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How Would You Argue for Open Source?
Nate asks: "I am currently working for an international corporation, and the site I am working at was (until very recently) entirely run on Windows. We recently purchased a Solaris server, and I am in charge of setting it up and resetting the global UNIX standard. The problem is that management doesn't want to install software that does not have 24 hour, worldwide support available along with it, yet they want the capabilities that only open source software can provide on a UNIX platform (VNC, OpenSSH, etc..) without spending insane amounts of money. I was wondering how the Slashdot community deals with convincing management that Open Source software is safe to use when creating a global standard, and what your solutions have been to supporting users working with open source software." Two years ago, Slashdot tackled the Enterprise Support question. Now, say you had that particular problem solved and the only thing left is that all-important pitch to Upper Management. What arguments would you use in your attempts to get their approval? What statistics and references would you point to, in order to back everything up?
"We'll have access to the source code, and be able to update the app as needed due to new requirements or OS upgrade."
Worked for me.
"If, therefore, any be unhappy, let him remember that he is unhappy by reason of himself alone."
~Epictetus
if they want to take responsibility for aligning their IT strategy to their business objectives, or their systems provider's.
"It's not your information. It's information about you" - John Ford, Vice President, Equifax
For statistics about open source software / Free Software, see my paper, "Why Open Source Software / Free Software? Look at the Numbers!", at http://www.dwheeler.com/oss_fs_why.html . It has a large collection of information you'll probably find useful.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
Show your boss how easy it is to ind online troubleshooting documentation for the various software packages you are proposing to use, as well as documenting the entire install so a monkey could reinstall the software if something breaks.
Your company wants to make sure that anyone who might administer those servers has access to the information they need to fix any problems that come up if the person who initially installed the software falls off the earth.
A 24hour support line is one method of getting that support, you just have to show that there are other less expensive support routes that are just as viable.
If need be remind your boss that it is your ass on the line if something goes wrong with the servers and you'll be the one showing up to work at 4AM on a Sunday to fix the issue.
Do you Gentoo!?
It seems odd to me to decide on a solution and then develop arguments to use that solution. IT is generally a service provider for business needs. You present the business users with the available options, outline the pros and cons, and allow them to decide. The other danger of engaging in proseletyzing is that if something goes wrong, everyone will be quick to point out the guy who did all the yelling about open source.
I guess it depends on how much money is considered 'insane'. RedHat offers support, HP sells contracts supporting Linux... I would think the support costs would not exceed a comparable contract supporting Windows systems.
.:diatonic:.
So give her estimated labor costs of installing and supporting MySQL vs cost of purchasing, installing and supporting Oracle. Don't forget hardware costs.
Talk about two things:
Cost: Cost of rollout of a commercial product is comparable or more than the cost of 3rd party support contracts for open software.
Risk Management: Buying proprietary software gives you support, but the support is with a monopoly supplier who can then choose to charge whatever it wishes down the road for both software upgrades and support. Tying yourself to a monopoly supplier is a poor risk, since every move a monopolist will make will not be for the benifit of your company, but for the benifit of thiers. Similarly, with Open Source, since our company has the right to modify the software, every change you make will be for the benifit of your company.
Upper Management does not grok Geek. Upper Management groks Dollars and groks Risk.
Just keep that in mind.
-- Funksaw.
Now, say you had that particular problem solved and the only thing left is that all-important pitch to Upper Management. What arguments would you use in your attempts to get their approval? What statistics and references would you point to, in order to back everything up?
I wouldn't even bother. I would call the local IBM Global Services office and ask them to pitch for the job, and dangle the carrot (whether it exists or not right now, it might to in the future) of outsourcing the management of said Open Source infrastructure to them. I assume that you don't actually care who runs it from day to day just so long as it's Open Source. They'll make a far more convincing argument that you can alone - remember they employ people full-time to do nothing but research and put together fancy presentations (as do all consulting firms... you don't think the slick performers doing the presentation will actually show up to do the work, do you?).
What you need are testimonials from others running mission-critical applications using FOSS.
