[ILUG] Re: Evolution and Exchange

[Andrew McCarthy]

(Apologies for breaking threading)

Paul Scollon wrote:
> Unfortunately, senior management have now decided that open source is 
> unreliable and unsupported (hence my quest to compile a list of 
> companies who support open source in Ireland) and have ordered us to 
> pull out everything and insert exchange servers for staff and put 
> exchnge clients on all machines. Plus, student mail is being farmed out 
> to Microsoft Live at edu.

If this is costing more than €10000 it must go out to tender, and you
can't specify a brandname or manufacturer in the RFT.

Note also Circular 2/09 from the Department of Finance:
	http://www.finance.gov.ie/documents/circulars/circular2009/circ022009.pdf
See section 2:
	"The arrangements require all civil service Departments,
	Offices, Agencies, and all non-commercial public bodies and authorities to:"
	...
	"(iii) implement measures to reduce reliance on ICT
	consultancies, contractors and external service providers and
	measures to become as self-sufficient as possible in the
	development, implementation, operations and management of ICT
	solutions"
Expanded further in section 2.3.

Reinforced recently in Circular 2/11,
	http://www.finance.gov.ie/documents/circulars/2011/circ22011.pdf
Section 3 requires costs to be considered include licensing, hardware,
user training, external expertise.

Section 6.1: "support and maintenance can amount to a substantial part
of the total-cost-of-ownership.  Consequently, measures are needed to
minimise this and ensure best value for money."

Section 6.3 (i): "Organisations procuring new software or hardware are
required to assess in detail the specific licence types being requested
or proposed, conduct detailed consideration of alternative cheaper
licence types, and determine whether support and/or maintenance is
actually required."


In all, it sounds like "replace a working, low-cost, in-house-maintained
system with a higher-cost 3rd-party-maintained system" is going flatly
against Department of Finance requirements.

Finally, the other question to put to management is quite reasonable:
"What is the functional problem we're trying to solve?" I wouldn't
accept an answer that boils down to "we don't trust you to continue
doing your job".

Andrew

P.S. At the end of Circular 2/11 is a contact number for "enquiries"...