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Linux Usage in the UK
pdajames writes "Techies don't seem to understand that businesses want to have a support contract with their usual supplier before they will buy Linux, even though the likelihood is that they may never need support. A survey in the UK showed that support concerns were the No. 1 factor keeping companies from investing in open source software."
"even though the likelihood is that they may never need support."
Nope. Businesses rarely use support. Nope. No-siree. Oh... wait...
Honestly I could never see anyone making any money from linux exept when selling support. Or hardware. Reason I guess why IBM loves it. Isn't that what Redhats buissness model is? Support and hardware?
Competition in America: If you can't beat 'em, Sue 'em!
Almost every high level manager I've spoke too, that is their #1 concern.. ' If you are not around, who do I call when its broke?'.
They understand the stability, the lower cost ( notice I didn't say free. it does cost something to maintain ), and that it *can* replace functionality of the commercial alternative at this point, but being out on their own worries them. And rightfully so.
Even down to the techies that defend Microsoft, that is their one remaining argument,that they have the huge support team back in Redmond to call on. And scoff as you want about Microsoft support, if you are a big enough dealer they WILL help you, they do have actual competent engineers hiding somewhere.... and the managers know this..
Having somone like IBM sell support, or even produce their own 'commercial' distrobution + support would go a looooong way to get past this.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
From the article:
Yates gave the example of an installation of 50 DHCP servers running Linux, which was set up several years ago, and for which the technical support is tenuous. "The people who set them up have gone on to other projects," he said. "People are terrified about what the support would be like if something went wrong."
I think that pretty much sums it up. Too many people thing computer = Windows and don't know how to use anything else. So if the Linux server (God forbid) breaks, who will be around to fix it?
And no, whatever monkey was assigned to look after the box after the guys who were l33t enough to set the whole thing up is probably not going to research the problem. He was probably hired to look at the pretty light and call whatever vendor's tech support when the light went out.
That, and if something does go wrong, there's someone else to blame.
this is my sig
SuSE offer support to those in the UK (and elsewhere) that want it. It is just more FUD that you do not get support with Linux, it is just an option to save your cash and not buy it if you do not want it.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
I think the main reason British is such an 'open source third world country' is because of the techie environment here. In regular schools, all you learn about is Microsoft, Microsoft and Microsoft. Why? Because Microsoft supplies the schools and makes money from the schools.
I have a lot of friends who are techies who came through the 'proper' way. That is, they were educated at college, did courses, and got qualifications. They're good guys, but when it comes to solving something, IIS and VBScript are almost the only two solutions!
One friend of mine was whining that he needed to build a new server and migrate and mirror data over to it. I suggested using an NFS server. This isn't rocket science, but concepts like these are unknown to the millions of lower-end techies in the UK. Why? Because Microsoft is #1. I know a lot of people studying for MCSEs, yet they're barely computer literate. They can get around in Windows 2000 or XP, but throw them at any command prompt (even DOS) and they balk.
UNIX and its variants just aren't considered cool within the larger techie environment in the UK. Microsoft has very deep roots here, unlike in the US technical fraternity, and most UK techies are so stupid they won't leave what they know.
I can't really venture as to the exact reasons for this... but perhaps it's because the British are used to doing things one way. I mean, we only had a single national telecoms provider, a single national gas provider, and a single national postal service until ten years ago. Therefore, when schools only show that Microsoft is the way.. the average Brit will nod and use it.
Another problem is the lack of decent IT education in schools. There are very few 'computer clubs' in UK schools, and those that do exist are only there for allowing kids to perhaps do something in Pascal under Windows, or to do their regular homework in Microsoft Works.
UK schools need to be more open, like US schools. US schools often give budgets to their computer clubs.. I mean, look at the Ask Slashdot thread the other day.. they ponied up $4000 for the guy to build a server system and get some connectivity. What a learning curve his computer club will have!
In the UK, by comparison, everything is so bureaucratic and purchases are so decided 'by the local education authority' that any choice other than Microsoft Microsoft Microsoft is effectively vetoed.
Personally I think this is great, because people who DO know Linux, who DO understand Computer Science properly and who DON'T have MCSEs, get rewarded reasonably well in the UK! But.. the knowledge just isn't there, and while Microsoft gets rammed down the wanna-be British techie's throat, Microsoft will prevail.
Could many of the people who responded that they didn't have Linux because of lack of support just be uninformed types who haven't done their homework and wouldn't use linux anyway ?
Seriously, how many of these same people have support contracts for their Windows systems?
What we're talking about here is places like my day job, where we have someone from Microsoft on-site full time. I was most upset when I found out, I mean, how pathetic, but there you are.
Support matters when you're a large company who is in it "for the long run" as I've been told.
Yes, we use Linux, but we have support from the supplier (SuSE just now, RedHat to come).
I can't implement software without a support contract! Isn't it insane? I was going to install a little GPL'd FTP proxy because our Microsoft proxies were failing, first thing management ask is "where's the support coming from?" Heh, a couple of hundred lines of C but it needs supported.
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
even though the likelihood is that they may never need support.
