem to do.)
That’s an easy math question if I have ever seen one, even despite it containing infinity and larger/smaller relation!
Things aren’t that simple, included in the microsoft licensing price are things like customer support - and not just for windows but other products like office, and none of that are part of the 0$ linux license. If you want customer support on linux (redhat, canonical…) it ain’t free either.
Perhaps I missed it in the article, but I would be curious to see how much they currently pay and what they expect to pay over a given timeframe for Microsoft software and subscription licensing.
It was not in the article, but let me help you. Swiss bureaucracy is my speciality.
There were two procurements in the past years, where only the minimal amount of data is publicly available. By request, they would release more data, but that’s something that takes multiple weeks. So I can only share what I have found so far.
In those contracts it is not known how many licenses and which licenses were bought. So they will also include Operating Systems (client and server), and expensive licenses such as MSSQL Server. I’m sorry that I cannot share anything more useful right now.
Quite a few developers you can hire to solve your problems and better the world by working on open source software for 25 million a year
This is something I was also always saying. The problem is that they are not allowed to hire freely. There is a limit of how many heads you can hire, due to whatever complex yearly budgeting. So to fulfill the requirements, they are looking for third party providers, which also include support and warranty. Usually this route is more expensive and less flexible. For those public tenders, they are bound by WTO rules. However, in this case, they were able to contract Microsoft freely, which is a huge fucking questionmark. This way you basically shut the door to competition, be it smaller IT companies just reselling Microsoft licenses, or companies able to provide a full set of open source tools including developers for customizations.
Hopefully someone is going to investigate this whole mess.
This. The question is always how long it will take to break even. A year? 6 months? The big number is just for shock value.
Big number? It’s 11 million. That’s pocket change for something like that.
That’s probably pocket change compared to the subscription they’d pay to use it.
With an estimated 38,000 federal staff and a cost of $36 per month each for an enterprise license it looks like 12 million a year roughly.
So they pay two years this year to not pay anything forever? (I know this is not really how this works and I sure hope they will start/continue sponsoring open-source solutions as many governments seem to do.)
That’s an easy math question if I have ever seen one, even despite it containing infinity and larger/smaller relation!
Things aren’t that simple, included in the microsoft licensing price are things like customer support - and not just for windows but other products like office, and none of that are part of the 0$ linux license. If you want customer support on linux (redhat, canonical…) it ain’t free either.