[ubuntu-uk] Has anybody seen this and what do you think......

[Jon Spriggs]

Just bear in mind while you're not wrong about it only going to a
handful of vendors, you've got the names wrong when it comes to IT.

HP (was EDS), IBM, Computacentre, Fujitsu, Capita, CapGemini

G4S don't have an IT arm that I'm aware of, Serco - not a clue, and I
think PwC's IT contracts were all bought by IBM, but I might be wrong.

Disclosure: I work for one of that first group of names, and we do use
some Unix and Linux on some back-end systems, just nothing at the
desktop, and as far as I can tell, most of our competitors listed
above do the same.
--
Jon "The Nice Guy" Spriggs


On 1 August 2013 00:38, J Fernyhough <j.fernyhough at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 31 July 2013 22:03, Muñiz Piniella, Andrés <a75576 at alumni.tecnun.es> wrote:
> <huge snip>
>>
>> Goverment has bigger contacts with huge service companies and those can
>> still be broken.
>>
>
> I avoided commenting until now, but realistically any UK Government
> contract is locked down to one of the normal "preferred bidders"
> precisely due to its huge value. Whether Serco, Capita, G4S, PwC, ...,
> a contract of any value will be handed out, I mean, put out for
> procurement, to one of those companies that have ex-Ministers,
> ex-advisers, and ex-officers on board (or on Board). It's the way
> things have always been done - there was a piece highlighted from a
> newspaper from (around) 1900 outlining concerns about a "revolving
> door" between Whitehall and companies and interest groups.
>
> It's bloody depressing - but on a lighter note, there are at least
> some places trying. From Slashdot earlier today:
>
> "Around a year ago, a school in the southeast of England, Westcliff
> High School for Girls Academy (WHSG), began switching its
> student-facing computers to Linux, with KDE providing the desktop
> software. The school's Network Manager, Malcolm Moore, contacted us at
> the time. Now, a year on, he got in touch again to let us know how he
> and the students find life in a world without Windows." And they
> didn't even meet much resistance: "Younger students accept it as
> normal. Older students can be a little less flexible. There are still
> a few that are of the view that I can get rid of Microsoft Word when I
> can pry it from them. Staff are the same (although it is surprisingly
> not age-related). Some are OK and some hate it. Having said that, an
> equal number hate Windows 7 and nobody liked Windows 8. I think the
> basic problem is that Windows XP is a victim of its own success. It
> works fairly well from a user point of view, it's been around
> practically forever, and people don't like change, even some students,
> oddly."
>
> http://linux.slashdot.org/story/13/07/31/1645240/a-year-of-linux-desktop-at-westcliff-high-school
>
> The answer seems to be to start local and not worry about global,
> because global is never going to happen until all the local has
> shifted (unless you're in Munich).
>
> J
>
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