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Midsize Businesses Not Considering Linux?
LukePieStalker writes "eWeek is running a
piece
about a research report which concludes that Linux is not even
on the radar screen for midsize businesses. The survey involved
over 1,400 executives of companies with annual revenue around $250 to
$500 million. It seems that, while smaller companies may see the
licensing savings as being significant, and larger companies have
the expertise to manage it, bringing Linux into a midsize Windows
shop creates a multiplatform organization which is prohibitively
complicated and expensive to manage. Unfortunately, companies of
this size comprise the bulk of American business. Quote: "Linux is
free, but the support for it is not.""
FTA: "But, in the midsized companies, adding Linux would create a multiplatform company where a Microsoft-only shop existed previously."
Keep in mind, while medium sized businesses may "comprise the bulk of American business", this is only the current situation. As smaller businesses grow, there will be an influx of Linux based organizations in the medium-sized business world. Adding Linux to a Windows based infrastructure is inherintly more expensive (because you have to pay for the upkeep of two systems). But a computing infrastructure based entirely on Linux is, as far as I know, cheaper in the long run.
Also, as Linux becomes a better candidate for a desktop platform, its adoption as a viable computing platform will only increase. The state of Linux is, now, significantly more advanced than it was just 2 years ago. 2 years from now, even more so.
Digital Sailor
I once worked for a smaller company that had this exact viewpoint. They would not even consider Linux for issues that would have actually had cost savings.
One particular scenario was a firewall. I suggested a Linux firewall due to the lower upfront cost. Now, there were a Microsoft shop, but a firewall is not something that has to be administered everyday (when it is working properly). Instead they decided to go with a Checkpoint firewall that cost them a hell of a lot more than what the support costs would have been for a Linux firewall. The interesting thing was they did not need all the features that were provided by a Checkpoint firewall.
Are they really sure they are not using linux?
Probably not in some major capacity, but I suspect it's there. All in all, maybe that is why they are in the mid sized category! [Think outside the box] Just kidding... mostly.
However, one thing about the article really annoyed me and that was the calendaring functions.
Not to go crazy on this one, but what is the big deal is requiring your calendar and address book be tied to your email client. I guess somewhere along the line everyone got mixed up and decided this is the way life should be.
It's not difficult to seperate the three and it is certainly not difficult to use them together (ie, mailto link, ldap interface for address). Then if you are really slick your address book ldap elements for your email clients are meta tables based on an extended set of data available... so you get to squeeze tons more information into a relatively organized space.
That said, I have to get around to configure Open-Xchange for work and setting up the outlook clients with the connector plugin. The suits really love that stuff... me... I just want them to use the ticket system more.
It would be nice if Evolution had a win32 port.
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
But get your credit card number and expiration date handy.
Or issue an open purchase requisition.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
I have professional dealins with many a mid-size company, and every single one of them has had some network service running under Linux somewhere.
It might be true that the management doesn't know, though.
I say their loss. If they're too strung up with windows to consider other options that very well could provide more stability and better service for a cheaper price then that's their loss. That's alright the others who do realize this will have an advantage when it's all said and done.
Kyle
http://www.unlogikal.net/
You and I know that administration of a firewall doesn't take much of your time, but lots of businesses don't. So what do you do? Start a business providing managed firewall services for a flat fee per month. Use free tools and provide services on top of them, and even RMS is happy.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
If it wasn't for Linux, Apache, MySQL, and Perl, some of us would be hard pressed to stay in business.
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
Linux is not even on the radar screen for midsize businesses. The survey involved over 1,400 executives of companies with annual revenue around $250 to $500 million.
That's midsize?!
"- Only 27 percent of respondents currently have Linux installed.
- Almost half of respondents said they had "no interest" in Linux.
- Of the companies where Linux is not already installed, 48 percent have no interest and an additional 15 percent are not sure."
So to sum it up, 27 percent already use Linux and of those who don't more than half are interested in it, while an other 15 percent are not sure.
How someone can conclude that this means midsize bussinesses are not considering Linux is beyond me.
The just-released report includes results of a survey of more than 1,400 IT executives ... (emphasis mine)
I.e., not sysadmins or developers. I think it's quite reasonable to assume that in many cases, the people actually doing the work are using whatever tool best fits the task -- unless they're hamstrung by stupid company policies, of course -- and not bothering to tell the PHBs, either because they don't think it's worth mentioning or because they're afraid of being shut down.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Midsize businesses can suck my dick.
Linux is free, but the support for it is not.
Microsoft now supplies free IT employees with their expensive OS?
Get paid to code OSS
"Linux is free but support isn't"
I have yet to encounter a problem in Linux that can't be resolved by googling, or calling the vendor.
A corrolary is:
"Microsoft 'support' isn't"
IE, the teleflunkies at MS Support don't even know the basics of their own OS. I worked as a Intern with a large company, we were trying to spit out a webpage for some app, and gee, used Frontpage for the quick and dirty work. I know, hand code, yadda-yadda, but everyone else there was Mainframe gurus, and they had MS on the desktops.
Anyway, this particular version of MS was generating improperly nested formatting, which we could reproduce...
I was told "Hey, we have a support contract with MS, call them"
"Hi, I need help with frontpage, it's generating malformed HTML. Is there a patch out? Or something we can do."