One Fortune 500 executive won't achieve comfort with this kind of a spending and deployment decision (face it, they don't know the tech) until, unless, and, only if, they have seen more than one other Fortune 500 executive put their own necks on the chopping block, made a courageous decision, and have it succeed wildly with no glitches whatsoever.
Getting those testimonials might be hard for an individual on their own ("Mr. Big's office, how may I help you? Right...."), but the web is full of articles showing different businesses using FOSS successfully.
If you were tied into a vendor with a lot of FOSS contacts (eg, RH, IBM), then they could probably help you find those important reference testimonials. Sun is late getting on board the FOSS bandwagon, despite having produced a lot the standards and technology that has made it possible. Their Solaris servers will run FOSS just fine and interoperate with Linux machines, etc.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
...give it to them:
Form a new company with you as the only employee.
Submit monthly invoice for $50,000 to your current company for "OSS Platinum Support".
Sit back and watch the money roll in.
This works to your benefit since they'll probably call you at all hours of the night to initiate the support call, anyway...
- Tony
There are so many different angles to attack this issue from, and unfortunately there are more sides to the issue than we'd like to admit. However I think there are several areas that would be good to discuss:
- Closed source has more bugs, and the exploits are typically more severe.
- Actual turn around time for Closed source is much slower than open source for new features and enhancements.
- Closed source hampers IT productivity as the fear of sharing "Intellectual Property" infects and permeates many people that work in closed source environments
one of my favorite all time articles is written by Clay Shirky, entitled In Praise of Evolvable Systems
This article addresses what many people consider to be open source's weekpoint. It is however it's strongest point. This is a fantastic read and is a must in any presentation to management about open source and open standards in general.
Doug Tolton
"The destruction of a value which is, will not bring value to that which isn't." -John Galt
software that does not have 24 hour, worldwide support available along with it
... and say hello to the 24 hour, worldwide support team.
My software is free and that makes it better..NEENER NEENER NEENER!!!
Neck_of_the_Woods
#/usr/local/surf/glassy/overhead
this guy if you want all the Microsoft dirt present and future.
http://www.aaxnet.com/editor/edit021.html
That is his latest. Look around on the site a little. Lots of stuff there with many current references.
Blogging because I can...
Microsoft's license agreement for Win XP makes it illegal for you to use any desktop remote control software other than Microsoft's built-in stuff. That means that if you use VNC to control an XP box, you are in violation of the license agreement. It also states that you can't access an XP machine from anything other than another XP machine. From the license agreement:
"Except as otherwise permitted by the NetMeeting, Remote Assistance, and Remote Desktop features described below, you may not use the Product to permit any Device to use, access, display, or run other executable software residing on the Workstation Computer, nor may you permit any Device to use, access, display, or run the Product or Product's user interface, unless the Device has a separate license for the Product."
*This page intentionally left pointless*
MS has stopped releasing security updates for NT4, so companies using it are forced to decide between having security holes or paying MS for a newer version that locks them into a more draconian license agreement. How long until your company faces the same problem with whatever version of windows they use?
With open source, you can patch whatever version you're running, or just upgrade whatever is necessary without the draconian eulas.
Jason
ProfQuotes
Sorry, trying to get a "first post", and now for more details.
Anyhow, my tenure has been at a large document and imaging company, a not-for-profit professional organization, entertainment conglomerate, internet security development company, e-learning and training company, a small IT consulting firm, and now a large energy company. The easiest minds, at least I encountered, were at the small companies, less levels of crufty management to deal with. It also counted that I had a bit of autonomy in driving the technology vision, mainly because whatever I was tasked with "had to get done". So, I think size combinied with mission critical decisions may help leverage a case.
