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Microsoft's Demise Looms on the Horizon

Aug 2, 2002

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Microsoft's Software Licensing

The key reasons for choosing an alternative to Windows lie with the Microsoft software licensing, which is blossoming into an expensive nightmare for many large and small organizations. This licensing causes these organizations to perform a cost analysis for using Microsoft software versus using something else that is equally effective and much cheaper to license and manage licenses. For example, every Windows PC must have a software license for Windows running on that PC and another license if that PC accesses a Windows server. Additional licenses are needed for using special Windows software such as Microsoft Office, and special server software requires additional licenses. Each license means extra revenue for Microsoft. Even with corporate bulk-licensing agreements, it is still a nightmare to track the licenses on all enterprise PCs. Windows and other software vendors provide special software to automate the process. Even so, this still requires constant costly monitoring.

Microsoft would justifiably argue that these license fees are perfectly legal, and that they are necessary to continue development of new and more productive Windows products. (This may or may not be true.) Does everyone in an organization need the latest and "best" Microsoft software? Is the latest Microsoft software the best Microsoft software? I did not see any Windows Me users standing up in agreement ...

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