"Front page generates compliant HTML"
"No it doesn't, I can tell you how to do it. Do you have a bug process"
*Conversation goes no where after description of convoluted process to get bug even noticed by MS. Every Open Source Project, I have very little problem submitting bugs*
Microsoft support isn't support. Yer paying for nothing.
to the Free Support clearly available to a business for any windows operating system or application after I pay for it !
.
How poor is Mr Koelsch's judgement that he can say a comment like "Linux is free, but the support for it is not." and yet not back this up with a proof in the survey that says "Windows support is free the operating system is not" !
In my local Federation of Small Business Chapter there are a number of IT service providers, im the only one ( well no one has directly contradicted me at the meetings when I say that ) who directly provides Linux support and has been talking about it over the last 6 years. All of us providing IT Support have a value for our support per hour, per day or per month. So support is never Free it always gets paid for somewhere
As for not on the horizon, all i can say is Mr Koelsh you should turn around and look at the sunrise and not the sunset to see where the new operating system is dawning.
And thats why Firecrackers and kittens don't mix.
Linux is free, but support isn't... well, couldn't it be said that windows is costly, and support for windows is costly as well?
The big advantage I can see is being able to automatically provide supplementary information in all three - so your calendar can allow you to click on a link to fire an e-mail to a person with whom you are scheduled to meet, and you have one address book for both e-mail and other contact info (also linked from the calendar), etc.
That said, I work in a Mac shop and we get that already with Mail.app, iCal, and the Address Book, so you're right that it doesn't require tight integration. But folks like the idea of getting a bunch of things rolled into one because of a (sometimes unfounded) perception of greater simplicity. That, and I imagine it would be a bit harder in if you're dealing with three separate vendors providing that integration, and a single vendor would have good reason to sell one app instead of three separate ones.
Also, I really have no idea if Outlook provides those features; I have never used the thing.
Installing software ? Thats getting easier all the time.
Or is this a good antilinux campaign by Monopoly-criminalsoft.
Good news! Evolution for win32 is on the way! The last that I heard, Novell was even pushing a port directly.
Throw the bums out!
There's a saying in spanish "mas vale malo conocido que bueno por conocer" which roughly translates to "better something bad that is known than something good that is unknown" (don't know if there is some saying in english similar to it)
People are scared of trying new things, especially management types. Increasing the complexity of a system by installing other in parallel can get, er, complex. Linux can be installed for free, but no support.
People will prefer to pay for windows than to pay for support and training to use alternatives.
Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
From reading all the comments thus far, its becoming obvious that these companies don't want to run linux because they already are paying for support with Windows.
My question is quite simple. Is it really more expensive to run Linux after already paying for windows? Seriously because I thought (never bought a windows OS myself) that you had to basically purchase a copy of windows for each department, etc. Microsoft I believe makes you pay for multiple copies of the same OS because thats how it makes the money to maintain its position in the marketplace. I could be wrong but if I'm not then it tells me a lot of companies find Windows cheaper when they use it illegally.
A lot of this varies greatly between companies too. A dry cleaning company may be more reluctant to use Linux then a company specializing in electronics. Keep in mind that these surveys generalize a large amount.
Quote: "Linux is free, but the support for it is not."
A couple years ago, not knowing anything about Linux, I bought a boxed Linux release at the Big Computer Store and proceeded installing it on an older P200 machine. There's a place where it stalled during installation. I googled and group.googled for a while (searching on release version, looking for hints on install problems) and found a Usenet post complaining about my very problem, a respnse spelled out how it wouldn't install on a Pentium 1 because something was compiled for a later processor. The responder pointed to a fix: put this file on a floppy inserted into the floppy drive when installing. I did, it worked.
On most products it's just as easy to presume they are orphaned, and the only support is unofficial, outside the product's maker. This often gets me better support than going to the manufacturer.
Tag lost or not installed.
Quote: "Linux is free, but the support for it is not."
So what? It's not free for Windows either.
i work for a company with about that much revenue, and we run entirely on linux, have mysql support contract, etc.
anyhow, isn't 250 - 500 million a pretty small range to call "midsize"?
In Europe SMEs drive Linux development and use. Events and fairs such as LinuxTag show a SME profile of the Linux user business community.
because FreeBSD is better.
Before any more people go and post about how calling Microsoft for support costs money, please remember the following:
1) If the place is a Microsoft shop with a bunch of servers 10-20+, they're most likely a Microsoft Certified Partner who get X amount of free trouble support requests per year. And if YOU solve the trouble shooting or if you bring a question to them that there is NO way you could know or find the answer to, they do not charge/deduct credits. As long as you've done your research and have tried everything to fix the problem, you're most likely not going to be charged.
2) "Support" isn't just calling Microsoft. It also consists of paying on-staff administrators to support everything. The admin(s) that are currently there, if it's a Microsoft shop, are probably MCSA/MCSE's and most likely not that well trained in Linux. For a mid-size business, a salary of 40-60K for another admin is probably a very prohibitive expense.