The "shouting" match occurred at the entertainment company and at the not-for-profit. The first was in the case of some top brass brought in to trim budgets, where we had everything successfully running on open source stuff (which used to run on expensively leased Sun hardware [E250] and software) but was moved to some discarded Acer desktops and FreeBSD. THe stuff ran better and without any hassles on the open source stuff, but because these jokers couldn't get out of their lease with Exodus for the hardware, I was told to support the Sun environment or walk out the door, I chose the door. The latter, in the not-for-profit, the shouting match there ocurred with one of the three (yes three) IT Directors we had there during my tenure. He didn't like the idea of open source at all, in fact, that old argument of "I can get a manager from Sun on the phone 24x7" for support was met with my retort "yes, but can that manager ever give you a technical solution. WHen was the last time he sat in fron of an E450 wondering what happened to the OS when it took a dump". It was later brought up that the organization supposedly didn't run any open sourced software for important tasks (he'd been there about 4 months at the time) and I think he took a look at our SUn, Windows, and Apple machiens at the time and thought that, but I said... "well, what about Sendmail...", he replied, "well, that's and exception...", "then how about BIND?","um, well", "and Perl?!", "well, that's not... but um..."... suffice it to say, making him look bad during a pissing contest in front of his subordinates in the meeting room was not a good way to intorduce myself. He later quit after not feeling he "fit in" to the organization (that, and he physically assaulted me when a hacker broke in through a few of their misconfigured Windows and Sun servers, then got yelled at by the president of the organization... I think his name was Terry White)
I think the best thing to do is to subtlely play to Open Source software's strengths... I wish you well.
They'll ask you "Why go with Solaris over any other Unix variant?" Better have that answer.
They'll ask you "Why not Linux?" Have an asnwer.
They'll ask you "Will it work with our existing Windows infrastructure?" Answer that as well.
They'll ask "How much will the rollout cost?" Better have those figures handy.
They'll want to know "Why not just stick with Windows, especially since Windows 2003 is about to ship?" Have a retort ready for that.
They'll want to know (if they're savvy) how the data crunching numbers will compare UNIX to Windows, MySQL to MS SQL. You'll want that handy, too.
And finally, they'll want to know why should they switch to a different platform when they're already so heavily invested in Windows. Got an answer other than "Windows sucks"? You better know those things, becuase bosses aren't about to "just take your word for it" they demand facts, figures, and spreadsheets for proof--and if anything goes wrong it's your ass. Switching is fine, but you better be ready for the backlash and have oodles of proof ready or the resistance will be an unsurmountable chasm.
Before you go to upper management find out how much the non-open source applications are going to cost. Factor in any consulting fees for setup. Then factor in the cost for global support on an ongoing basis over say the course of the next five years. I'd also suggest adding in any special hardware requirements.
Next find your open source "products". Then find developers who are very comfortable with the "products" that you are recommending. Factor in the cost of hiring them and their salary on an on going basis. They will be your "support" team. Also factor in hardware if needed.
The first hurdle is to prove that it will cost less or at the very least no more than the "off the shelf" products. Then you'll need to put your sales hat on and do a side by side "feature comparison" of the OSS alternatives to the products that you evaluated.
Most of all, be objective and very matter of fact about your presentation. Prove to them that OSS is the way to go becuase it costs less to aquire and maintian and has an equal or superior feature set. Apache is a great case study...
Good luck!
Why do you think that they're going to be anything other than in-house apps?
Heck, I expect to write a Linux app in the next year. Frankly, I expect to be doing it in under 6 months. And nobody will ever see it since it's the core infrastructure for a service my company is offering. Pure backend stuff.
The vast majority of software written is not written for the commercial marketplace. It's written for inhouse use.
I work at a university, and over two years ago, they asked me to help evaluate authoring systems for online courses. One of their requirements was that the company we chose needed to be willing to partner with the institution to extend the capabilities of their software to meet our needs. We gave several suggestions, but I told them they should get on board with MIT's OKI and OpenCourseWare.
They had two concerns about open source solutions: 1. There is no company behind most open source solution. No company means no tech support. 2. OKI was just getting off the ground and would not be ready for prime time for a while.
Over a year later, the university finally chose a company to go with for their authoring system. We paid for a 30-day trial and got 5 days into it before we realized their marketing people had straight-up lied about its feature set.
So, we went with the company our university had ranked number two on the list. We worked with them for 6 months, hired one of their people to work for them on a university paycheck, and gave them a substantial fee every month for licensing. Then the company decided to get out of the authoring systems market, pulled our license and left us with nothing.
