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Linux in Enterprise Environments

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the putting-on-your-tie dept.

watzinaneihm writes "Eweek has an Article about how Linux is getting accepted in Enterprises.IBM is releasing Tivoli for Linux. CA released Unicenter for Linux a few months ago.I got rumours about rumours that HP might do something similar with Openview. " One for those of you who dress nicer than me.

35 of 190 comments (clear)

  1. Linux on the Enterprize? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    I always knew that Spock was logical

    1. Re:Linux on the Enterprize? by macdaddy357 · · Score: 4, Funny

      They must not use Linux on the holodeck. It screws up all the time. That's windoze for sure.

      --
      How ya like dat?
    2. Re:Linux on the Enterprize? by Anonvmous+Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      "Computer, what time is it?"

      "command not found"

      *sigh*

      "Computer, time."

      "It is 39284.23429 seconds since the designated marker was set."

      *grumble*

      "Computer, man time" .....

    3. Re:Linux on the Enterprize? by Anonvmous+Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      "They must not use Linux on the holodeck. It screws up all the time. That's windoze for sure."

      I don't think it's Windows. Nobody on the ship was ever bothered with a message like "There's a Windows Holodeck Update available for download, would you like to interrupt your game to install it now?"

      It's probably Linux since all the content they ever viewed in that system was public domain.

      Heh. I wonder if anybody'll get that. Oh well.

  2. Lotus Notes, Please! by swordboy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Just release Notes already. I realize that it runs under wine but...

    --

    Life is the leading cause of death in America.
    1. Re:Lotus Notes, Please! by muecksteiner · · Score: 3, Informative

      This is a "me,too!" post just in case someone from IBM is listening...

      In my spare time, I'm the admin of a small office network (~10 PCs when fully deployed) which uses SuSE as desktop OS after endless troubles with an aging NT4 installation. The users mostly love it, and generally find it to be easier to use than NT (which is not surprising since it does not constantly act up like NT did). Staroffice turns out to be a suboptimal but acceptable replacement for MS Office, and the only thing we have to run in Wine is Notes R5.

      Since we need the advanced facilities of the client (i.e. not just mail) we need the genuine article, and not e.g. a third party mailer or a web interface.

      Even though Wine is a terrific application, there are always some problems with complex apps like Notes, especially for advanced features like database views. Also, the users find the idea of one program basically being a Windows app in a KDE world pretty confusing (KDE itself is fine for them), and configuration of this setup is troublesome. A native Notes client with KDE integration would be extremely nice to have - come on, IBM, you can't tell me you haven't been working on this anyway!

      A.W.

  3. Linux is used in the enterprise by Gortbusters.org · · Score: 4, Insightful

    but mainly by people who are developing on the Linux platform. The majority of managers, marketing, and other folk are very tightly monitored by the IT department and are not ready for Linux yet.

    Here, it's all RedHat 8.0. It was tough to get people to switch to 7.3, but once the developers saw 8.0 they loved it.

    --
    --------
    Free your mind.
    1. Re:Linux is used in the enterprise by Alkarismi · · Score: 3, Informative

      That's now what we've found. In fact business in the UK at least are interested in using it for pretty much everything you do on the back end. Here's our latest case study:
      http://www.siriusit.co.uk/technical/casest udies/kg .html
      The short version is - GNU/Linux is Enterprise ready, and companies are using it for pretty much everything!

  4. Linux in the Marine Corps by kryonD · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Linux is not just being considered, it's being used as a realistic, cost effective solution. See this presentation on what the Marine Corps now uses to manage its warehouse inventories. It's a bit old, but still very relevant as the system is being deployed here in Okinawa next month.

    --
    I've dirtied my hands writing poetry, for the sake of seduction; that is, for the sake of a useful cause. --Dostoevsky
    1. Re:Linux in the Marine Corps by kryonD · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You are actually incorrect on this point. I'm also stuck with the lovely billet of being the NMCI rep for the unit, so I've done my homework here. You can start at EDS's site and then get even deeper at the contract award site. EDS is going to do exactly what their satement of work and contract say they have to do. Anything you may have read produced by the Navy or Marine Corps that contradicts these two sites is merely wishful thinking or bad information.

      STRATIS(Warehouse management:Linux, Oracle), as well as ROLMS(Ammunition accounting:Solaris/NT, Oracle) and DMLSS(Medical Logistics:Oracle) are three systems that I am responsible for that employ non MS based solutions. All 3 of these systems have been identified by EDS Corp as LEGACY applications and will be supported in house by DOD personnel. The contract clearly explains the definition of legacy and non-legacy systems.

