More generally, the risks to using a single-source vendor is:
1.  The vendor becomes abusive (like you mentioned);
2.  The vendor goes out of business; and
3.  The vendor discontinues the product line without a replacement.


Other than that, it mirrors much of my own thoughts.

George


Quoting Robert Bushman <plug@traxel.com>:

> I think that the following questions capture
> most of the points that have been brought up
> over the past few days. Please help polish them
> by, say, 8 PM tonight so I can format and print
> copies. I will be at Maricopa County by 8:15 AM
> tomorrow. I'm 6'2", 215, with a shaved head. I
> should be easy to find :)
> 
> 
> Introduction
> ------------
> I would like to thank the Maricopa County CIO's
> Office for inviting us to this meeting today. The
> Phoenix Linux User Group is a community organization.
> As such, we are dedicated to supporting our
> government. We look forward to finding ways that
> we can help Maricopa County to take advantage of,
> and promote, competition in the information
> technology marketplace.
> 
> 
> Multisourcing
> -------------
> Single sourcing of technology products means accepting
> the risk that the single source will become abusive.
> Recently, Microsoft was found guilty by the Department
> of Justice of abusing its monopoly power. Maricopa County
> has a clause (MC1-902) in its procurment procedure to
> deal with such vendors, but Maricopa County is currently
> too dependant to even consider invoking the clause with
> Microsoft. What efforts are being made to mitigate
> Maricopa County's dependance on a single source which
> has been found guilty of taking advantage of such
> situations?
> 
> 
> Open Data Formats
> -----------------
> In the mid 1990's, Maricopa County began a landmark
> program to make all public documents available online.
> These documents are published in Portable Document
> Format, an open format from Adobe Systems. Maricopa
> County uses Microsoft Office internally. Presumably,
> this currently includes the use of Microsoft Word
> and Excel formats. What steps are being taken to
> move these documents to an open format to guarantee
> future readability without dependance on Microsoft?
> 
> 
> Experimental Migrations
> -----------------------
> Maricopa County has acheived an extremely high degree
> of interoperability by using a single source for all
> software systems. This is the most cost efficient
> choice as the first step in connecting disparate
> departments, and it requires accepting a single source
> in the short run. Now that the initial effort of
> integration is largely complete, when will experimental
> migrations begin to eliminate the single-source
> dependancy?
> 
> 
> Competition Pricing
> -------------------
> It was quite easy to discover by looking around on
> the Internet that Maricopa County is 100% Microsoft.
> Surely Microsoft is aware of this, and its sales
> representatives take this into account when negotiating
> licensing agreements with Maricopa County. What efforts
> are under way to demonstrate to Microsoft that going
> forward it will have to compete for Maricopa County's
> software budget?
> 
> 
> Dependancy Spiral
> -----------------
> Using a single source for a few years in order to
> establish integration is a great idea. The longer that
> this continues, however, the more an organization
> becomes dependant on a particular look and feel, and
> the harder it is for employees to move productively
> between similar products from competing vendors. What
> steps is Maricopa County taking to prevent a dependancy
> spiral and restore competition for its budget?
> 
> 
> RFP?
> ----
> How does Maricopa County guarantee competition in the
> information technology acquisition process, does it
> use RFPs? If so, what are the steps for providing a
> competing proposal, and are any companies other than
> Microsoft eligible to submit proposals?
> 
> 
> ________________________________________________
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