Microsoft's Beijing win causes concern

There is growing disquiet about public sector IT contracts being awarded to Western vendors in China, a country long known for its fondness of open source and homegrown companies.

According to reports following news in the Beijing Times last week that Microsoft had won a three-year, $3.6m contract to supply that city's municipal government, there is criticism that foreign companies are winning such business.

The contract comes in the same week that Dell inked a $10m agreement with Chinese education authorities. One of Dell's key long-term rivals is likely to be China-based Lenovo, previously known as Legend.

Some government officials have spoken out, saying the deals may not only be bad for domestic vendors but potentially against a procurement law brought in at the start of last year.

China is already a big market for Microsoft and some other Western IT vendors but the rise of Asianux, an open-source operating system collaboration between the governments of China, Japan and South Korea, points to those countries looking to cheap, non-proprietary computing options.