      What you may have been thinking is what would happen if we elected to request EDS to support the functionality of the system. In this case, EDS would contract out and provide their own MS based solution which would be a non-legacy system. They would support every inch, or byte in this case, of the system. Legacy apps only get supported up to the link light on the LAN card...not the card itself mind you, just that there is a valid signal going to the card.

      --
      I've dirtied my hands writing poetry, for the sake of seduction; that is, for the sake of a useful cause. --Dostoevsky
  5. Unicenter by RobertNotBob · · Score: 3, Interesting
    I seem to remember Unicenter for Linux being out years ago. Has anybody here been using Unicenter on Linux?

    --
    ___ I don't respond to Anonymous Cowards, and I Never Mod them UP.
    1. Re:Unicenter by shippo · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I had the misfortune of using this pile of junk a few years ago, but not on Linux, but on a variety of other systems such as HPUX, Solaris, Windows and even an IBM mainframe. Quick frankly the most over-hyped, memory hogging, very expensive pile of crap I've ever had the misfortune of using.

      The software on any machine consisted of agents that reported back to the main system via SNMP (security hell!). The UNIX agents were not only huge memory hogs, but on most systems I worked on returned figures that were completly meaningless to the well being of a modern unix-system. The Windows ones were even worse when it came to grabbing memory.

      The main purpose of Unicenter was to allow CA to charge high amounts of money for on site support. The manuals were just so appallingly bad that on site support was the only option. Even training courses seemed to concentrate on using the minor components that no-one in their right mind consider in enterprise environments.

  6. Microsoft TCO makes linux success inevitable by Argyle · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I work as a CIO in large corp and know the costs involved with running a Microsoft centric enterprise. The TCO (total cost of ownership) is unsustainable. Microsoft is increasing these costs yearly with limited benefit outside the Outlook/Exchange arena.

    Money, not reliability or security, will be the reason corporations switch to linux. The upcoming rise of network computers ala Citrix will also reduce the value of a Windows-centric enterprise.

    --
    nuclear iraq bioweapon encryption cocaine korea terrorist
    1. Re:Microsoft TCO makes linux success inevitable by salesgeek · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Since you brought up the TCO model, let's follow this through. The logic is that MS is increasing TCO annually while providing little improved capabilities. This is 100% correct but isn't where the real TCO problem is. Microsoft's hitting us with 4%-5% per year in increase. The real problem is that in most enterprises you have over 22 business systems drawing resources and contributing to the sprial (they even sometimes require you implement more MS stuff):

      * Desktop OSes
      * Server OSes
      * Messaging (mail servers)
      * Databases
      * Office Suites
      * Web Servers
      * Enterprise Network Management (Tivoli/Unicenter)
      * Accounting (sometimes ERP usurps this)
      * Order Entry
      * Billing (it's amazing how few comapnies use their accounting systems for cutting invoices)
      * eCommerce
      * Content Management
      * Inventory Management
      * Manufacturing (MRP)
      * Sales Force Automation (sometimes CRM)
      * Helpdesk
      * Customer Service Automation (sometimes CRM)
      * Internet Browsers
      * Groupware (outlook, groupwise or notes)
      * Misc. Productivity Apps (project management, CAD, graphic design, etc)

      It seems to me that the proliferation of business systems is really a core problem in ever-spiraling TCO. What really gets me is the ammount of patchwork integration out there. I think the root cause of the TCO spiral is that most managers missed the lecture about "Be very careful spending today's money to get ROI on past purchases!" It never ceases to amaze me how well protected lousy, non-integrated, buggy legacy systems are by the IT departments that foist them on the rest of the company.

      I'd love to work with a company that wanted to shrink the number of systems from 22 to a more manageable number.

      $G

      --
      -- $G
    2. Re:Microsoft TCO makes linux success inevitable by Dr+Caleb · · Score: 3, Interesting
      I'd love to work with a company that wanted to shrink the number of systems from 22 to a more manageable number.

      We have:
      * Databases
      * Enterprise Network Management (Tivoli/Unicenter)
      * Accounting (sometimes ERP usurps this)
      * Order Entry
      * Billing
      * Inventory Management
      * Manufacturing (MRP)
      * Groupware (outlook, groupwise or notes)

      Running off 1 AS/400 And:
      * Sales Force Automation (CRM)
      * Customer Service Automation (CRM)
      * eCommerce
      * Web Servers
      * Messaging (mail servers)

      Running off another AS/400. Our software for the first is custom made for us by a company in California, but everythinng gets entered into it. It's very propriatary to our industry, and it does everything from front line customer service, to billing. It'll even create invoices in PDF format and email them directly to the customer from within the app.

