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Enterprise Linux: Are We There Yet?
Simon Crosby writes " Network Computing is running an special report on Linux in the enterprise. It evaluates strengths and weaknesses of Linux useage in the enterprise. It also discusses perceptions, roadblocks, security, clustering and other Linux enterprise issues."
I'd mostly agree, except I'd exclude some high-end hardware. It'll take another couple of years before you're running Linux happily on a 64 CPU box.
But if you're comfortable running NT or SCO in your enterprise, then Linux should be no problem. I'd even go so far as to say that Linux has always been more enterprise-ready than NT. The first version of NT that was reasonably stable was Windows 2000. Linux was solid much sooner.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
I think one of the best parts of Linux's "PR" is that it really comes from its users. Other than IBM and, to some small extent RedHat, there isn't anyone really doing PR. Except the users. They are the ones going out to their bosses and saying, "Hey, I've used this for a long time and I know it can meet the needs." You can't get that kind of assurance from a commercial. Sure you might have PR reps from companies like Microsoft or HP coming around and giving you their salesman pitch, but who would trust more: a guy that shows up at your door and gets paid on commission, or the guy in your systems department that's been keeping everything going for five years? The Linux user base is really growing, and it's the kind of growth that feeds off itself, expanding more into new places. I think in time we'll see more people moving to Linux for enterprise partly because of this.
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Promoting critical thinking since 1994.
I think MS Word interoperability is perhaps the single most important barrier limiting companies from changing to Linux. Other Office products such as MS Excel and MS Powerpoint are also important.
You should remember that it's not just necessary to have some semi-lousy import filters to Linux word-processors, but also have 100% compatible export filters. It's practically impossible to make a transition in any company that has to communicate with an existing MS Word user base. And that is the case for almost any companies and public administration.
And 99% doesn't do, it must be 100.000%. If there are even small incompatibilities, you have to use genuine MS Word -> MS Windows.
StarOffice 6.0 beta (same as OpenOffice build 638c) has some compatibility in basic formatting. The older StarOffice 5.2 has, in my experience, much better MS Word compatibility, but it also breaks up quite quickly. However, its Excel compatibility is worse than with SO6.0b/OO638c.
KOffice (1.1) is not even worth mentioning with regard to MS Office compatibility. Its Word import filter simply strips all formatting, and it doesn't have an export filter.
I work in an IT company, doing purely Linux work, but have to do all documentation, communication, and administrative tasks with MS Office. I was able to use StarOffice 5.2 for a while in some tasks, but can't rely on it completely. The situation really sucks.
could this question please die? considering the realities behind shrinkwrap licenses and ever dedicated support contracts, you can't sue anyone. and even if you could - how can you hope to win? the us gov't sued microsoft and look at how victorious it was?
a better question is: if things go wrong with widget x, what are my options to get it fixed? with closed s/w, the only option is the vendor you got it from (and really, knowing that, do you want to sue them?). with free software you can use your vendor, another vendor, your own staff, or private contractors (and knowing that, you could feel free to sue your vendor; assuming they failed to live up to their support contract).
note: i'm assuming in an enterprise situation you'd have some sort of support contract with ibm, redhat, microsoft, suse, sun, linuxcare, apple, etc.
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"Enterprise" has two components, first is the relatively straightforward "Core Application" of a company, which might be some sort of ERP system like PeopleSoft, or some other commercial produce. For many companies, this will be an amalgamation of custom programs written over many years. These applications are typically based on some form of transaction processing system (e.g. CICS on the Mainframe, Tuxedo on Unix, or even database-driven transactions ala Oracle, DB2, etc.)
The second, and more critical part of 'Enterprise' is the nature of the computing service. Generally any outage is measured in dollars per minute or hour. It's not unusual for a large company to face severe monetary losses for even slight outages. Think millions of dollars an hour (or even per minute). This measure tends to be a little slippery, but with some analysis a pretty solid figure can usually be determined.
For some enterprises, Linux might make complete sense (e.g. Google). For others, the potential of saving a few thousand or hundred thousand in licensing costs pales in comparison to the probable re-training, new hardware, and "potential" instability of moving to Linux. If you've got something that works, why fix it?
Given the above, even if all of the big 'Enterprise' vendors port their software to Linux, you're not done. Linux clustering in a business context such as Solaris, AIX, and (in the good old days) VMS provide would be one stumbling block. The lack of high-end hardware is another -- and yes I know that Linux runs on anything from a PC to a SPARC server to a S/390 mainframe. In reality, you're unlikely to drop $2million on a big Sun box then load Linux -- you'll want to take advantage of Solaris's dynamic partitioning and other proprietary hooks.
Loading Linux on diverse old hardware makes business sense -- turn that old Sun box into something useful. It doesn't make nearly as much business sense when buying a new non-intel server, since the license fee of the OS (if any) is negligable compared to the overall value of the system in the 'Enterprise'.
