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EDS' Secret Love For Linux Laid Bare
Ashcrow writes "'Only a day after flaming open source as insecure, unscalable and unfit for Australian consumption in its Agility Alliance, services vendor EDS has revealed it really does have a soft spot for the penguin deep in its heart.' Apparently the 'Linux environment provides a level of security and stability unavailable elsewhere' which differs from that they had said earlier."
Both will tell you just what you want to hear and do just about anything to make a buck.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
We have many hundreds of Linux boxes in our data center, run by EDS. We have a cluster of about 150 4-way Opteron machines, as well as several other clusters. This is in the US.
I also need to say that our support for Linux & MySQL from the EDS team supporting us has been excellent.
I was disappointed by the comments earlier this week, doubly so as I'm an Australian. I thought my countrymen would have smarter things to say about Linux...
Alan.
Just after reading about EDS bashing Linux, I read this article. about the myriad of glitches in EDS's software for the Colorado welfare office that is going to cost millions to fix.
Now, they do say that colorado pushed the go live faster than was recommended, but the point is that EDS might not be the one to talk about stability and flexibility.
Be careful what you wish for...give someone enough time and an Etch-A-Sketch and you'll end-up with this.
Agility Alliance is mostly an attempt by EDS in particular to form a consortium to counter IBM and its love affair with Linux. They offer Solaris Server's(SUN), Windows Desktops(Microsoft), and Cisco just wants to sell their Chinese made routers to anyone and will probably kiss up to IBM five minutes after walking out of the Agility Alliance press conference.
EDS is just trying to be anti IBM, and since IBM is pro Linux that means their competitive analysis team unwisely told them to be rabidly anti Linux whether it made any sense or not. Obviously it didn't make much sense. Big consulting companies might form preferences, and offer recommendations, but they are supposed to pick the best solution for job and be willing to be open minded enough to offer the technology the customer wants.
To put it another way by bashing Linux to this extent EDS has:
A. Shown to their potential customers they have a religious bias, which will preclude them from being a good consultant.
B. Shot themselves in the foot for any contract competition where Linux is prefered by the customer.
@de_machina
Look what Colorado got from EDS for our $200,000,000 in taxpayer money:
Benefits plan assailed - Lawsuit targets benefit system - Benefits program hits predicted snags - Loss of aid to poor feared - Computer causing headache, heartache - Computer upgrade in works - Donate food, mayor urges - Judge: Keep system running - Company has other unhappy customers - Computer glitch costly - Food drives ramping up over weekend - Pressure to go online - Mixed results on rollout - Living on the edge - Glitch leaves poor out in cold - Benefits system lawsuit revived - Old system assisted payroll - Woman desperate to get meds for son - Needy could wait months for welfare benefits - Federal report blasts state welfare backlog - Benefits battle boiling - Letter blasts benefits system - Demand for food 'unprecedented' - Consultant derides new benefit system - Nursing home 'crisis' - Counties faulted on benefits - Mother deals with confusion on benefits - Lawyers wrap up arguments on benefits system - Judge: Clear backlog - Family in downward spiral -
Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition (Highly critical)
Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 Server (Highly critical)
Microsoft Windows 2000 Server (Highly critical)
Microsoft Windows XP Professional (Less critical)
Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition (Less critical)
Linux Kernel 2.4.x (Less critical)
Mandrake Linux 9.x (Not critical)
Mandrake Linux 10.1 (less then Not critical)
RedHat Linux 8.0 (Less critical)
RedHat Linux 9.0 (Not critical)
RedHat Enterprise Linux WS 3 (less then Not critical)
No sig for now.
I work for EDS, and I have to point a few things out. For one, it's a HUGE corporation...it's a world unto itself. We've got over 120,000 employees all over the planet, on nearly every continent and in every time zone. You always have to take what one guy says with a grain of salt; there are very few universal truths that cover all of EDS, and none of them have to do with a preference for a kind of technology, one way or the other. For gods sake, I'm sure there's a linux beowulf cluster somewhere, and a whole lot of Windows ME somewhere else.
I'd also like to point out that the previous article about the EDS "stance" was very likely taken somewhat out of context by the reporter. You've got a guy high up in EDS saying that in enterprise environments, linux doesn't match up to Solaris 10, and in a lot of ways he's right. If you doubt that, check out Solaris 10 and its new features. It rocks like mad, and I do prefer linux to Solaris.
No large enterprise on the planet is all of anything; even Microsoft got caught running linux and a BSD variant at times. So let's get over the notion that one guy out of 120,000 may not like linux so much yet still have it in his corporate environment?
Oh, and I use linux daily in my work at EDS, just to be clear on the subject, and rarely touch Solaris.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
Agility Alliance is a group consisting of EDS, Sun, Microsoft, and others mostly to battle IBM's IGS. Yes, they are mortal enemies, but in this case, it's the whole "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" thing.
/. and actually writing code at work, i like to make good use of company time by um.. "dropping the kids off at the pool". During these "meditation sessions", i read whatever year old magazine or trade journal someone else dragged in there. today i happened to read a story about EDS and agility alliance in a channel reseller network journal.
between posting on
looks like goofing off at work, paid off!!
If bad puns were like deli meat, this would be the wurst