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InformationWeek On Windows-Linux Interoperability
prostoalex writes "InformationWeek magazine has a lengthy article about the issues that enterprises face when vying for Linux+Windows interoperability, as most of the corporate infrastructures are seldom monocultural. What's also interesting is the InformationWeek surveys of the IT professionals. The following questions are asked and the responses to them are nicely graphed: 1) Reasons for choosing Windows, 2) Reasons for choosing Linux, 3) Top Windows concerns, 4) Top Linux concerns, 5) Top interoperability issues."
One of the biggest issues, however, is not necessarily intra-office compatibility, but inter-office compatibility. If you're sending out Word documents and Powerpoint presentations to a company who only uses Linux it causes some problems.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
According to the graphs in this article, security is the #3 reason people use Linux, behind cost and reliability. For people purchasing Microsoft stuff, even "Other" scores higher than security, which came in dead last.
I guess we should be glad that most people are apparently not falling for their "Trustworthy Computing" horseshit. The numbers in this poll show that this summer of worm after virus after worm after virus has really put Microsoft under a cloud. It will probably take them at least five years to even begin to win back security mindshare, and that's assuming there's not another SQL Slammer or Blaster waiting to happen in that time.
~Philly
I remember reading in Byte magazine years ago a quote from microsoft that went something like this.
"As soon as a Unix get over 1,000,000 seats, we will port Office over to it"
The price of Microsoft's newest version of Windows, released last week, is aimed squarely at Linux. With Small Business Server 2003, Microsoft knocked 60% off the price of its previous Small Business Server, introducing a standard edition for only $599, right between Red Hat's $349 basic edition (software only) and $799 standard edition (software plus phone support).
With RedHat wouldn't you just have to buy one copy of their standard edition software and be able to install it on multiple servers? Would this be a breach of their license? In any case this would be a definite no-no with Microsoft...
The second point, accountability, is where managers, in my experience get concerned. While it was great that the company didn't get mugged on licenses, the learning curve for the admins is relatively steep compared to Monopolized Systems that are managed at the crayon level.
Businesses want to know that, in the event of the bus flattening the admin, they can get a replacement, and not here some line like "uhh, I'm a vi user, and my predecessor, apparently an Emacs LISP fetishist, (ran (the (whole (network (with {these (crazy (macros))))))))".
IANAT. In fact, I've reached a state of total agnosticism about platforms, languages, and licenses as a result of
Ulitately, I hope the market does, too, in favor of what really matters: standards.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Last week, we had trouble restoring an Exchange box from a backup. The difficulty was due to Exchange being integrated with Active Directory. What caused Exchange to go down? We ran forestprep and domainprep on Active Directory.
The integration of the two products makes it difficult and more costly to administer.
>> Lack of an integrated software environment
The point is not that you can pick and choose the pieces but that the pieces you use work well together. The 'one choice' scenario actually helps in this area because each product development group knows the other pieces and can take specific steps to interoperate well.
>> Lack of a clear roadmap
With no central guiding body, Linux ddevelopment goes in a thousand directions at once. It is through attrition of pointless efforts that its roadmap appears at all. In Microsoft's case, there is central control with central planning. The roadmap is much clearer although it must periodically change to address new issues or newly important issues.
>> Accountability if problems arise
No stuff works perfectly. What do you do when you need help? Go to a message board and hope someone will help you? Pay some thrid party to modify code it didn't write in the first place? Code that may not make it into the main release? With Microsoft you have someone being paid to work your issue through to completion, access to the developers who actually wrote the code and future support for the patch issued to fix your problem.
>> admins expect it to work the same
You're right that there is a huge difference in the way things are done and this merely leads to more difficultly when switching to Linux. They'll likely need to be heavily retrained, not only in the OS but in all the applications that'll have to be replaced or rewritten during the migration. Linux has better chances in new shops, shops able and willing to take the transition incrementally or shops leaning heavily to web or Java based applications which should be easier to migrate to the new platform (and back...).
They're quite right to worry, and it's very nice to see that message getting through. I wonder if there's any platform in which the vendor makes a binding promise that the product will work?
Sig:Why copyright isn't a fundamental human right
Wow, the graphs from the article are kind of scary. The Windows Worries graph's first item is 80% of "business-technology professionals" are concerned with software quality issues or vulnerabilites in Windows. However, on the Linux Concerns graph, the first item is only 40% of "business-technology professionals" are concerned that Linux lacks "a complete and fully integrated software environment".
While anybody would agree that 40% is less than 80%, the two charts are the same width, and a casual glance would certainly give the impression that people are more concerned with Linux problems than with Windows problems. This is disturbing since there are no Linux concerns that exceed 50% with the interviewed "business-technology professionals" while there are three concerns that exceed 50% of the same group with Windows.
It appears that "business-technology professionals" are more concerned with Windows than Linux, but the graphs are set up to give the opposite impression. Is this another case of spin-doctoring? Or is Linux just a casualty of aestheticism?
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