Jiri’s Notepad

Philip Windley on Tom Adelstein’s article about open source in government:

“Even more problematic is that RFP are not usually about just hardware or software, they’re about solutions to particular problems, including hardware, software, supports, etc. Most government’s don’t write much software, they outsource that and the vendor supplies a system to meet a particular need. So, KPMG or Deliotte and Touche submit an RFP for a total solution. Here’s the problem: these vendors get a percentage of the software and hardware sales in the RFP. As Tom points out in his article, most RFPs are judged on a lot of criteria other than cost, so is KPMG going to recommend Linux or Solaris? You know the answer. “

Having worked for a consultancy on bids of the type Phil mentions, I must disagree with him. In my experience system integrators are more likely interested in the following questions:

1. What COTS application package gives the largest share of functionality to implement the requirements?
2. What infrastructure (database, O/S) the package is known to work well on (is certified on)?
3. What development platforms (j2ee, .net, lamp - at least in theory) can be used with the given package?
4. What platforms or vendor specific IDEs our (or our partners’) developers can work with?
5. What is the potential customer’s preferred technology?
6. What the customer’s operations organisation can support?
7. Specific commercial agreements with vendors?

Margins on hardware & software most often come as number seven or perhaps even lower. It’s not that Linux & OSS is not been considered. Vendors most often do have incentives to drive down the cost of the solution. The dot come times are over and technology buyers are sensitive to cost. Because there are usually more than one vendors, offering the lowest overall price while maintaing overall quality provides a good chance of winning the bid. It’s just that when both costs and risks are weighted, Linux and OSS are yet not the safest bet for vendors. As one of the biggest application vendors’ technical specialist I spoke with recently put eloquently: “You’re either stupid and go Windows, brave and go Linux or safe and go Unix”.That’s probably valid for most big SIs. The criteria will be however different for non-SI companies - Question number 6 will be on top of the list for outsourcing provider and margins in case the company which is bidding for the work happens to sell hardware or software.