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Mission Critical Linux in Trouble
Dynedain writes: "ZDNet reports that Mission Critical Linux who specialized in server clustering, is laying off 90% of their work force of 60 after failing to secure a buyer of the company. :("
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Sadly, a failure like this is a high-visibility public relations disaster. Companies should refrain from including the name of an operating system in their company name.
Had the company "Mission Critical Implementations" gone under, it would have gone largely unnoticed.
Their failure as a business reflects poorly on their marketing and their business savvy - not on their choice of toolsets. The industry decision-makers, however, will be affected. "Yet another linux failure" will be the gut reaction.
>>Mission Critical Linux in Trouble
they're not in trouble. They're dead. Please give an example of any company that has had to resort to laying off *90%* of their staff and has survived the calendar year.
Does anyone else get nervous when a company that purports to offer mission critical systems has their own web site succumb to the /. effect?
No wonder they're laying of 90%...
Gentoo Linux http://gentoo.org/
Bloody hell! Now what's going to happen to the mission?!
-- the most controversial site on the Web
They should have clustered themselves - that way if one of their business nodes went bankrupt or was sued, then the other business nodes could take up the slack.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
fewer distros. At least in the for profit arena. Hobby distros don't depend on economics as much to stay around because they don't need to stay in business to stay around. I don't mean any disrespect to Mission Critical Linux. But there must be demand to meet the supply of distros.
It is sad that a Linux company has gone under, but maybe this is just a sign that in our (for now) weak economy there isn't room for a bunch of High-End Distributions quite yet. Red Hat is still going strong, but they have name recognition and have been around for a while. I have talked to people who didn't recognize the word "linux" but did recognize "Red Hat." In a time when companies are not spending very much on tech, companies are more likely to go with something they've heard of, regardless of how well it gets the job done. (again, not a slam on how good any distro may be, just a comment on human nature)
Hopefully as Linux continues to pick up speed / market share (which in my opinion it is doing and will continue to do) the need for more companies devoted to the "mission critical" niche will come to be. All it will take is time. More people have heard of Linux now, Linux continues to improve both in quality and ease of use. It is not going away, but sadly not every distro will make it.
you probably shouldn't have read this.
Sorry things didn't work out MCL people. Consulting sucks, I know. My company had to lay people off to get to break even and we're still struggling to tread water. And we were one of the slow and steady firms during the boom. Its kept us afloat after the crash, but man does it suck. Competition is fierce and clients want more for less. Props for trying to do it with Linux (wish I was as lucky), but I guess it just didn't work out
psxndc
The emacs religion: to be saved, control excess.
Ok, here's the dirt. Basically we had to choose between getting more funding, or selling the company. Two offers came over the table to buy the company and we picked one. It fell through at the last moment and we had to make some tough decisions. Our support services were loosing money, so they're gone. We've kept profitable custom engineering projects and our cluster products groups. Hopefully we have enough funds to stay alive untill our products can support us. We're not planning on going completely out of business in the near future.
Full disclosure: I'm one of the employees that didn't loose their job. Someone else may be less optimistic about the whole thing. Since we were as nice as possible about laying people off (They got to stay around, paid, using their offices to find new jobs for three weeks) you probably won't find too many pissed off ex-employees.