In the meantime, OKI has picked up steam, and the 11 universities that got on early with them have been developing solutions that will soon be GPLed.
The long-short is that having a company behind the product is a double-edged sword. Sure, they could give you tech support, but what happens if/when they're gone?
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
No, I don't work for them, but Linuxcare has a professional looking website using the CEO-lingo that might comfort the big-wigs you need to convince. There are other companies that support Free Software too, check out Red Hat's Support Services. A site called OpenEnterprise looks to have a ton of resources on exactly what you're asking for.
Also, take a look at IT Management's special report on Linux. It offers a lot of ammo to you in making a presentation. You can point to the other heavy-hitters that are using Free solutions and have concrete examples of success.
The same site even has an article entitled Selling the 'Suits' on your IT project which looks to have some good advice for you.
Like Digital Freedoms? Then donate to EFF before they're gone.
convincing management that Open Source software is safe to use
Most Open Source advocates really need to think about something before they go charging in assuming OSS without vendor support is really better for all situations: Management wants 24x7 support not because they think the software is unstable, but because they cannot afford downtime when that software does fail.
"So what?" you say, "I've been using this stuff for years and I can solve pretty much any problem they might run across. I am 24x7 support!" What happens when you're gone? On vacation? What happens when you get burned out and sick of being the only guy capable of supporting an application that's taken off in the enterprise and now has a hundred installations all over the world? What happens when you have trouble finding someone with the skill sets needed to replace you?
This "guru" support model simply does not scale. This is why management wants 24x7 support: so that no matter what happens to their gurus, they always have a toll-free 800 number to call to get someone that knows what they're doing on the problem. If that person can't solve it, a good maintenance contract might even involve getting the vendor to fly an engineer out there to fix the problem. This is very much about making management feel good about getting the support they need to solve their problems.
The alternative is to spend an exceptional amount of money training a staff equivalent to the staff of the vendor to be just as smart and available as a vendor offering 24x7 support. It's not just about hiring two or three strategically-placed gurus.
Now, with that out of the way, OSS can still work in the enterprise, provided you approach the situation intelligently. Can your organization staff up a support group internally to support this application without requiring a maintenance contract with a vendor? (And can you keep them busy enough to make it cheaper in the long run?) Certain skillsets are pretty common nowadays, such as administration of Apache. It may be perfectly realistic to be able to staff up a small group to support common OSS applications in an enterprise. If someone leaves the company, it's realistic that they can be replaced or someone else trained to fill the vacancy, but you can never count on being able to hire a small army of "gurus" capable of adapting to any OSS application at the drop of a hat. This is very unrealistic (not to mention extremely expensive).
But not all OpenSource projects fit into this category. Frequently they'll be smaller projects that might be used plenty on the Internet, but either because there's a guru out there actually setting it up and administering it (that can adapt to just about anything), or because the author made it exceptionally easy for a novice to get it running. Neither of these options is acceptable in an enterprise setting! Your guru won't be there forever, and your army of novices won't have a clue how to fix a novice-friendly application when it breaks.
The bottom line is that you need to consider your company's true support expenses here: if an application needs 24x7 support, you either need to have a staff of people on-hand to guarantee support for this application (across your enterprise), at a significant expense, or there needs to be a vendor out there willing to assume 24x7 support for a fraction of that cost.
The article mentioned in the parent is a good one... I've used it successfully in several seminars on value proposition of open source software. It's generally been very well received.
As far as arguing with upper management, when I was working in cubeville, I never worried about it. I just implemented it the best way I knew how, and presented it as a completed solution.
Once the solution is in place, nobody ever seems to worry about it. Then at some point in the future, it's easy to point to it and say: "but we've *been* using open source all this time, and don't have problems with it".
I think that's still the most successful implementation strategy. It's the one Microsoft used for pushing Novell out of mid-sided businesses.
This is why most pure tech people generally cant get things done (or done "technically" right); because they sometimes have an inability to provide things that are asked for.
Management and Tech are two different languages. Your boss was telling you how she wanted to explain it to HER bosses, and you basically said "oh, I dont feel I need to". Well, when she doesnt feel like listening to your suggestions in the future, you will know why.
