Instead, the company will move towards Linux as much as possible in the next few years, he says.
"We were on the Microsoft Select licensing agreement and decided to let it lapse. When they first came up with Software Assurance, I opposed it and Stagecoach accepted a policy of not buying it."
Low has heard of the sweeteners Microsoft has added to Software Assurance, but declined to comment on their appropriateness since Stagecoach isn't a Software Assurance customer.
He says Stagecoach has adopted OEM licencing, each year replacing a quarter of current licences with the OEMs. OEM licences for commercial software are cheaper but the software cannot generally be transferred to another machine and attracts zero support.
The company is committed to getting as much Linux as possible on servers and desktops in the next few years, he says.
"We're doing all the tests and have changed the Oracle server from Windows 2000 to SuSE Linux."
Stagecoach is "looking at all other areas, but it's a long road. It won't happen this year or next year, it'll take a number of years. But we're running more and more Linux and will have a Windows and Linux environment."
Linux on the desktop "won't be happening this year, maybe in a few years", but two servers currently run Linux, with one more to be shifted to the open source OS in the next month.
"We have less than 10 servers in total -- we run Citrix Metaframe."