The Register: Linux in Munich–Gartner Gets Retaliation in Prematurely?

“In what some less incisive souls are viewing as ammunition for
the counter-attack, a recent Gartner ‘first take’ (the research
outfit’s free info-gobbets) warns that Munich city council’s
decision to migrate to Linux should not be seen as proving the case
for Linux on the desktop. Which is no more than, as we say over
here, the bleedin’ obvious, but although the conclusion is sensible
enough (in a bleedin’ obvious sort of way, that is), the note also
includes some claims that some people might interpret as suggesting
Munich’s decision was thoroughly perverse.

“Gartner does not say outright that it thinks the Munich switch
will turn out to be a costly failure, but it seems to question the
move in terms both of cost and methodology. The migration, it says,
will cost around €30 million, whereas an upgrade to Windows
would have cost €27 million, excluding the extra discounts
from Microsoft which Munich spurned. Alongside this, Gartner claims
that ‘many applications will not migrate to Linux; but will be run
either as thin client systems or ‘using virtual machine software,
such as VMware…'”

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