Microsoft puts blind faith in schools
14 May 2008 | 14:17 BST
Vista beware
BEREFT OF ANY EVIDENCE to challenge the UK's official opposition to the sale of its latest software in education, Microsoft has decided to shore up its reputation with a good old-fashioned piece of puffery.
The Volish vendor started spinning after Becta, the quango which governs tech spending in education, made its case against Microsoft to the European Commission's competition police. In response, Microsoft said it thought that an increasing number of educational institutions were installing the latest versions of its software.
"We believe that more and more schools are upgrading to Windows Vista and Office 2007 as they increasingly recognise the benefits of embracing technology to transform teaching and learning," said Microsoft's response to Becta's complaint. But a Microsoft spokesman said it couldn't provide sales numbers to back the claim. Rather, Microsoft just had the impression that sales in education were going well.
A woolly statement of optimism may have been the best that Microsoft could do since Becta had advised schools in January that they shouldn't upgrade to either the Microsoft Vista operating system or the Office 2007 application software. Microsoft ran unfair licensing practices and locked people into using its software with proprietary standards, Becta said at the time.
Microsoft also provided a defence to the another element of Becta's EC complaint, which was that its software wasn't compatible with open standards and this locked schools into buying Microsoft software. In failing to support the internationally-recognized Open Document File standard (ODF) in its products, Microsoft shored up its monopoly of office software in education by locking other software vendors out of the market.
Microsoft retorted that it has funded the development of a tool that schools could use to work around the incompatibility problem. But Becta's complaint to the European Commission maintained that the conversion tool was a sop - interoperability between Microsoft's and competing document standards was still half-arsed and therefore a barrier to competitors.
Microsoft has not been able to say how much it spent on the development of the conversion tool, but it didn't do the work itself, which is another reason for critics to gripe. It's interoperability funds were given to developers allied to the Sourceforge open source community.
"Microsoft is deeply committed to education and interoperability," it said in response to Becta's complaint. If that is the case, say critics, then why has it not made interoperability an integral part of its products? µ
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