Over time this is likely to change, since Linux represents a constantly improving and freely available system, vendors will start adopting it as 'their' OS. IBM is an early starter here, but the process will take time. And like a battle of attrition Linux has the advantage over time, since it is constantly improving (for free), while commercial vendors have to dump $millions into R&D to bring out each new version of their OS.
"But actually trying to use m4 as a general-purpose langage would be deeply perverse" --ESR
I work for a rather nice sized ISP in Michigan, and no it's not AOL. Every_single_server we have runs linux. We have one, count 'em one, NT server in the entire place that belongs to us and that is here only to give the owners son a job as an NT Admin, sad huh?
For the last 3 or maybe longer years we have run Debian exclusively. Is Linux ready for the enterprise? Yes. Is Linux ready for every enterprise? No. But those of us who can, do.
No, because the question itself is wrong, and is really a red herring.
It isn't "Who do you sue?" because instead it's really "Who can I blame and send the heat somewhere besides me?" The IT management structure will take heat for any service problems, but with a Microsoft solution they have the perfect blame target. Between "Everybody uses Microsoft," which absolves blame for having chosen them, and the fact that Microsoft is essentially lawsuit-proof, between their EULA and size/tactics, things are nicely diffused. Doesn't keep the systems up an running, but at least you're suffering in the same boat with everyone else, and there's the general, "Nothing can be done any better," to protect you.
Contrast that with Linux and outsourced support. First off, you've chosen something different, and hence inherently risky. Second, your outsourced support is probably less lawsuit-proof, and therefore maybe something might actually have to be done, rather than sighing in resignation.
Also contrast with Linux and internal support. Now you're to your own resources, and directly and immediately responsible for anything that goes wrong.
Note that NONE of this says a single thing about service levels, outages, or whatever. It's merely about adequate 'diffusion or responsibility' to keep the IT peoples' jobs protected. Microsoft provides a great 'responsibility diffusion sink,' one of the best at that.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Linux will not truely be viable for the Enterprise until it is entirely 64 bit, not just the kernel. We (a major university that works with geophysical data sets that are large - like corperate datasets) have to kludge around the 2gb limit emposed by utilities like gzip. Without 64bit apps, a 64bit kernel is off little use.
Spell check? Why bother. That is what grammer/spelling Nazi freaks who waiste band width posting "spell right" are for.
There are different levels of enterprises. Are they talking about billion dollar companies, or are they talking about mom-and-pop companies?
Where in the enterprise do they see Linux running?
Is it as a printserver, database server, or the desktop?
Personally, I don't think Windows will be replaced on the desktop in the foreseeable future. The average ubergeek/Linux user hates the normal user too much for that to happen (personally I think it's an inferiority complex...)
On the server side, at my work, we still haven't seen any major request for Linux solutions (we write custom management solutions for midlevel enterprises, i.e. adding specific monitoring support into HP NNM, CA TNG, Tivoli etc). Here, Solaris reigns supreme (if you don't have Solaris support, you can forget it). We looked at Linux support about 6-12 months ago, and the thing is, from a network management point of view, Linux is terrible (right now). SNMP is not fully supported (the UCDavis agent that comes with RedHat doesn't have full SNMPv2 support), and it's harder to get to the underlying hardware than for WinNT and Solaris.
It is getting there though. The Tivoli agent (no matter how you feel about Tivoli TME) has been ported to Linux (at least it was, last time I talked to a Tivoli rep at LinuxWorld '99). The new management standard, WBEM, seems to get full Linux attention from people like IBM, although it's still not there compared to what Sun and Microsoft has in place (basically, the frontend (cimom) seems to be there, the backend (providers) is missing).
Quite frankly, I would be curious to see how people like Google is managing thousands of Linux servers (they're not going around pinging each server each day to see if it's up, are they?)
Sorry about the rambling, it's early in the morning, and it's slashdot.
Je ne parle pas francais.
Hard to use != more secure (perhaps just the opposite)
Easy to use does not necessarily mean there are flaws in security, or that you only need to point and click. It DOES, however, mean that someone like me who knows DHCP or DNS doesn't need to look up the man page every time I need to add an option, or forget to add an important security setting that isn't in a default configuration file. It also means that, by restricting _what_ can be modified, there is far less chance of an error. Ever use a # sign as a comment in a DNS zone file? It's terrible that Bind will keep on going without an error messages, but resolution (particularly of MX records) will fail miserably
Commented config files are easier to use than non-commented ones which require you to read a man page. Similarly, GUI tools are easier to use than config files (generally) - especially when they include good help functions. GUI admin tools SHOULD NOT replace an admin or be a substitute for stupidity, but they SHOULD be there to make our lives easier.
Administrators are busy people. Many IT departments are understaffed. Admins have better things to do than battle with the UI.