My interest, and it should be yours, your CIO and CEO and especially your CFO, is not just save money or convert clients to Lotus.
It's to provide a logic to understand, the Microsoft Tax, as some have called it.
Microsoft is hurting, the companies that said they would go to Exchange, never did and they are still trying to get them to do the migration. But in this economic environment, why would you pay over $3million dollars to move a moderate size company and still just have email?
Microsoft is aware of Liberate and may now start digging in their heels even more to stop the losses. Google hits them, IBM hits them, but Microsoft still hurts themselves.
If they do not discount any pricing, but will do it for "free", where does that leave you in your organization?
If you can't explain to your C executives why it isn't free, you need help, ask me, or you can go to the IBM group itself. http://www.ibm.com/software/info/liberate
Nothing is free in life, even death is expensive. So get over the free discussion already and face reality. If you don't believe it, numbers don't lie. YOUR numbers.
I know of at least 1 CIO who asked for and received a 50% discount on his Software Assurance renewal after telling MS that he was ready to replace Exchange with Notes and Sharepoint with Quickr. It seems like payback time for Microsoft and it couldn't happen to a nicer bunch.
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