Theirs and Linux's. If nobody uses an operating system, there will be no incentive for software producers and such to market to it. Likewise, if everybody uses an operating system, there will be a large incentive for software producers and such to market to it. If Linux had more people using it, more people would market to it, and more people will be willing to use it. Now, of course, Linux isn't exactly tiny...but it isn't nearly as large as Windows. The more people who use it, the better it will be, I think (but this statement isn't too true for Windows, as tons of people use it and it still isn't as good.../me pets Ubuntu and Fedora).
and that makes it generally cheaper, too. Probably not on the scale of the megacorps, but there's little in the way of cheap support for small companies in the Linux world. Regardless of the quality of MCSEs, there's sure a lot of them.
What, exactly, does an "IT Executive" do? Wouldn't that just be a manager in the IT department? Why don't they just ask the people who actually DO the work? Even if the article says that "IT Executives in mid-sized companies are hands-on", the fact that some of these companies make $250-500 mil. says to me that the company is too large to keep a close eye on every bit of tech in it. Managers are the people who *think* they know everything that's going on, but they're probably the ones who know the least.
Tluin natha Linux xxizzuss uriu olt bwael mon'tun.
Midsize Businesses fear multiplatform organization which is prohibitively complicated and expensive to manage?
Maybe it's a sign that we're all a little nervous in the post-9/11 world.
I work for a mid sized retailer and Linux was not chosen mainly because it's not the price of support but the quality of support that people seem to fear. We went with AIX, which I really like, but it's their loss if they don't want to save money with Linux.
-- "You can lead a yak to water, but you can't teach an old dog to make a silk purse out of a pig in a poke" - Opus
Unfortunately, companies of this size comprise the bulk of American business
I think that is incorrect. No matter how you measure it, small businesses are a larger component of the economy.
4 year old stats, but I don't think it's changed
link
Textbooks and Open Educational Resources
I've pondered this many times. There's no reason mail, address books, and calendar servers couldn't stay separate, and have the clients integrate them together. The servers would need to all use a common client directory, but there's no reason an mta like exim or postfix couldn't be easily made to handle mail going to and from addresses that exist in some remote directory, not locally. I bet they already can, actually, but my only experience with mtas is within UNIX only environments.
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
I'm sure there were people who believed that mid sized companies were wasting money buying big blue, but the combination of FUD^H^H^Hsalesmanship from the friendly IBM rep, total lack of understanding of computers, and the one-stop budget line (a big deal to accounting) makes it worth the other hassles. As much as we like to think that computers are more accessable, there are still a large number of people who don't understand 'em, don't like 'em and don't want to know about 'em. We call those people managers!
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
About 50 people, but the company grosses a few hundred million a year. We're moving to the new Novell Linux Small Business Suite next month. :) Although, I've already been using linux for mail, web and intranet stuff for about 5 years.
Ok folks, I can see how it would be "interesting" to the press to write about what IS being used and picked up by the industry, but writing articles about what IS NOT being picked up? I wonder why they would feel the need to do that? Not.
There is obviously a motive behind this tactic and the motive is hidden from view for obvious reasons. Whenever there is a shift from one product for another, all those tightly involved in the losing market are going to do anything they can to slow down, stall or even stop the migration. Atleast until they too can figure out a way to shift over to that new market and pull profits from it. Think about the oil industry and hydrogen/fuelcells. All of Detroit held up the gas/electric hybrid flag until Bush took office and directed them to hold up the hydrogen/fuelcell flag. A shift threatened the profits of one industry, oil, and many players involved moved attention away from the immediate solution in order to slow down growth while they figured out how to play catch-up. In this example, there has been a number of articles falsely stating data.
So, why would eWeek/PCWeek/ZiffDavis post an article about companies who have decided NOT to use GNU/Linux?
I recall seeing them post a few articles about how much money was being made on sales of Microsoft software compared to GNU/Linux. The funny thing is, THAT kind of article was showing businesses how much they were sending to Microsoft or its partners, instead of NOT spending the money on GNU/Linux. Microsoft has shifted its marketing from competing on price with GNU/Linux and is now focusing on TCO. Just like this eWeek article....
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
There's also the KDE approach. It has separate applications for mail, calendar and address books. However, they all communicate together well, and they're built in such a way that an application like Kontact can embed each of the individual pieces into a monolithic, Outlook-style interface.
It's the best of both worlds, I suppose.
A recent report shows that Linux is a roaring success with midsize businesses.
An amazing 27% of the companies taking part in the survey were already using Linux.
But the most important finding of the report is, that more than 50% of those companies currently not using Linux think about deploying Linux.
It seems it's really time for Microsoft to start worrying.
We don't know what the actual report says (and I'm sure not going to buy a copy), but there are some definite red flags surrounding this report.
1) Infotech says that Microsoft didn't pay for this report, but they weren't asked who did pay for it, nor were they asked how much of their business is derived from Microsoft.
2) We don't know who the 1400 executives were. Were they all in the IT department? If not, do they erally know what is in use in their IT department?
3) According to the survey 27% of these companies were already using Linux. That is a huge number. I think it is save to say that 10 years ago, the number was 0%. The report says that Linux use has 'stalled' in this market, but if they haven't been doing the survey every year, how do they know that?
4)Even if it were true, it at best represents a snapshot of the marker today. GNU/Linux is continuing to improve at an extremely rapid pace, and Windows is not.
5) Finally, and most import, who cares what other businesses are doing? If your business can benefit from using Linux (or not), that is the only thing that matters.
27% have Linux installed somewhere.
