Ni bu nung shuo hun duo wun. Ni yo google translate

If I was your manager and you talked up this expensive proprietary product and it crashed and burned AND made me look bad, you're not going to be sticking around too long.

Your job, everyone's job, is to make your boss look good.

Your boss wants to use up his entire budget, and deliver a working solution as promised. There doesn't have to be any connection between those two. I think that the gpp was proposing that you help chose a proprietary system which would burn up the budget, and that you use you spare time to set up a F/OSS system which would work.

When the proprietary system fails, put the free one on to cover the gap. Now that it's working, it's pretty hard to argue that it can't do the job. Your boss has used the money, he's gotten the kickbacks from the salesmen, he's delivered a solution, you've made him look good. As long as he gets to take credit for everything, you'll be sticking around.

Since you know that they went out of their way to NOT restart, I would guess that they have had bad experiences with critical windows updates, and weren't going to be part of the experiment.

Those are your knowledgeable users, who read and understood your message.