Now, isn't that a bit presumptuous?
I don't care what OS you run on your desktops/servers, stuff is going to screw up. It's the techie's job to minimize the impact.
The coolest voice ever.
A lot of UK businesses apparently...
Then few people out side the industry know about it.. even I was unaware they would.
Marketing that would help a LOT.
Even some of their techs and sales guys don't know this.. I've spoken to some at our place on occasion wile they are working on things, or working out costs for the next round of PC upgrades...... they had no clue either..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Techies don't seem to understand that businesses want to have a support contract with their usual supplier before they will buy Linux
Can you say "business opportunity"? I now only install and support only Linux solutions (I don't do Windows anymore - I have other "grunts" with MCSE's who do that for cheap). The sell is simply two points 1) Open Source products use Open Standards, which will interoperate with anything. 2) The business decision to keep, update or upgrade company software is back in the software buyer's hands. If you want to keep your software, or hire someone to [fix|add] features, or upgrade to the latest version - it's their choice.
The Redmond camp keeps hammering on the point that Linux doesn't have support. So hammer back on those two points: open standard interoperabilty, and the return of the business decision. It really shakes people up to realise they _do_ have a choice, and that Microsoft is not the safest choice anymore.
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Never needing support?
With Linux?
Sure, maybe if you're Linus...
According to the recently discussed Business Week article,
If anything, open source will lower support costs as you can get support from more sources at a wider range of price points.With a global support base of people with the same software, open source will rapidly lower support costs. Today people get far more information and many times higher quality information on problems via the net than they do from a manufacturer.
And beyond support, you can now directly hire people to work on the software changes you need to make your business work. That means you don't have to wait years for your vendor to listen to you. In today's hyper-competitive global business market, the time you save may be the difference between your business succeeding or failing.
All in all, open source is a giant win for business. Hopefully we can soon move past the incredible amount of FUD the closed source vendors are promulgating in the market.
One of the problems with linux in the uk is the l10n problem. They just think that because we speak english they can just dump "americanisations" (note the s in isation) on us. But were different. We use Metric now, we use A4 paper, we use DD/MM/YYYY we spell colour with a u, and so on.
XFree86 diidn't even support keyboards with euro keys (alt-gr 4) until recently and gnome still chokes on that. The same problems occur to other english speaking countries as well, but I'll just have to put up with 06/28/03 until gnome uses 28/06/03!
"Support" is just the name they give to their fear.
They are afraid to use Linux because Linux hasn't achieved the market dominance they feel comfortable with.
If Linux had 51% of the desktop market, they'd feel comfortable with the risk of having their current Linux support person/company becoming unavailable.
This is about fear. You cannot remove fear with facts.
But who cares? The businesses that have people who can evaluate the risks and benefits will make the jump first. And they will reap the rewards.
As each year passes, more companies will feel comfortable enough to switch.
Don't sweat the "support" issue. Support is readily available and easily found. But pointing that out will not end stories such as these.
This is about fear.
now?
we had them FIRST
That was classic intercourse!
My school is having major problems with their "firewall" right now. Namely, there's just too much traffic for the crappy hardware boxes they're using - so they bought a $10,000 Packeteer packet shaper. Anyway, I offered to retrofit one of their old servers as a Linux-based firewall. The sysadmin said no. The reason? "I've got nobody to blame when it breaks."
Going with Linux doesn't mean you have to use multiple distros,
However, this is nevertheless often the case.
What? You have just mentioned two examples to completely undermine this position.
Not so. The only reason Red Hat and SuSE have centralized technical support is because they have commercialized their distributions of Linux as a packaged product and market it as such. Technical support is part of their package. For non-commercialized versions of Linux, such as Slackware or Debian, no such convenient package exists.
The coolest voice ever.
Organisations absolutely, positively hate this. "Single point of failure". They piss you off, you quit and get a better job, you get killed in a bizarre gardening act, and they are up shit creek.
Unfortunately, this is also an attitude taken by lots of Admins as well (Windows and Unix, I will state). The "fuck off and leave me alone" attitude that many them put forward when asked questions. The inability or unwillingness to document what they've done ("Say, how do we re-install the sendmail installation if we have to?" "Fuck off and leave me alone").
I have seen many an office who will stick with middle-of-the-road software, even though they figure there's better stuff, because they don't want to risk the chance of getting fucked over by this.
This is why they want support contracts, this is why they use windows. "well, if Jim Bob dies, we'll just get the support folks to help us until we get someone else", or the (perhaps false sense of) security of "every here knows windows, we can fix things ourselves without Jim Bob"
I've worked in the UK IT sector for 14 years and I can tell you it's about the management running scared. Not scared of OpenSource but fear of their peers and colleagues. The whole business world has very cut throat since the days of Thatcher, it's very dog eat dog, so lower management and above spend most of their time covering their arses. It's inevitable something will go bang at some point their main concern is to make sure they're not in the firing line. So from this culture of fear in the business community everyone needs SLAs, guarantees etc, basically someone lower on the food chain they can point to when the crapola hits the fan. To think that pundits wonder why British industry has been in decline for decades....ah well.