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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."
The whole "article" seems to depend on the word of "a Lockheed employee who is close to the transition." I have my doubts about their source. For example, the source says this about Lockheed's lawyers:
According to our source, Lockheed's lawyers "are like a deer in the headlights" because of SCO's legal threats over Linux usage.
Are you serious? Lockheed is a defense contractor, a major government supplier. Their lawyers aren't going to be "deer in the headlights" against these or any other litigious bastards. More like "alligators in the swamp," if you want to use nature as a metaphor. If SCO so much as puts a toe in Lockheed's water, they're going to lose a leg.
So after calling BS on this, can the source be trusted? He's competely ignorant of the real legal threat, but knows a lot about what's on and under the engineers' desks.
I say their "reliable source" is the janitor. He's probably the guy who stole your lunch out of the fridge last week.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
Haven't we got to the point where these kinds of stories aren't news any more?
Surely we don't need to have any more "another company using linux" news flashes.
Lots of people use linux. Lots more companies use it every day.
In order for the Linux community to accept the level of success that we have achieved already, it's time to realise that we don't need to bash out these stories all the time.
Jolyon
Please read my Canon EOS tech blog at http://www.everyothershot.com
CAD and other engineering apps usually have versions available for linux, or solaris. They are usually very expensive.
From the CAD and Engineering point of view, the advantage of Windows is in a cheap lower quality competition. You can often find a system that doesn 60 percent of the big system for a tenth the price. On linux, you have the choice of contorting yourself around an open source app which is free but does 30 percent of what you need, badly, or shelling out the $10,000 per seat for the real stuff.
Wait until they see how they can run most of their Windows software under GNU/Linux using Wine.
You make it sound like Microsoft Office never has any problems. Not to say that OO is better, but what is the running cost of keeping MS Office?
It would be surprising if a large organization like Lockheed were an early-adopting corporate user of OpenOffice. After all, even assuming that OpenOffice and MS Office are functionally equivalent in every way, someone has to make the decision to make the switch. And MS Office has a pedigree in the corporate world that OpenOffice doesn't, so a decision to switch to OpenOffice would be a lot riskier for the decisionmakers than a decision to maintain the status quo.
Whenever a glitch happens in OpenOffice, the person who decided to switch may get blamed; if the same glitch happened in MS Office, the user would be more likely to blame MS than the decisionmaker. So, for reasons of job security, etc., the decisionmakers are likely to take the safer route of inaction.
CAD and other engineering apps usually have versions available for linux, or solaris. They are usually very expensive.
True, but I just mentioned CAD in passing. I'm sure they use a lot of other specialized stuff that grubs like us know nothing about.
Don't get me wrong, Linux can replace a lot of MS workstations out there now. But a lot of companies use software that isn't available at all on Linux. Maybe it's from a small firm, maybe it's not that well known outside the people that use it, maybe nobody's released a Linux version yet.
I'm just saying, that Lockheed probably had a good reason not to go with Linux on the "business app" workstations. They probably need to run some stuff under Windows, and want a modicrum of support (most vendors will not support their app if it's running under Wine or something).
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.
I agree, there's a non-zero cost to moving to so-called "free" software. On the other hand, what about the cost of upgrading when Microsoft decides that your version of Office has reached "end of life"?
It's appropriate to put scare quotes around "free" software... but the same thing applies to "purchased" software. "free" isn't completely free, but neither is "purchased" completely paid for.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
It sounds as if nearly every other news story I read regarding Sun Microsystems make the picture for them look progressively more grim. They have been trying to realign themselves and have changed their strategies somewhat but is it too late?
I recall years ago working with Sun/Solaris systems alongside i86/Linux systems. I was amazed at the hardware costs associated with servicing some of the Sun product line. The prices were outrageous. Something like 5 to 10 times what the i86 servers were demanding. What's the point? I even recall when Sun started deploying supposedly lower-end, lower-cost i86 hardware. The costs were still 3 times what I was expecting.
Can't say I'm sorry to see them hitting hard times. Java will be the only legacy they have left over looking back at this 3-5 years from now.
