I led Microsoft's public sector consulting services group for the Midwest for a few years, and have lots of experience being one of the "big 3" you mentioned above. That said, I'm long-standing advocate of open software and platforms.
However, because I was in Microsoft's consulting division, we responded to RFP's with *solutions, *not products. The proposals I went after were typically built for a particular product company in mind, and in fact it was blatantly obvious at times. In those cases, there isn't much you can do as there is usually a political force behind it. As a vendor, I prefer an equal playing field when selecting RFP's, and I only went after the RFP's that were as vendor agnostic as possible. Additionally, I would not specify individual products in my high level overview--again, focusing on the * solution*. The truth is, the product focused RFP's are becoming less popular (in my experience). I would suggest to the committee that they should focus more on the business solution, rather than a product. My $.02 Hope it helps! Ed Edward R. Swiderski III GreenCanyon | Business Technology Solutions 312-622-1127 200 South Wacker | Chicago | IL | 60606 <http://www.greencanyon.net> On Thu, Feb 17, 2011 at 6:48 AM, MJ Ray <m...@phonecoop.coop> wrote: > Chris Tyler wrote: > > I agree with Nicholas here: if an organization is looking for a > > fully-supported solution, responding with an unsupported (or > > community-supported with no SLA) DIY open source solution is a > > non-starter. > > > > However, a competent consulting and support company can come in with a > > FOSS solution [...] > > But if you mean a community-developed FOSS solution (rather than one > developed mainly by the company but is also FOSS), then if the > organisation insists on a guaranteed Service Level Agreement which > puts all risk on the support company, the guarantee costs can make it > uncompetitive. Guarantee companies cough up their skulls when you're > trying to guarantee stuff you didn't make yourself. > > There are three possible ways round it: > > 1. you find new guarantee companies which I haven't discovered that > offer better prices for FOSS; > > 2. you give a guarantee which is only backed by your company, which I > feel is a bit morally grey unless you've got deep pockets, probably > not what the requestor really wants and not really a good option for a > co-op - but I think this is what a lot of people are doing and it'll > cause much pain whenever any one organisation calls on service to the > point where the support company collapses; > > 3. you persuade the organisation to reword the SLA. > > Which is most probable? > > So I guess my advice would be to make sure the wording of the target > SLA doesn't effectively prevent honest FOSS bids. :-) > > Or maybe this cold is making me crazy this morning. :) > > Regards, > -- > MJ Ray <m...@phonecoop.coop> > Kewstoke, Somerset, England > _______________________________________________ > tos mailing list > tos@teachingopensource.org > http://teachingopensource.org/mailman/listinfo/tos >
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