[LINK] MS audit cripples city

[Howard Lowndes]

It strikes me that Virginia Beach should be dictating the resources that
they afford M$ in their witch hunt, not the other way about.  Unless of
course they are slapped with an Anton Piller, in which case they should
just shut everything down and blame the whole mess on M$.

Has anyone told Virginia Beach about OSS.

-- 
Howard.
______________________________________________________
LANNet Computing Associates <http://www.lannet.com.au>

On Tue, 7 Nov 2000, Bernard Robertson-Dunn wrote:

> MS audit cripples city
> By: Kieren McCarthy
> Posted: 06/11/2000 at 12:05 GMT
> 
> A demand by Microsoft to run an audit on all its software has brought chaos
> to the city of Virginia Beach, Virginia. A one-page letter demanded to see
> all software licences to prove the software wasn't counterfeit. The
> thinking is that since government departments tend to go for the lowest
> supplier quote, they may inadvertently pick up pirate software.
> 
> The city's CIO admits that Microsoft is legitimately entitled to order such
> an audit, but we don't think he's all that happy about it. The demand will
> affect every department and tie up large numbers of staff - Virginia Beach
> is almost entirely run on MS kit and they will have to check around 3,500
> computers. Not only that, but if the city can't prove that a piece of
> software is legit, it may have to pay full whack for them. It could be
> facing a nasty bill at the end of it.
> 
> Having managed to get a 30-day extension on the deadline, it now has until
> the end of the month to comply. A quarter of the city's IT staff have been
> put onto the job full-time, causing backlogs in IT updates across the
> organisation. Have fun lads.
> 
>