So forget it. It's not good enough, they have to interoperate with too many subcontracters, government agencies, etc, etc..
And, like it or not, the world uses MS Office formats. OO.o isn't good enough.
They wouldn't save anything. They'd waste a lot of time and effort reformatting documents sent to them, resending documents to others, etc.
Seriously, it's called reality, you all might want to look into it.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
This is not a decision that can easily be made by any company via guidance from a bunch of flippant remarks made by armchair quarterback /.ers. This requires a detailed COTS assessment that examines technical and cost aspects of changing platforms.
''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 not true: 95% of the workers will be okay after just a hour. The other 5% will surely will not cost 170$ by people for technical support. Anyway, this 5% is not too really good with MS office anyway. And for others incompatibilities, there are far less incompatibility between MSO and OO than between different versions of MSO.
There are way more resources to deal with Office problems than OO problems. You can hire an Office trainer or expert for cheap, or find good books, etc. OO is going to be more expensive to support. Good software doesn't mean support-free software. It just changes the support from "word keeps crashing" to "I don't know how to use this." And if anyone argues that OO is transparent and anyone who uses Office can figure it out, you haven't worked with real users.
My sig is blank, I typed this by hand.
to move clients from MS to Linux on their workstations and servers. My score so far:
Internal Mail Servers: 6
Firewall/Routers: 8
File Servers: 5
Workstations: 1
There used to be more file servers. When we moved them to Linux file servers we would find that a critical software application would migrate to some server-side-critical application (like a run-time of MS SQL) and we would have to move the entire box to 2000 server.
Workstations are even harder. We migrate them and the users bitch about not being able to use their "favorite software". Only once, 2 weeks ago, did we find users overjoyed to get Linux. A local Aquatic Park had the lifegards surfing on their XP box until it was unusable. Since it had to be blown off anyway, I threw a Knoppix 3.4 disk into the CD and did the install, configured the users, their email, the printer and the network, and showed them where the apps were. So far they are still happy with the functionality. Plus no viruses and no spyware.
It is very difficult to move people away from even the "standard" apps (Office, etc.). When it comes to specialized applications it is impossible; for now.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
Have any of you considered the idea that perhaps Lockheed is big enough to develop the 'business apps' they need in-house, and simply have to port that from Solaris to Linux. I'm thinking that they probably can buy CAD, but their simulators, project management software, and other stuff is all done in-house.
Plus, if they're already using Solaris, there's a good chance they can get a Linux port for it already.
Can't stand all of these "Microsoft Office doesn't run on Linux!" posts.
...but what about when the next Office doc-based virus/worm comes out?
Or when Microsoft changes the file format yet again when the next version comes out?
Or when some brilliant poweruser uses some of the Office 2003 document "security" stuff to lock down their docs and forgets the password?
You forget all the myriad ways that Office forces users to retrain when new versions come out. This includes change-for-change's sake in the UI.
I think you make a very good point, and it's about time someone realized that Office Apps does not necessarily mean "MS Office". There is a plethora of applications out there available ONLY for a Windows machine, and many companies use those.
Furthmore, this article shows exactly what has been going on for a long time. Linux is a replacement for *nix, not for Windows. Sun has been steadily losing market share while Linux gains. Microsoft stays pretty even.
OK, mods, I'm ready for my troll status. Thanks!
I retired from a major defense contractor a bit over 6 years ago. If anything, what I observed then is even more true now.
The biggest obstacle to LockMart changing over to OO is the fact that their main customer, the US Government is a big time MS user. If the US government changed over to OO this week, LockMart and the other major defense contractors would change over by the end of next month.
It's not the technical challange, it's the suitability for the job at hand. A good share of a defense contractors work needs to be compatible with the goverment's systems.
Government offices and defense contrator employees tend to do a lot of fancy, unnecessary but pretty and fun BS with Powerpoint, Word and Excel that make their files unreadable by OO. I'm sure the Linux zealots will say they should stop doing that, but that doesn't change reality.