I get ahead by making my boss's job easier, not harder.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
But she has a perfectly valid point. When MySQL breaks, are you the only/best option for fixing it? Do you really consider yourself that much of an expert that you could handle any conceivable problem that you might face? What if a hardware problem causes data corruption? Would you know how to recover from that? What if a library incompatibility comes up in the future and breaks MySQL. Would you be able to troubleshoot that and get the database back up? How long would it take you to do that? What if you run across a problem you have no idea how to resolve? Are you confident enough in your ability to find a solution via newsgroups or mailing lists?
Now what happens when you're on vacation? What happens when you've left the company? How does additional staffing (and training, since it may be very difficult to find a MySQL guru as smart as you might be) factor into your costs?
The point is, from an enterprise management perspective, things aren't as simple as some of us think. We think, yah, I can support this pretty easily. I haven't had a problem yet with it that I haven't been able to resolve (given enough time). Now ask yourself if that's sufficient for the project, or if you're going to need something or someone else to fall back on.
The "guru" support model works very well for smaller businesses, but frequently has major problems scaling to support an enterprise.
Now, I'm not saying that you (or someone else) might not have problems with this anyway (given that MySQL is actually fairly popular), but others reading this might not have the same luck with any OSS project. Just because the source is available doesn't mean it's cheaper to use than a commercially-supported product.
"management doesn't want to install software that does not have 24 hour"
;)
Tell them for about $40 a month, they can buy you a cellphone and make you their 24hr on call person. And of course since you'll be salaried, you won't get over time for those 2am calls. They'll like that.
I did not see anything about demos, installs or Gnome skins outside of your flames. Nor was there any good reason to flame free software as a "summer project".
Your points about presenting a whole solution are useful when you need to replace a whole system in a lethargic micormanaged work environment. All that "Oracle, Sybase, HP, Compaq, Cisco, Microsoft, Sun, IBM, SAP, etc ... certifications" blah blah is so much dated marketroid bable with good bad and out of business mixed up. Wake up boss, HP is Compaq, Microsoft is worthless, Sun is good and IBM uses Linux. Well, OK, You've got a point about selling a "solution" in such an environement. It's negligence to not do your homework about the bottom line anywhere.
At the same time, it's a good idea to talk to people you trust about what free software is all about. It is important that management understands that free software is simply a co-operative community of software writers and users. They should know that such communities have always created the software that some companies tried to comercialize in a closed source way in the 1980s. The closed source experiment is just about out of gas, becasue the free software community has ignored it to create viable alternatives. Corporate managers understand co-operative research as well as they understand bottom line issues. Free software is not such a great leap at reasonable companies and most people are tired of being jerked around by comercial software pimps.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Red Hat's primary business is support, unlike MS which regards its primary business as writing code. The biggest difference between commercial open source support and proprietary support is that there is *more* support for open source software. Why? Because open source code is supportable by more than just the original vendor. You want support? You can hire the original coder or a third party. You can choose to debug the code yourself, add features, or change features. You have options.
What options do you have with proprietary software? Well, you can guess at what's causing the problem and change configurations. If the problem is an actual crash or something, you can reboot, reinstall the offending program, reinstall the OS. If none of that works, you can call the vendor (who will start by having you follow those three steps, along with applying patches, blame the hardware, etc.). The vendor may or may not be able to help you. Further, it is entirely up to them whether they give you real support or not (for example, if behavior is considered to be a feature, you cannot make a software vendor change the behavior). If they choose not, then there is no recourse for you (other than switching software).
A university where I worked considered switching to one of those MS license all your software from us and we'll give you a really great deal. As part of that, they considered moving the yellow page servers to the MS product. The deal was sold, they were ready to start. They asked MS to make a tool that would convert a flat text file generated from the information stored in the previous software's format into the MS format and MS refused. They had a nice point and click interface, and they expected the university to manually retype 60 *thousand* accounts with it. An overnight batch job would have become a multi-month project. Yellow pages info now resides on OpenVMS boxes with a custom written interface that took a couple of weeks to design.