London Council Dumping Windows For Chromebooks To Save £400,000 193
girlmad writes: "Google has scored a major win on the back of Microsoft's Windows XP support cut-off. The London Borough of Barking and Dagenham has begun moving all its employees over to Samsung Chromebooks and Chromeboxes ahead of the 8 April deadline. The council was previously running 3,500 Windows XP desktops and 800 XP laptops, and is currently in the process of retiring these in favour of around 2,000 Chromebooks and 300 Chromeboxes. It estimates the savings at around £400,000 compared to upgrading to newer Windows machines — no small change."
Translation (Score:5, Insightful)
Translation: London Council trying to extort cheaper licenses out of Microsoft.
Security improvement. (Score:5, Insightful)
Are they trying to go around the (few) GCHQ monitoring limits by going straight into NSA-friendly territory?
Re:Translation (Score:5, Insightful)
Translation: Microsoft trying to extort expensive license fees from London Council.
FTFY
Re:Translation (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't sound like they're using web apps, at least not yet
No, but they were (apparently) using mostly Citrix apart from the power users. A Chromebook seems a good fit as a remote desktop client; you don't have any more issues with requiring an always on network than you started with. For once, a fairly sensible strategy it seems.
Re:Translation (Score:5, Insightful)
If using a Chromebook as a remote terminal, that makes sense, assuming a decent connection to Citrix. It means one less security issue (stolen/compromised laptops) to worry about. There is still security required when people have to log on, but that can be accomplished via SecurID or another 2FA system.
Re:All that is left (Score:0, Insightful)
Devil's advocate time:
Even if they pissed off the retail customers, MS has one spot that they are virtually impossible to dislodge from, and that is the enterprise. For example, Exchange. There are other solutions (Zimba or Google Apps), but for scalability and management, there is no other messaging system that can handle the sheer amount of users that Exchange handles on a daily basis.
Same with Active Directory. LDAP is used in some small firms, but AD has scalability on its side.
There are alternatives to MS, but there isn't anything that can do the group policies to desktops on the massive scales that what is done with Windows.
Plus, MS knowledge is easy to find. I can pay $16,000/year and get a H-1B with a MCSE who is extremely competant, far more than local talent on average. Good luck with trying to find that with Linux.
Re:All that is left (Score:1, Insightful)
3 years ago my family would be using Windows XP on 2 Lenovo X series, possibly also a Dell D610.
Today the four of us are on Apples and we all have Android based phones.
Whats windows again ?
Re:All that is left (Score:5, Insightful)
Once upon a time, payroll and accounting ran on a mainframe. On punched cards, no less.
OK, so your current system runs on Windows. And you've a captive audience that has no choice but to use IE. A browser whose world-wide usage rate has been dropping for years.
Some day, it's possible that the CIO is going to come in and say "We're switching all our financials to Oracle. They gave us a real good deal on an Exadata server. Running Oracle Linux. And apps written in Oracle Java.
Nothing is forever in computers. Not even Windows. Although the time spent waiting on virus scans can certainly make it seem like forever.
Re:Something's fishy... (Score:2, Insightful)
If you've ever sacrificed enough goats to divine the proper licensing you need to purchase from microsoft, you'll know the money they save /on software liscence cost alone/ will cover the hardware cost of even premium chromebooks 2 or 3 times over.
By the time you get done with Windows, Windows server, device/user CALS, Desktop services CALS, Systems management, etc hardware costs seem trivial.
Re:Translation (Score:2, Insightful)
Translation: London Council trying to extort cheaper licenses out of Microsoft.
You keep telling yourself that. It'll make it easier for competitors to eat your lunch.
Just conveniently ignore the bit where they already have the Chromebooks...
Re:Translation (Score:5, Insightful)
The AC has it. It's all about data security, or at least that's certainly the thing that would have prised Windows from the hands of the managers. The costs/hassle of not worrying about losing sensitive data knocks all the other savings into a cocked hat.
Re:All that is left (Score:4, Insightful)
That thing that just about everyone else uses.
Isn't reality neat?