FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Government Inaction on Competitive Software Tendering Wastes Millions.

Australia -- 20th April, 2007

It's time for all Australian state and federal agencies to bring
real, open and competitive tendering back into their software
acquisitions. Their lack of willingness to ensure competition in
the marketplace costs Australian taxpayers tens of millions of
dollars every year - a bad practice that must be halted.

"At present, almost no government agencies in Australia permit
open and competitive tendering for software platforms and
productivity applications," observed Con Zymaris, CEO of
long-standing ICT industry company Cybersource Pty. Ltd. "Instead,
these agencies hand the business, worth around a billion dollars
each refresh cycle, to Microsoft - no competitors are allowed to
make bids."

"We are astounded that government agencies, which have a fiduciary
responsibility to Australian taxpayers, should follow this
strategy," continued Zymaris. "We are even more amazed that no
voices have raised this issue in Parliament. It is an obviously
short-sighted strategy which merely serves to lock Australia's
public sector further into a Microsoft-only monetary sinkhole."

A recent example of this kind of 'no competition allowed'
deal-making was the Queensland Government's decision[1] to abort
any potential for competitive bids from alternative software
suppliers in its refresh of 100,000 PCs - no vendor besides
Microsoft was allowed to enter the bidding arena. This left many
other multinational vendors, like Sun, Novell and Red Hat, along
with numerous innovative Australian Linux companies, such as
Cybersource, with no chance of competing. 

"By subverting the power of competitive markets, federal and state
agencies are hurting the local ICT industry. By keeping innovative
technology off government desks and by always returning to the
souring teat of Microsoft, they're hurting their own productivity.
And by stubbornly refusing to seriously consider alternative
technologies such as Linux and open source, they are shackling
themselves to the Microsoft upgrade treadmill in perpetuity, with
the cost meter set to spiral," concluded Zymaris. 


References:
[1] http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;504512889;fp;16;fpid;2

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About Cybersource Pty. Ltd.                                                     
                                                                                
Cybersource, founded in early 1991, is the second longest running open
source solutions company in the world. We have been demonstrating the
better value, security and robustness of open source technologies to
our clients since then. We also produce products like:


The Small Business Linux Server: the best value small business server on the market and 75% less expensive than the Microsoft alternative.

Datasafe: Stores copies of all your documents. Easy and direct access
to all past revisions.

Cybersource TrimClient; All the advantages of a thin-client with
none of the disadvantages.


http://www.cybersource.com.au

Spokesperson/Contact: Steven D'Aprano 
Phone: +61 3 9621 2377                                   
Email: info@cybersource.com.au
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