      If you want to shrink everything, think about AS/400. They're really good workhorses. Disclaimer: I don't work for IBM, but I used to.

      --
      "History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain
  7. Not enough documentation by Amsterdam+Vallon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As a developer, I'm asked on average of once or twice every year to suddenly pick-up a new technology and learn it within a couple weeks so that I can write a new program for release 6-12 months later as itself or jointly with the hardware guys.

    When it comes to good, thorough documentation and API releases, I've always thought that this is an area where Linux is truly lacking. Hypothetically speaking, I think a coder learning Java for a new Windows P2P program that he must write would have a much easier time than a programmer who must learn Perl or C on his Linux box and create a network-intensive application that installs and runs the same way on all distributions of Linux, as well as Mac OS X.

    I figure opinions from the "non enlightened", as many of you will probably call me, will help you to improve Linux, especially its documentation and user-friendliness.

    --

    Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
    1. Re:Not enough documentation by DeadSea · · Score: 4, Interesting
      This is one of the reasons that I love Java. Everybody who writes code in Java puts in javadoc comments directly into the code. Java comes with a tool that pulls out these comments and makes web pages, pdfs, or pretty much any other format documentation out of it. Sun does this with the java.* classes, I do this with my classes, other third party libraries all have this. Because the documentation is in the source, it beats external documentation like man pages. It sure makes programming in Java a pleasant experience.

      I still recommend that if you are using Java, Linux is the way to go. The Java from Sun runs on Linux just as well as any Windows platform. It beats Java for Windows 9x by a mile. If you will only use opensource software, GCC's Java compiler (get a nightly build and compile it yourself rather than relying on what comes with your distribution, as those are older) is getting pretty darn near usable. It works for 97% of my stuff now. Similarly, the classpath libraries are reaching a point where I can usually substitute them for the sun libraries.

    2. Re:Not enough documentation by PrimeNumber · · Score: 3, Interesting
      Although Linux can be frustrating at times for new users (it was for me years ago), most of my frustration as a developer with MS products have been for the reasons you have stated.

      One thing I have noticed about Linux documentation is that it will usually come in one of these forms:
      • man pages
      • info pages
      • how-tos/readme
      • HTML or postscript file with full documentation in an indexed format.
      Also a big help are one gazillion web pages devoted to any Linux specific topic, programming or otherwise.

      Microsoft languages and API documentation have been really frustrating for me personally, either because the documentation source example doesnt work as it should, or a kludgey workaround is assumed to be acceptable get everything to work for MS oses 95 through XP. Check out differences in RAS implementation from 95 to XP as an example.

      At least in linux IHMO the solution(s) usually isn't limited to purchasing a proprietary 3rd party hack to get an app out in a timely manner.
    3. Re:Not enough documentation by DeadSea · · Score: 3, Insightful
      Not everyone writes comments that support these tools however (myself included) which dilutes the dopumentation process.
      I agree, its partly a cultural/precedent/ease-of-use thing. Because Sun includes the tool by default and uses the tool extensivly for all their stuff, far more Java programmers use it. In many ways, the advantages of Java don't come from the programming language, but from common practices that are associated with Java.
  8. Stone soup? by bunyip · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Just curious, I download a free operating system, then buy:

    - Tivoli / Openview / Unicenter / whatever
    - Oracle / DB2 / etc
    - Storage manager (Veritas?)
    - Enterprise backup software
    - Four other things I forgot
    - yet more stuff
    - yada, yada, yada
    - etc, etc

    Once you add a gajillion dollars worth of 3rd-party software, do you still have a free-OS?

    FWIW - I'm pro-Linux, I just don't recognize it beneath all this other stuff.....

    Alan.

  9. Empirical Evidence by DASHSL0T · · Score: 5, Informative

    If anyone doubts Linux' inroads into the corporate environment, just read today's release from HP. HP now says they have 2 BILLION in annual revenue attribuatable to Linux. http://biz.yahoo.com/rc/030121/tech_hewlettpackard _linux_1.html

    --
    Freedom Is Universal
    Linux-Universe
  10. GUI? We don't need no stinking GUI! by Inflatable+Hippo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    > What about the GUI?

    What GUI? It doesn't have a monitor...

    I've got a beloved Cobalt RaQ4 running a proprietary app server.

    I've booted it once when I turned it on an that's it. That was a year and a half ago. I patch it when necessary, keep the fluff out of it's inlets and that's it. (Sometimes I stroke it, and sing to it)

    On the other hand I have the same app server running on a Windows development box and, well, you can just tell what I'm going to say so I won't bother.