I will confess to doing quite a bit elaborate engineering work in Excel that made them OO incompatible and would have been better done in more specialized packages...but, that would have made it more inconvenient to share my work with others in my organization and in the government. Considering reality, Excel and other MS Orifice packages were the best tools for the job, and still is if you are working at a major defense contractor and communicate with the government.
Your message was intended to be humorous, but I feel compelled to give a serious reply.
/. had predicted the demise of Sun's OS and SPARC. The predictions are coming true.
At this point, Linux should not be compared to Windows. Linux is intended for technical people like engineers. Windows is intended for consumers who have little knowledge of computer science.
Therein lies the threat to Solaris. It is targetted at precisely the same market at which Linux is targetted. The supposed qualities of Solaris are high reliability and efficient operation. Today, Linux has both qualities -- due to IBM. Linux on an IBM mainframe is rock solid and highly efficient; IBM has poured a huge amount of money into ensuring that Linux and any other OS sold by IBM will meet the standards of 6 sigma.
The future of computing sees 4 surviving standards, ranked in order of marketshare.
1. Windows on x86 (including both Intel and AMD)
2. Linux on x86
3. Linux on PowerPC
4. MacOS (FreeBSD) on PowerPC
Numerous people on
Wildly oversimplifying, I'll float the statement that MS traded security for market share throughout the '90s, and the worm has turned sufficiently chtorran to be a problem.
I've been experiencing 'interesting' times with XP, the firewall, and the multi-function printer driver. Suddenly, the ambiguous administrator/plebian account model, the graphical interface (how counter-intuitively can we arrange the dialog boxes separating you and the 'system' tree view), and the hardware drivers becomes a total bore. I don't scan often, and it's easier to become the administrator and do that, than try to grasp WTF is going on with the configuration.
Back on thread, there will be plenty of work for these Microsoft Certified Types, running about, keeping the emperor's new clothes tucked in.
But my theory of the market is that there is a standard normal distribution of users, and no bulldozer exists that can push the lump over into the right tail, where they can bask in the glow of emacs.
Gates knows this, and sleeps comfortably most nights. The real question then, is, how to market security without wiping out the usability. Mixed with the right new features, it shakes loose the upgraders...
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Sounds like the kind of sabre-rattling corporations do, when they want to negotiate a new contract with better discounts. Have other corporations threatened to move to Linux when they wanted lower license fees from Microsoft?
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
When I do work for Mallinkrodt they are very specific about what file types they accept. They call the shots because they have the deeper pockets. Lockhead is in a similar situation.
As a non-American I have the right to ask stupid questions about American legal system: if lawyers are so expensive, it means there is too few lawyers. Or else the price of their services would drop. America is a free country, so anybody with enough brains can become a lawyer. If the lawyer's profession is so lucrative, many people should want to become one. Am I the only person that thinks something's missing in this picture?
"Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead." (John Maynard Keynes)
That's like saying that everone should be given the freedom of speech only if they say things thing that does not offend anyone. Besides, people don't seem to mind civilian use of technologies that were initally created for the military use.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
...need to run "business applications"?!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
I don't think so. OO is free by any useful meaning of the word free. If there's a ad in the paper for "Free Puppies", no one takes that to imply that it won't cost anything to feed them. And yet, something meaningful is completely conveyed by the use of the word free in both cases. Even if we're restricting ourselves to the free-as-in-beer sort of free.
-Dave
You'd have to be nuts to send a customer a 500 page Word document. You'd send them a PDF and/or the document in some other easily marked-up format.
.DOC file sends them all your revision history and all kinds of other stuff that you don't really want or need for them to have.
Sending them the Word
Plus it's more likely to be 'broken' in format than the document sent in many other formats. Word 'breaks' formatting with simple things like the default printer, etc. It's notorious for having fussy failure-prone markup features.
Send them a document created in FrameMaker in the PDF format.
resigned
Then it wouldn't be free software anymore. It would be political charged software, what's next and who decides? Being free means living with things you might not agree with and respecting the freedom of other party itself along with disagreeing with that said party.