Over the next few days, Microsoft will have an opportunity to hear what a
group of customer "heavies" want. The National
Association of State Chief Information Officers kicks off its annual
Conference tonight in San Diego. NASCIO membership includes the CIOs of all
50 U.S. states.
If others are interested in attending, conference details
are on the NASCIO web site, but it is a pay-to-get-in event. The event runs today
through Wednesday. One panel discussion on the agenda
for Monday (1:45-3:00 p.m.) may be of particular interest to Groklaw
folk:
Open Source: Is it Really a Free Lunch?
One of the big pluses touted by Open Source advocates is the zero cost
acquisition of Open Source software. But at the end of the day, will
deploying Open Source software be free over time, cost the same, less or
more than proprietary software in your enterprise? If you are considering
employing Open Source in any part of your enterprise this is a must-see
session to understand the economic impact Open Source will have on your
Total Cost of Ownership. Your take away will be real life experiences of
those who have taken the journey and documented all that they have
learned.
Moderator: Peter Quinn, Chief Information Officer, Commonwealth of
Massachusetts
Panelists: Gary Edwards, Founding Member, Oasis OpenDocument
Terry Savage, Chief Information Officer, State of Nevada
Bill Welty, Chief Information Officer, Air Resources Board, State of
California.
Peter Quinn is the director of Massachusetts' Information Technology
Division who recently caused a stir by rejecting Microsoft's XML formats and
adopting OpenDocument XML as a standard for executive branch procurement of
software.
An interview with
Gary Edwards ran last week on Mad Penguin and was linked from Groklaw's News
sidebar. I personally found it revelatory on OpenDocument-related issues
despite having subscribed to OASIS.org newsletters for more than two
years.
Although not commonly known, all 50 states and local governments nationally
plus the Feds are working on an integrated time line to develop standards
for file formats, driven by requirements of E-SIGN, the Electronic Signatures in Global
and National Commerce Act, 15 U.S.C. 7001, et seq. NASCIO is the primary
organization being used to coordinate those efforts. You can bet that
Microsoft will be at the NASCIO conference and that the feedback it obtains
there may well affect Microsoft decisions about supporting OpenDocument.
|