  11. Financial Corps by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Large financial corps have been aggressively looking at clustering linux for future generation platform. All the work IBM and research facilities have put into clustering linux has proven it's reliable and scalable. There is no equivalent in on windows. How many windows clusters are listed in the top 100 supercomputing clusters?

    Microsoft won't win in this area for several reasons. Large grid and clusters sometimes require really low level tweaking to optimize performance. When you start getting into shared memory architecture, windows is still 10 yrs behind. Plus, the researchers and high end computing need access to source code to tweak and optimize. Microsoft is it's own worse enemy in this area. MS effectively locks themselves out of the supercomputing world due to their business practices.

  12. Re:Obviously... by Inflatable+Hippo · · Score: 4, Funny

    > Huh? I guess the only Windows system you have ever maintained is your mom's WindowsME.

    I remember one delicious incident supporting a windows server.

    1. Needed to upgrade the database.
    2. Forced to install IE to do so.
    3. IE won't run because Graphics card not good enough.

  13. CmdrTaco dress code by lovebyte · · Score: 5, Funny

    CmdrTaco wrote:
    One for those of you who dress nicer than me.

    According to this pic that includes many people!

    --

    I'll do it for cheesy poofs.

  14. You *can* use Notes under Linux by nicestepauthor · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Here at work I sometimes use Linux mail programs like Mozilla Mail with Notes. Notes supports IMAP for reading your email and LDAP for accessing the company address book. We've been doing this using Netscape Mail on the Macintosh for years (Notes client is available for the Mac but the Mac users didn't want to buy it) and it works just as well for Linux. For Notes databases (other than email) you can make them useable over the Web with a reasonable amount of work. Notes *developers* need the full client, but many Notes users could probably do without it.

  15. Just don't pick redhat for a distro. by weave · · Score: 3, Informative
    Redhat recently changed their support policy. They now will only support releases for one year with errata. Are you nervous about switching to a .0 redhat release? Well now you have little choice.

    Actually, you have a choice, you can switch to their advanced server line for at least $800 per server. They will support each rev of that product with errata for up to three years. As for desktops installs...

    Imagine if Microsoft only supported an OS for one year from release...

    I am not happy at all

  16. Why use either .... by johnlcallaway · · Score: 3, Insightful

    We have been using NetSaint for years ... it runs on Linux, Solaris, and NT and exceeds our needs. It is tremendously configurable, supports remote reporting nodes, and is extremely light weight.

    My prior exposure to Openview, Unicenter, and Tivoli are that they are bloated monstrosities better suited to pleasing upper management types who like pretty pictures (has anyone actually found 3D flythroughs to be effective?) than to sys admins and NOCs. They take way too much effort to setup, and suck system resources like crazy. Plus, the damn things cost a fortune to purchase and support.

    So .. anyone care to tell me why I really care about this report, other than it showing how companies are taking Linux seriously? Because if they are, then it is time for them to start taking other Open Source software seriously, view what the competition provides, and start making their products more usable. I used to hear a saying, putting a dress on a pig doesn't make it a prom queen. Well, dressing up a pig using Linux doesn't get it a date on my server.

    --
    I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
  17. Re:Office productivity and visual basic. by finkployd · · Score: 5, Informative

    Before linux can EVER make it onto the desktop, somebody is going to have to come up with some type of scripting language besides C.

    I'm going off this assumption that this is either a joke or troll, but in case someone actually thinks this:

    (1) C is not a scripting language, never was, never will be.

    (2) Scripting languages available and commonly used on Linux are Perl, PHP, tcl, shell scripts (bash, tcsh, csh, zsh, et al), Python, Java (I kind of lump that in with scripting languages), and a bunch of others I am forgetting.

    If you specifically mean Visual Basic, no it does not exist for Linux. Clones of VB do but probably are not exactly the same.

    Finkployd

  18. It's part of the plan here by slutdot · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Ever since linux was introduced into our environment about a year and a half ago, linux has grown to be a major part of our organization. We proved to upper management that linux was a viable solution to MS products, not only in cost but in functionality for many situations. We have 6 RH servers now and more are forthcoming. It's a nice change since this makes me a linux professional instead of a hobbyist now. Granted, we have about 90 NT/2000 servers but 6 can be considered a nice start when a couple of years ago, my manager was telling me that he didn't trust open source because "if it's free, it can't be any good".

    We're about to hire three more engineers and as part of the requirements to work here, a candidate must have at least a functional knowledge of linux or unix. That's a major step in the right direction for an MS shop.

