Lockheed Replaces 10,000 Solaris Seats with Linux

bl8n8r writes "Citing hardware and software TCO, a source close to Lockheed Martin says the aeronautics giant will be replacing 10,000 of its Solaris seats with Linux. The article mentions AutoZone, IBM, SCO and Daimler Chrysler and what may be in store for Lockheed Martin. 'Every engineer has a Microsoft PC sitting next to their Sun Blade,' said their source. 'That's for business applications, and Linux is no threat there. It's Sun who has to worry.' Wait till they find out how much they can save running OpenOffice."

Comments

Business App != Office

[kannibal_klown]

Business Apps don't necessarily mean "MS Office."

We consider business apps where I work:
Bioinformatic software
Data Analysis software
specialized inventory management software

I'm sure Lockheed uses CAD as well as a plethora of engineering apps that have no-where-near equivalent versions in Linux.

OpenOffice

[vasqzr]

Wait till they find out how much they can save running OpenOffice."

We've only got ~100 PC's, and we pay about $160 for Excel/Word/Outlook. I can imagine Lockheed can work something out for the few users that need Powerpoint (managers that make presentations).

The very FIRST issue you have with OpenOffice, whether it's a formatting issue, file conversion, or other imcompatiblity, will cost MORE than Microsoft Office in the loss of productivity and IT staff.

That's news to me and I work at a Lockheed branch

[Fallen Kell]

This is most likely a case of the one hand not knowing what the other is doing, since I work as a systems administrator at a different branch. Its always interesting to read about something this big on slashdot before getting a memo about it.

In anycase, it sounds like they have a similar setup there as we do here with most engineers having a Sun system and a PC. I personally have a linux PC and a sunblade, both of which run open office, and I don't see any need at all for a MS PC other then for some website tools that ask/require IE (but are easily spoofed with multi-zilla plugin). It will be interesting what comes of this. I don't actually see us making a change like this away from Sun simply because there are no true replacements for the types of servers we are using from an x86 standpoint. However, as opterons become more and more available in server class systems, then maybe some of the systems will be converted over, but I don't see this happening anytime in the next 3-4 years...

As a Lockheed employee...

[Call Me Black Cloud]

I can say that MS isn't going away anytime soon. Not only (in my particular division) does Exchange run the back end, but our engineers have integrated the authentication across the board. Want to check your pay stub online? Use your exchange domain\username and password. Want to check your training records? Ditto. Check the status of a referred employee? Ditto. Change health care coverage? Ditto. Pretty much the only thing that doesn't require that login is access to the 401k/pension site.

The division I'm in is heavily involved in software development for the government. Sun gets a lot of the business here because of the massive data storage requirements we have. 10's of terabytes is not an uncommon need. The government is also pushing towards more COTS solutions so until there are ready-to-deploy applications on Linux, Sun will still be around. Unfortunately, ready-to-deploy doesn't mean easy-to-deploy. My current project is a nightmare of integration...but that's a story for another day...