Saying that "A recent report concludes few midsize enterprises have an interest in Linux." is an interesting spin on the 27% figure. Is that 27% larger or smaller than previous reports?
Hmm... "It also tends to confirm what Microsoft has been saying, slaps down some zealots". Well, no bias there then.
Move along, nothing to see here.
Deleted
Perhaps this more accurately captures the flavour of the Spanish saying: "Better the devil you know, than the god you don't."
One problem with Linux right now is there isn't a good site that lists all the features of the OS.
That, of course, is because the features depend on the packages you install.
However, think of this: if you're looking for a firewall, you have certain requirements in mind. How easy is it to find the capabilities of any of the linux built-in firewalls so you can see if it can handle the job?
It's hard. What you find are HOW-TOs. You have to plow through a ridiculous amount of stuff just to figure out if the built-in firewall can do what you need.
Commercial companies have SEs and marketeers that list and explain features, so potential customers don't have to become subject-matter experts just to understand the product's capabilties. There's no such thing on the linux side, as far as I can tell.
IF you're buying something, you'll tend to go with a company that's easy to work with. If it's hard to find pre-sales information, it'll be even harder to get help when you're in production.
Not everyone wants to know the ins and outs of ipfilter, iptables, or ipfw. They just want stuff that works, and is easy to set up and maintain.
This is the truth that is being overlooked.
+5 Insightful.
I know I am not the only one who has experienced Linux xenophobia before. To me, Linux, Windows and all others are just another way of doing things... so I do them all. (Not everything looks like a nail to me)
But bringing up Linux to some people strikes fear and confusion into their hearts because it's very foreign to them. And in the tech world, to appear to be ignorant is a sign of weakness.
So largely what we're seeing is the natural resistance to change. Bosses don't often know anything about their IT stuff and rely largely on their in-house experts for advice... largely, these are people who only know Windows, so naturally, the advise Windows. But more and more, tech people are getting curious about Linux, learn about it and start using it.
Nothing can really accellerate this progression except marketting and there's not much marketting going on. IBM was marketting for a short time... it was encouraging and it got people talking about Linux and wondering what it was.
It's all an eventuality, I think, but only while current activities don't change. I work for a medium-sized corporation... maybe edging into 'large' but we have a strong desire to migrate into Linux based solutions. (There was a BSA audit a few years back, I'm told... With all this buzz about Linux and OSS have you heard anything about BSA lately?) Whatever the case, the more things like Perl, PHP, Apache, Firefox and even OpenOffice are used, the more we like it. It's just working out for us and since the migration is somewhat gradual, there is little to no shock involved.
We will begin testing the Novell Linux Desktop before long... I am very excited at the idea and I expect my site to be the first to get it.
You get what you pay for. If you pay nothing for support you get crap support, if you shell out a couple of dollars you will get better support.
We currently are running a mixed environment with about 300 thin client desktops and about 15 servers. We have had a redhat support contract for the last 3-4 years but in that period of time I have never called them even once. I would drop the support but it makes the big dog's happier to actually have to pay for something....bottom line is the servers and workstations have a perfect uptime record and maintenance is not even 1% of our windows environment. Let them right what they want those of us that know and use it get the competitive advantage. Now granted I consider myself a top notch linux admin but I don't make any more money that anyone else.
Bottom line I do not want our competitors to use linux it is our advantage that we can.
Got Code?
The problem (and I've had Microsoft technical people agree with me on this) is that Microsoft made it possible to to a really half-assed installation that actually works (sort of).
This doesn't happen because Windows admins are lazy - the point is economic - many smaller and even mid-size companies have a lot of infrastructure run by partially or totally untrained (self-taught) individuals who, because they were able to bring up a 'working' installation probably THINK they're up to the job. Linux admins tend to be either formally trained or enthousiasts who are have done much better self training and at least are a lot more self-aware of their limitations. In big corporate enterprises the natural breeding ground for Linux staff is UNIX staff that want to move into new ground.
When ever I have a discussion with a big IT org that says they can't support another OS, I just ask them to poll their Sun technical staff and see how many have Linux boxes at home (vs how many have a SPARC/Solaris box or even Solaris x86). The answer invariably is that they already have a semi-trained Linux staff ready for more formal learning.
Anyway, the main point is that Windows can be made to run generally as well as UNIXes if the same level of MANAGEMENT DISCIPLINE is employed. The problem is that Windows can be run shoddly, whereas you can't bring up UNIX in production environment without a certain level of expertise. Whoa onto us all if RH and SuSe succeed in making Linux as easy to install and start going as Windows is, because we'll create a whole another class of cheap clueless help that maintain awful installations.
Windows+Office cost per employee is at least $300. OEM price may be low, but you have to factor in a couple of upgrades. Linux+OpenOffice cost is 0.
:-)
Before anyone talks about support costs, consider a bootable CD that formats the local hard drive and installs an image with all the applications from the server, which also stores all your OpenOffice documents. I "supported" several hundred math students using Mathematica and WriteNow on NeXT during my $7/hour student job this way and got 0 complaints.
