Slashdot Mirror
FAQ On Convincing Big Companies To Try Linux?
Yet another of the numerous Anonymous Coward asks: "A group of us are hoping to convince a big UK based defence
organisation to break away from Microsoft's stranglehold on the workplace and to try out Linux. I am preparing a Q&A style document to be e-mailed to the company which will answer people's worries. What I
am trying to do is convince people, either at work or at home that there is a cheaper, more stable alternative to M$. So, I am writing for a general audience." A document describing the advantages of Linux to corporations and small companies can't be a bad thing. I should know: the Ask Slashdot bin is full of them!
"What I am after are examples, facts and figures as to why they should try Linux? For instance, the announcement a few days ago that Linux was running 60%+ of Web servers, plus speed trials etc.
I've broken the document down into the following sections:
- What is Linux?
- Why Should I use Linux?
- But surely Windows is good enough? (this section will include data on emulators, etc.)
- But I heard there aren't many applications available for Linux?
- What machines will run Linux?
- How much does it cost?
- What technical support is available?
- What games are available?
- Why the penguin?
Once upon a time, i had a hard drive go out on a machine that served a "critical" function. With 3 people waiting on this machine to come back up, i grabbed the most recent backup and got the machine back up within an hour. Problem was, the software this machine served was keyed to the hard drive. When i called the company to get another key, all i got was a recording saying that they were closed down that day "to celebrate the SuperBowl victory." Good reason to use OSS.
Another time, had to IPL the RS/6000 and it didnt come back up. All it did was blink a little code at me. Too bad the code wasn't in the books that I had. Called our IBM solutions provider, they too did not have the code in their book. After a field guy came out, ended up being a minor problem in the inittab. With linux, i would have had the problem fixed in 10 minutes, instead of waiting half the day for a field tech. They do that on purpose, you know. Make things as difficult as possible so that you have a false sence of value for your service contract.
hmph.
--
Rocky McGaugh
I am in a similiar situation. Instead of MS its
Sun. I love solaris.. I make my living off of supporting it. Unfortunalty Sun hardware is IMHO way over priced at the workgroup server level when compared to equally powered i386 hardware. I could get a LOT more done with a lot less money if I could convience my company to go linux for the lower end servers. I have managed to get a few linux box's in our environment but its really tough. I need to basically shove it down their throats. Heck I would even be happy with the BSD family.. for example. I want to setup a usenet news server. Several deptartments in my company have asked for one, unfortunatly there is no money in the budget for a 10k dollar server and about 10k worth of disk. If we went i386 hardware I could at least cut this figure in half if not a third and get better performance to boot.
I totally agree with the poster.. we need to get some knowledgable people together to write some
Something versus linux documents that admins can use to convince companies that linux is the way to go. At least on the workgroup server level. I am definatly not saying that linux can replace my enterprise 6500 solaris box, but it can least replace a netra t1 webserver (at a third of the cost).
Malice
This is *not* going to happen easily.
Not only will you have to retrain thousands of users, but you'll also have to replace all of your applications software and stuff.
Since companies often don't like big expenditures (and the cost of a Windows or Office site license is usually the smallest part of the bill), they're not going to want to do it all at once.
Here's a suggestion to start getting the ball rolling, and it basically details what I'm doing at the company that I work for. Remember, one step at a time, as opportunity permits:
New webserver running Linux, not Windows 2K. This is a good chance to show the boss what Linux is all about.
New mail server running Linux.
New SAMBA fileserver, using a RAID setup, without incurring the massive licensing costs of setting up a Novell box. (Our current Novell box crashes daily; no one seems to know why.)
Lighter-duty users (who basically just use their computers for running a terminal and reading their e-mail) will be offered the choice of running Linux. As these pioneering users get used to Linux, I fully expect water-cooler conversation to turn to the fact that they haven't seen a BSOD in months.
More demanding users will get tired of the existing Windows 95A installations on their machines. As these machines crash out and need hard disk formats and reinstalls, the option of Linux and Corel Office will be presented.
The plan has not yet been established for how to deal with the very demanding users, like our General Manager and our Controller, both of whom are running Office 97 for a lot of the accounting. Since they make very intensive use of spreadsheets and need backwards compatibility with Windows, they may need to remain with Windows, either until the perfection of WINE or of Corel Office.
This becomes a one step at a time method. The overheads of supporting two operating systems in our office won't be all that great. I'm in a small branch office, and I fully expect that there will be less problems overseeing the Linux boxes than I currently have in administering the Windows 95A machines.
The part that really frustrates me about this whole process is that our General Manager likes to get involved with everything. He's the sort of guy who thinks nothing of walking across our carpeted office with a bare stick of RAM in his hand, giving me the added challenge of worrying about weird hardware crashes.
Recently, we got new computers for both him and the controller. The controller trusts me implicitly, and is very knowledgeable about computers. On his new machine, while we're unable for a couple of reasons to run NT 4.0, I was able to format the hard disk drive and do a clean install of Windows 95B, which is, IMHO, the best Windows version.
The General Manager wanted none of that. He didn't want to have to reinstall all his applications. So, he made me give him the computer with no operating system on it. He then used an old, pre-FAT32, version of Partition Magic to copy his existing drive over to the new computer. His machine now runs Windows 95 Upgrade (also no FAT32), which was installed over Windows 3.1 on a 486, and has been mirrored onto bigger and bigger hard disks with every hardware upgrade since then. His 8 gigabyte hard disk is now set up as 8 different 500 meg partitions, for a total of 4 gigabytes.
He complains constantly that his computer is buggy, and thinks nothing of tinkering with it for a day to try to get it stable. Of course, the amusing part is that he could have formatted his hard disk and reinstalled it cleanly in half the time. Of course, he's always short of hard disk space. And his Windows directory is cluttered with DLLs and stuff from applications that were uninstalled several hard disk drives ago.
Anyone got any suggestions on helping this guy see the light? He's my biggest challenge.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.