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Expriences with Open Source Web Technologies?
_ZorKa_ asks: "I have been asked to give a presentation at an up and coming technology expo by my employer about 'Open Source Web Technologies'. Having taught Linux courses and open source web languages at a local college I feel fairly comfortable in speaking on the subject in front of a large crowd. So, instead of giving some of the same old boring open source stories I normally use I thought I would poll the Slashdot audience and see if there is anything of particular interest I should mention during my presentation. Maybe you have a war story to tell, or some advice to give. Anyone have any great stories that I could pass on as to why you *should* use open source web technologies in a business? Anyone have any links to some sound numbers that can back an argument up with. Even if you have reasons why a business shouldn't use open source web technologies I would like to consider those as well. I'm all ears!"
I work for a web development company in Draper, Utah. Initially when I signed on we were running on a purely NT atmosphere with ASP, JSP and Coldfusion installed. All of this was running on the backend MsSQL server hosting up a ton of registration data for companies. The pain in the ass part was the up time for the servers. They had hired a MCSE that managed the NT boxes, they went down (i kid not) atleast 10 times a day. The people at our colocation service gave us their ICQ numbers so we can just icq them when the server needed to be reboot rather than having to go through the whole rigermoral of calling through the tech support lines. We decided to move over to Debian Linux stable. After a very painful transistion (mostly to the lack of knowledge on how to properly export databases out of MsSQL from our MCSE), we have a fully running apache,php + mysql implimentation (with JSP support, Coldfusion support and even ASP support thanks to ChiliSoft). This is increadibly useful in that our servers have not gone down in over 2 years that i've been here. We also were able to get rid of the annoying MCSE, seeing as how we could hire a consultant to come in once a month and double check that everything was all right. Moving to linux was the best choice this company ever made, and I haven't even gotten into the whole money savings thing. MySQL + PHP also allows you to integrate your software into other open source applications such as ghostscript or the pdf libraries. We were able to dynamically create certificates made from PDF's with peoples signatures and names on them for clients. This is something that can be done in windows but requires you to go through there Printer OLE Com functions, not to mention it halts the system while the print job is finishing (oh and costs 5000 dollars for the ASP plugins.).
:-)
That's my beef with Windows NT, etc, doesn't run what you want fast enough and costs a huge amount. Not to mention it crashes 10 times a day
This company organized a huge media-related event, and they wanted to have an on-line registration system. Initially they called in a team which developed the system on Windows NT servers, with ASP and SQL Server. They took 3 months and when they finally delivered the system, it simply crashed under the heavy load.
That's when they called us in. This was 2 days prior to the registration day, so we were in a big rush. We, of course, advocated open/free technologies; we suggested Linux, MySQL, apache and perl. They said OK, so we started working. At the same time, the NT team worked on their server, tweaking it to see if they could withstand the load.
30 hours later, and on a server that was about 1/2 the capacity of the NT team's server, our system went on-line. It turns out it, too, crashed under the load. Heh. But while the NT team was busy rebooting their server just once, we installed Linux on 4 additional computers (desk-grade IBM Aptivas) and ended up with a round-robin configuration, with 4 web servers and a backend database server. Our system handled the load so well, that this time the company' firewall crashed and they had to update it.
I still like to use it as an example of how free technologies and tools enabled us to re-engineer 3 months worth of work from the NT team, in about 36 hours.
i work for a large corporation that uses Microsoft (go figure) and we do call upon MS for support alla time. especially since we dont have the time to pick though the BSOD dumps, and we pay them for it. but you are very right - they dont give us much back in the way of real support - other than to pull up MSDN articles we could have searched for ourselves. and usually we find the real answer ourselves in 1/2 the time.
BUT. the problem is that the management perceives that microsoft is supporting us. it isnt about the REALITY of support, its about the PERCEPTION, and more importantly, the BLAME of support - management wants to be able to tell their boss / the clients "we think its a problem in the Microsoft stuff, Microsoft is looking into it" i've consistently found that its all about CYA - Cover(ing) Your Ass - as long as you can blame a vendor, its ok. thats the real reason they're scared of using OSS. you cant blame a website, you cant point to a newsgroup and say "they're looking into it"
by the way, you said this vp kept talkin about windows and asp pages, but he had the right answers about Open Source - was he just a talking head or did he know what was what?
oh, and beware of the management using your answers to build up a case for OSS/Linux and then taking that as leverage to Redmond in order to cut the licensing costs...