Not everyone needs Windows-only applications that don't run under Wine. Most office workers just use e-mail, word processor, web applications and a printer. If a company doesn't want to hire a student to whip up a simple solution, there should be a consulting agency that already has the stuff ready. The fact that it's not happening is a sign that current companies are surviving on government favors and people's stupidity rather than honest capitalist competition. If they can afford to throw away a million bucks on Microsoft software, they should just give it to me
Every single institution I've been at bought computers in bulk from Dell, with the OS (windows) pre-installed - only those with special needs (and were pretty computer savy to begin with) used Linux. Linux simply isn't a household name in the desktop market. Besides, practically everyone uses Windows or the Macintosh - sticking with a popular OS (real or perceived, it doesn't matter) reduces the risk of incompatability with the rest of the world.
Smedley, I have scrutinized this radar screen and see absolutely no penguins!
...
...
Umm, yes sir, the thing about this radar screen you're holding
No evasions, Smedley! You told me Linux was the next big thing, but my radar shows no trace of it!
But sir, the thing is, this radar screen is actually an etch-a-sketch. Remember, we gave it to you after you went through three notebooks in a week. If you want Linux to show up, just twiddle those knobs
Big picture, Smedley! No implementation details! Linux is NOT showing up on the radar!
but did you really download a kernel image from the wild (web) and install it? Without knowing where it came from, even without knowing what exactly you were doing?
Unless this post pointed to ftp.$your_distro.com/kernel/image-i386 or such this was a really _bad_ idea.
I agree that usenet, mailing lists, forums and even IRC can be a great resource; but it is no equivalent for payed support. I have seen people give advice on #linux channels, which effectively broke a machine beyond a newbies ability to repair it.
"Linux is free, but the support for it is not."
While it's entirely possible (and easy) for anybody who's interested to get their hands on Linux, consider the company to which many businesses will go first: Red Hat.
Have any of you looked at the cost of a Red Hat Linux subscription lately?
Feast your peepers on these numbers, my friends: Red Hat server licensing options.
Sure, you don't have to go with a solution like this, but any company that depends even a little on its IT department is going to want some real support and culpability - they aren't going to just be throwing Slackware on machines willy-nilly.
Food for thought, mes amis.
- Rory [Microsoft Employee] | Free dirt: neopoleon.com
This is just more spin on the same study that Didiot just took all that flack for earlier this week.
Original Story
Didio gets bent.
In Communist Russia, mid-sized businesses consider YOU!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
they are going to stand up for you, if someone sues you for their violation. Can anyone post numbers for this kind of lawsuit? I mean, I don't know that I remember hearing anything about it until SCO tried to sue Diamler and Autozone for using Linux and those are stalled out. Really, MS doesn't protect you anymore than they would protect themselves and that's it; moreover should you request indemnification you open yourself up to be responsible for their fees if it's not valid. According to DiDio of the Yankee group, that is "best of breed" indemnification. It's all FUD, we know that, but people are clearly listening to it, it's like spam, they wouldn't keep doing if it wasn't working. I mean, when I first think about indemnification, I think about SLAs and software working as it's expected to and the types of shit you can get from IBM and the big boys; if I was to be sued for using MS's products, worst case is I lose and then sue MS..
If you're a big company, you take your IT seriously, you know have too much to lose so you employ a staff and implementing something like Linux is just a decision based on costs and features. If you're a small company, you do what you can and what you can afford; I love Linux and run it everywhere but I also have to admit for a lot of smaller shops MacOSX or Windows provides a lot more function for less IT investment. They're more enduser friendly. Or small companies have a UNIX dork and employ Linux for some critical functions. That really leaves "midsized" where they may wish to outsource, they aren't comfortable analyzing risks because they can't determine how big or small they really are in the world, they want to be big bug can't afford it and they need to take risks more seriously than small sized organizations. Sign up for MS's all encompassing license for the mill and a half or whatever it is for your group and you sleep well at night.. It's all emotion and insecurity (psychosis) they're scared, they hear the FUD, they believe it.
Really if you look at it, this is something I'd expect distributions to solve to a large degree. I also see Apple potentially making this space really painful for MS if they keep doing what they are, there are already small companies that can do most or all of their IT with MacOS. I'm kind of surprised that there isn't a directory distribution that installs and sets up up LDAP right out of the box and has some managment tools. Same thing could be done with databases. A linux based backup server distribution would be cake. It needs to come out of the box and pop, you know? So of like smoothwall does for firewalls. It seems like a market where you really could add some value, that's what midsized are looking for.
I think that the other area where we can enhance what Linux is offering is by some of the main distribution vendors stop leading with support but start up programs where they suggest third party consultants to do support. That potentially hurts them but Redhat and Suse have the appearance of being large platform vendors. No MS roll out is done with MS support, midsized companies always have some third party consulting group involved.
The author of the eWeek article writes: "My conclusion: In most of American business, the supposed competition between Microsoft and Linux just doesn't exist. And with good reason."
Unfortunately, he doesn;t seem mention the right reason in his article.
Just like the author, I think it's very probable that M$ has little to fear from GNU/Linux in the Mid-size enterprise market in the near future. But I don;t believe this has anything to do with 'cost effectivity' or 'quality of software'.
At its heart M$ vs. GNU/Linux is an ideological battle. Freedom to choose and Freedom of ideas are at the heart of FOSS, not better quality software nor cost-effectivity. Most mid-size corporate entities are simply not aware of, or interested in, the issues surrounding Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Information and patent-lunacy. After all, they operate in a cultural climate that considers short-term 'shareholder value' as it's highest virtue, not unprofitable long-term stuff like ensuring a culture of openness and discourse.