  19. Re:Office productivity and visual basic. by syle · · Score: 5, Funny
    Yes, because if there's one place where Linux is lacking, it's that there are not enough scripting languages.

    --

    /syle

  20. Re:Version 6 won't run under Wine :-( by 4of12 · · Score: 3, Informative

    According to this article, IBM is providing iNotes web access this quarter, with client technology "next quarter".

    --
    "Provided by the management for your protection."
  21. Tivoli is an update; Client for Notes IS new by GerardM · · Score: 4, Informative

    Tivoli already runs on Linux for quit some time. The importance of the news is in the widening of the support.

    Notes client will be introduced by IBM. This is really important news as it makes it not mandatory anymore to have Windows on the desktop.

    http://www.internetwk.com/story/INW20030119S0001

    Thanks,
    Gerard Meijssen

  22. Native Notes client for KDE/Gnome by NotesSauceBoss · · Score: 3, Informative
    IBM has no intention of building a proprietary client solution for a platform dedicated to open standards. What they're doing instead is opening maximum possibilities on the Domino server using standards-based clients, including IMAP, HTTP and LDAP. iNotes is simply the next phase of that. (iNotes is really just some packaging of an extremely complex DOM application that could never even have dreamed of seeing the light of day on Linux before Mozilla was released.)

    You can read why they don't want to build a native client from the horse's mouth at LDD Today

    For those that want to see a Domino Designer for platforms other than Windows, I'd ask a simple question: what do you think DXL is for?

  23. Tivoli Linux support has been there for years. by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Tivoli TME10 ManagedNode support was ported to Linux back in the olden days by one Mike Poag, a Level 2 CSR in Austin, Texas. I think he got the ORB (which was not Java at the time) running on Linux originally through iBCS, but I don't recall from which architecture. This was readily possible because Tivoli TME10 is a CORBA-based application which used primarily shell scripts and perl scripts for its methods at the time.

    Any customer with a large installation (the kind that costs ~5M rather than just a half mil or so) has been able to get Linux support for a long time. I know it's becoming an official product now and thus is newsworthy but let's look at some facts; No one has had a shop with enough linux to justify using Tivoli to manage it until fairly recently, and anyone with a shop big enough to need Tivoli has already had TME10 (or whatever it's called now) or that crap from CA (Unicenter-TNG) for some time now. In addition Tivoli has loads of opportunities for customers to come and meet service reps and company mucky-mucks (at one such event, I happened to meet the VP of the company which led to us having several discussions about what was wrong with customer support. Martin Neath, he's a great guy, and he has a great first name, since it also happens to be my own :)

    Anyway amusingly Tivoli also supports or supported OS/2 for two reasons: First, IBM bought them. That much is obvious. Two, the UK Post system uses OS/2 extensively.

    Now for those who are claiming that Tivoli is just stupid bloatware and doesn't provide any value which equals its cost; You don't know jack. Oh, it's a big, complex product which can be difficult and is always expensive to implement, but you are forgetting what it gives you; seamless management support of an absolute shitload of different operating systems. They may have dropped some platforms by now but it used to support Pyramid, Convex, SunOS4 and 4, AIX 3 and 4, HP-SUX 8, 9, and 10, NT, OS/2, Linux, IRIX (latest couple of major versions) and a bunch of Unixes which I can't even remember. You could do software distribution, software inventory of all nodes, hardware inventory of windows machines, and so on... Security with ACLs implemented through RACF on non-NT platforms, job scheduling, very granular resource monitoring... And what's most significant, if your machines were properly maintained and patched, and your network wasn't horribly screwy, then it really wasn't that tough to get going.

    Once you have tivoli going, one person can reasonably manage tens of thousands of nodes (save for hardware issues) from a single interface and the nodes need not be the same operating system, yet they still appear the same to the Tivoli administrator.

    Finally, Tivoli uses its own GUI description "language" and then renders to local Graphics APIs, unlike Mozilla (Sorry, couldn't resist a dig) so you can make cross-platform customizations (Especially if you write any new methods in perl) and deploy them across varying platforms; It doesn't matter WHAT platform you bring your changes to. All this from a common codebase across ALL platforms, mostly built with gcc, last I looked. How can you hate it? Because it costs money? This is the really real world. Because it's big and "bloated"? It does an IMMENSE number of things, and it's a general-purpose CORBA-based framework for distributed application development, it's GOING to be big. It's a complex system.

    Me? Martin Espinoza, former Level 2 CSR. Lived and worked in Austin, TX just around the corner from the office so I could walk to work, which I did once barefoot with wet hair in below-freezing weather. TX ain't always over a hundred, remember.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"