Talks are on with Microsoft with the intention to keep its licensing agreement for Windows, according to the European Commission. Instead of holding a public tender, the commission has decided to start negotiations with the software giant. Amidst supporters of open standards, the decision has sparked controversy. Under certain conditions that allow the commission to acquire software made by a single vendor, the negotiated procedure is allowed by the European Union. Anthony Gravili, commission spokesman for Inter-Institutional Administration revealed that everything done by the Commission is above the board.

While negotiating on behalf of all the E.U institutions, agencies and other bodies, the commission is committed to getting value for money. Driving a hard bargain has been possible for the EC as they can drive costs down by representing such a large number. A business case has to be made in terms of feasibility and total cost of ownership after the commission has assessed products well. Representatives from the budget department (DG BUDG) asked why the products were not put to tender when the decision was made to take the negotiated procedure route at a task force meeting in December. Microsoft met all requirements, according to the Directorate General for Informatics (DIGIT) that sets the commission’s IT strategy.

Gravili explicit that the authorisation already has the faction to delegate to Windows 7, under the licence concord. Thought it is highly outside to interchange under a new lessen, this is a standard abstract for big corporate contracts with Microsoft. As else bodies and organizations essay to protect measure with the commissions study practices, any mass instrument acquire a large knock-on opinion that give be potentially worth around jillions of euros to Microsoft. According to the IDC, with many than 36,000 desktop computers in Inhabitant institutions, Dweller governments state 19% of all software purchases in the E.U.
With its own European Interoperability structure, which are a set of guidelines for governments instalment IT systems, the commission's project to force with Windows appears to be at ratio. It was required that the decisions understood to not bosom the certificate into any engineering providers for statesman than a few life, according to the lead of the chore displace determining on the latest Windows licenses. The aggroup of separate mainstream IT businessperson should be hip of the negotiated procedures where contracts are approaching their demise, according to Extremity. Whether proper tendering is existence done is puzzling analysts, according to Jan Wildeboer, the EMEA gospeler at Red Hat.

Gravili explains that the commission will also seek to renew its services contracts in tandem with negotiations on the licenses. While larger institutions such as the Parliament and the commission have a services contract to help manage any issues that requires a deep know-how of the software at the code level, the current agreement includes a baseline service agreement for all the institutions. The Microsoft experts and their great knowledge was used along with EC experts recently when they faced a strong cyberattack, according to Gravili.