This corporate mindset weakens the strongest argument for using GNU/Linux: 'Doing the right thing'. In my opinion using GNU/Linux effectively doesn't flow from TCO-style considerations. Rather, effective use of GNU/Linux stems from a Freedom-oriented mindset and such a mindset is a rare thing in Mid-size enterprises.
Put simply, M$ vs. GNU/Linux is about business ethics. And as we all know 'American Business' is not the place to go looking for that elusive quality.
- It took western civilisation 2000 years to ensure popular literacy, and now we work with icon driven GUI's. Go figure.
Experience?
This isn't about spin, so much as many mid-size businesses are in weird places where technology is concerned. Individual department managers sometimes have enough budget to build IT infrastructure of their own, independent of centralized IT departments. Interfactional disputes and politics play heavy in mid-size organizations. A couple IT people build an intranet with Apache/PHP/Linux and put up Samba file servers. Executives simply do not know everything going on with respect to technical implementation in their company. If they do, however, IMHO, they are way too focused on details that should be handled by lower level employees. Some executives still have their secretaries^Wassistants print their email. While the more technical literate may snicker, I kind of like the idea of an executive more focused on running the business than learning every new techno-whizbang thing to come along (and yes, to some people, e-mail is whizbang).
Not to say there aren't technically inclined executives in these companies, but even that technically inclined exec isn't likely to know every nook and cranny of the technical infrastructure.
You are right that these companies are not apt to totally overhaul everything, dumping major systems overnight, as long as what they have gets the job done. But, I've worked too long in this field to believe anyone who tries to tell me that most executives know the ins and outs of their company's entire technical infrastructure. I think this belief comes from an overestimate of our importance to the business at large. Not that IT isn't important, but most people just don't give a damn about the details. They just want their invoices, pick lists and purchase orders to print when they need them, they want their sales and forecasting reports to be right, and they want their internet connection and email to just work. Everything else, well, that's why us geeks have jobs, right?
It's like a constant barrage of these articles about how --oh gosh businesses aren't satisfied with free software for XY and Z reasons and if those don't change then business will never use free software.
Well, uhm so what?
This more users argument is stupid. MS clearly disproves the theory that more users makes better software. Of course more coders seeing code should most certainly be helpful in numerous ways, but that's a completely different issue. More clueless users whining about what they don't like though? Who cares? Let them stay away in droves.
All the better as far as I'm concerned. Free software doesn't need business. This is the whole point of free software. Business is irrelevant. This is why MS is, in fact, a monopoly: free software is not competing with Microsoft because free software is free. You're not competing if you're not in the same market and free software is certainly not in MS's market.
Moreover, free software will inevitably drain that market, but observe that this is not the same as being in the market. It's more like an alternative to the market that demonstrates how ridiculous the whole metaphor of a market was for a product that had no physical existence and could be re-created more or less infinitely without costs worth tabulating.
Open Source is the awakening to the fact that software is too important to be shackled to arcane and inappropriate systems like markets which are effective only under conditions of scarcity. Open Source is the beginning of the real software of the future and its destiny is most certainly manifest. Geek hippies will rule the world!
So, when these businesses get broadsided by other businesses that do reduce their costs by using free and open software then this petty crap will no longer be an issue. It's just a matter of time.
Until then, what difference does it make other than being fodder for a pissing contest in the IT press. FOSS will be just fine with or without these businesses.
Linux is a PITA to install and configure on laptops. Perhaps this is a factor for medium sized business that require both desktops and laptops for the field. It might be a valid option to switch all your desktops to linux, but would it be worth it if you then encountered various compatibility problems with the laptops?
Samba is certainly fantastic, but I would imagine it would be easier to maintain a one-OS environment.
"Cheaper to stick with Windows for the sheeple."
[Slogan]
"PHBs, use Linux so your IT geeks will no longer call you sheeple behind your back".
My experience with small businesses is that they almost uniformly consider themselves to be 'under the radar' when it comes to licensing issues. Small businesses are all about getting the job done quickly, compatibly, and as cheaply as humanly possible. They don't even blink in the face of considering a ready-made *NIX solution provided it meets those three criteria.
But marketplace reality is that proprietary commercial solutions are, more often than not, the only out-of-the-box plug-and-go way to ensure standards compatibility. Small companies don't have the time or money to invest in custom IT infrastructure or even tweaking close-enough solutions to interoperate. So they pirate commercial products relentlessly.
If it's something under $100 or so, they might buy a single legitimate copy for the office. But any other commercial applications? Cracked downloads. Utilities? Unless it's under $50 or so, they'll buy grey-market pirated warez and feign ignorance regarding its legitimacy.
If it's something like AutoCAD, with an established record of hunting down and suing illegitimate users, they'll buy enough several-versions-old used copies to sit a box or manual on every employee's desk - but we're talking $30-50 boxes of otherwise obsolete five-to-eight-year-old 'lite' editions off of eBay. Meanwhile, that single new full version is what's actually cracked and in daily use on every employee's machine.
Heck, I've tried to impress upon management in such environments the importance of keeping legitimate software licenses, even going open-source where the cost of entry for commercial software is too high. But not only are these businesses small enough to feel 'under the readar' in the face of $100K-a-pop fines versus feigned ignorance of their licenses' legitimacy, they're too small to afford any sort of full-time IT staff.
