CERN Is Working To Move Further Away From Microsoft Due To License Costs Going Up By 10x

CERN, The European Organization for Nuclear Research that is home to the Large Hadron Collider and a lot of other experiments, is experimenting with moving further away from Microsoft products. Due to Microsoft license fee increases affecting their work in the research laboratory and its budget, they established the Microsoft Alternatives "MAlt" project.

CERN had already long been involved with developing Scientific Linux (now shifting to CentOS) but they have still been reliant upon Microsoft products in other areas, on some Windows systems as well as using the likes of Skype for Business.

The Microsoft Alternatives project has actually been in the works for one year already due to "anticipated software license fee increases" which turns out is impacting CERN as Microsoft revoked their status as an academic institution. Without the special academic pricing, CERN is forced to pay much more for Microsoft products. According to CERN, their license costs are up by a factor of ten.

The goal of MAlt is to migrate from Microsoft products to more open-source solutions where possible. Among the changes happening this year are replacing Skype for Business and existing analog phone infrastructure with a software telephony solution. Other software packages to replace existing Microsoft products are being explored.

At @CERN, we are moving away from @Microsoft products due to their license fee increases for our research laboratory.

We will try to use Open Source software as much as possible :)https://t.co/s1LqxDuRmJ

/cc @phoronix

— Iban Eguia (@Razican) June 12, 2019

More details at home.cern.