And lacking dedicated IT staff, the cost of entry for roll-your-own open-source compatibility is just too high.
Off all the move Microsoft made toward customer lock-in, I think tying Outlook and Exchange together with closed protocol was the smartest. Making Exchange 2000 depend on Active Directory was the second smartest. Now that the suit are in love with Outlook and that most people equate email with Outlook, they have a pretty strong tie on the server room of most organisation.
As a side note, I can't believe people actually like Outlook. The damn POS is so confusing, I wonder how people actually get anything done using it.
Apparently, Novell is working on one.
:wq
Agreed. OS X has these as three separate applications - iCal, Mail and Address Book. They work together pretty much seamlessly and I prefer this approach to having a single monolithic app.
However, shared calendering is still a strength of Windows in general, and Office in particular I feel. I really wish for shared calendaring to become standardised and commoditised soon. It does seem as if steps have been taken recently, but everything seems to need a fair amount of configuration. I would like the configuration to consists of "Enter calendar server", "define calendar user group", "set user group permissions" and be done.
Cheers,
Ian
Having come from a shop which manages Linux efficiently, and having done consulting gigs with Linux shops...
The problem with Linux is it's possible to manage it very efficiently but the majority of shops don't know how. Tools like cfengine and a reasoned and planned methods are not implemented as a discipline.
I haul out Kirk Bauer's "Automating UNIX and Linux Administration" and it's both a revelation and a threat to the staff, who spend their days either pointing and clicking or doing the same thing over and over again at the command line. How desparate is that?
Unfortunately, most of these shops are managed by bottom-line folks who do the do every day and never consider alternatives. The ones who hum along don't bother to respond to such surveys because they _get it_. They invest in the scaffolding that has to be built and once it's in place, the thing just plain flat rocks and IT finds its proper role - disappearing.
When I talk to such organizations about IT, I tell them "if I do my job just right, I disappear." It usually causes crossed brows and consternation, but it's so.
Linux advocates do themselves great injury by not creating and requiring open architectures and open methods of system administration. And disappearing. It's only sexy if you watch it all happen.
a lot of my clients run on MS Exchange + Outlook
i have yet to find a simple Linux replacement for it, so until then none of my clients will even look at Linux, they are not willing to change their business practices (if it aint broke) so they stick with the MS solution.
eweek, pcworld, cnet, and all of those commercial 'news & market review' sites are all biased towards microsoft.
Their frailed linux sections are generally written by windows-2-linux migrants who feel so compelled to discuss the system, only weeks after their 1st installation.
Businesses and lamebrained execs (CTO/CIO's etc) read that stuff like it's a bible, sad!
*rant*
the only permanence in existence, is the impermanence of existence.
If anything, a single competent linux admin can run a LARGE set of Linux boxes with little to no effort. Create custom install scripts for "regular" boxes (Kickstart), point the boxes to your own package repository, enable nightly updates - there you go, half of the problems you'd have with "stock" windows (if you pay for SMS, windows will install shit for you, too) is solved right away.
:0)
Then lock down the boxes for non-root accounts, put together a file server, and install windows 2003 with 10 terminal server licenses for the rare occasions when someone needs Word and OO won't do.
This, of course, assumes that that you're only running Office or Java software on your windows boxes. If you have custom windows apps, shit becomes really complicated. Well, at least until BSA raids you for minor non-compliance.
I've been working in this Liquor store for about eight years now, around a year after I started working there, the old owner got a computer (for porn, internet, shopping, whatever)
He later left to manage his other buisnesses, and a manager family member that worked there took over managing.
They left the computer there, still with cablemodem (at buisness rate though) for porn and arab news sites.
When windows was on the machine, they screwed it up at least every two days to the point where drastic things had to be done to make it work at all again, after a couple years I got sick of it, set them up with a Linux distro, got it all configured, auto-login, etc, to disguise those complexities from them (they are really, really, _stupid_)
Anyways, it's been running on there for years and years now, they've never once messed it up or brought down the system,
Linux is great for small buisnesses that need to protect themselves from themselves.
Windows is cheaper than Unix, that's true.
... Guess which one is cheaper ? And it is more true with Linux.
:-)
Linux is cheaper than Windows, that's true too.
The hardware costs the same.
The commercials softwares cost exactly the same.
(i.e. Oracle on Linux or windows or HP is the same price... but yes Oracle is expensive)
As for Linux , the OS is free.
Most the tools surrounding the OS is free too.
I work for a large company in the aerospace area we are around 23,000 employees. And most of the time when we use windows it is for "toys".
For real computing we use Unix and more and more Linux.
The ratio of Unix admin is around 1 for 20 servers
The ratio of Windows admin is around 1 for 5 servers
After paying vacations, benefits
A good windows sys admin is not cheap.
A Unix sys admin is not cheap either.
But it takes less Unix sys admin than windows sys admin when you manage a 18,000 devices network.
In my experience, the ROI on unix is proved to be a lot better.
Anyway to conclude my point,
I am still surprise that today, mid-size enterprises don't seem to understand that.
Are they too much influenced by MS ?
Do their analysis bias ?
I don't know, but its their money, not mine
> Not to go crazy on this one, but what is the big
> deal is requiring your calendar and address book
> be tied to your email client. I guess somewhere
> along the line everyone got mixed up and decided
> this is the way life should be.
That is your opinion, which is fine. I personally prefer a Unix(tm)-type command-line-based e-mail app myself. But please recognize that 66% or more of Western office workers do not share your opinion, which is a large market.
sPh
I don't know whether Coursey supplied the headline (maybe some editor above him did), but it's one of the more Onionesque headlines one could see on a computer-centric Website.
"Midsize Businesses Have No Use for Linux"
Now say that again with a straight face, and wonder. This is stretch past even the stretches contained in the article that follows.
Now, surely there are many businesses (for various reasons, of varying degrees of rationality), aren't currently using Linux. (Or Mac OS X, or any version of Windows past 98, etc.) However, even the very few data points I know of (check out NewsForge, any big IT publication, Dr. Dobbs, etc. for more and better) are more than enough to make clear that Coursey's article is the usual Coursey -- provocative if you're a pal, flamebait if you're offended, laughable if you think that he's sincere, trolling if you think Coursey knows he's egregiously distorting the truth. I go with that last one, but Hey, maybe he's just a big prankster.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Linux is free but support isn't? Well clearly, these geniuses have discovered an OS that has free support. Microsoft is doing that now, right?
I say this from professional experience in a small-mid-sized company: Windows complications are more common and more problematic than Linux's are. Windows has good marketing, but shit never works the way it's supposed to. And then you have to try and deal with a single-vendor platform to make it work.
But let 'em keep using Windows. Eventually they'll figure out that the guys using Linux (or *BSD) are better, faster, and more secure than they are. These guys are just a little slower than the rest of us.
Also: what do you think the odds are that these brain donors have Linux boxes running critical systems and don't even know it? Linux by stealth is really common; it's how I got Linux into my shop.
I, for one, welcome our new Antichrist overlord.
Are the mods crazy? "Offtopic"? The post was a direct response to a comment in the OP!
Windows is not free, and neither is the support.
I can count to 1023 on my hands. Ask me about #132.
"Executives in $250M/year to $500M/year companies don't know, what systems their engineers are running. If the company is smaller, executives likely know more about what they manage, and if the company is larger, it's an IBM client."
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Every chance I get, I boot Windows out the door; for any sized company.
From my experience, anything *nix is the best choice for business critical.
Further, converting those big Windows licensing costs into consulting/support dollars is a wise choice for any Linux capable consultant.
The client benefits from lower overall support costs because the machines run so reliably.
The consultant who sells Windows servers is probably some "accelerated" DeVry graduate who also sells Norton and McAfee for protection;
(Kind of like selling someone a condom with a hole in it)
"A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" - referring to hunting: Don't lose the animal you may already have captured by hoping for the larger one that is still free
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
Hrm,
In my ldap auth setup, most users don't exist in the system at all, but just entities in ldap. The majority of the users are for samba pdc auth, but even so I tend to build the accounts with posix attributes as well.
So yeah, the subsystem believes they are real users (they are... they just don't exist in flat files)
In any event, I think that's pretty much the approach open-xchange is using.
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
- Only 27 percent of respondents currently have Linux installed.
- Almost half of respondents said they had "no interest" in Linux.
- Of the companies where Linux is not already installed, 48 percent have no interest and an additional 15 percent are not sure.
So let me get this straight, 1/4 of midsize businesses are already using linux, and another ~ 1/4 have interest in it. And the conclusion we're supposed to draw is that mid size companies have "no use" for linux?MRSH-Recording device, corned beef sandwich with kraut, seafaring bird, and the foamy top of a beverage.
http://haystack.lcs.mit.edu/screenshots/full-scree nshot.png
http://helium.knownspace.org/manifesto.html
http://www.daml.ri.cmu.edu/Cal/
Not quite right.
100 % total - 27 % with linux = 73 % without
of whom 100 % total - 48 % not interested - 15 % unsure = only 37 % of those without linux are interested
73 % without linux x 37 % of them interested = 27 % without linux but interested
I agree with your general point though - 27 % use linux, and a further 27 % are interested in it. 54 % are either using linux or interested it it. That hardly qualifies as "off the radar"
What is the robbing of a bank, compared to the founding of a bank? -- Bertolt Brecht
How do you mark an entire article "-1 Troll"?
Usage: fortune -P [-f] -a [xsz] Q: file [rKe9] -v6[+] file1
Set up a windows server to run these apps, and use terminal services to connect from your linux desktops. Or, if you have a huge amount of people needing to use it at the same time then terminal services isn't so hot, so use citrix.
If you use citrix, you also have the advantage that you can have it so that people simply double click an icon on their desktop, and the app runs on the server, but appears in a window on their desktop just like with remote X apps. It works fantastically well, we use it for several old VB apps.
Does that come in a size nine? :)
I'm not familiar with the numbered sizes, but you can buy Mozilla Firefox softwear in small, medium, large, and XL.
ObTopic: Mozilla Firefox software and other cross-platform applications are useful as a gentle method of training users on GNU/Linux compatible apps before switching them to GNU/Linux.
mid-sized business use midrange apps. E.g. Forth Shift, Visual Manufacturing, etc. Which were written in the late 80s/early 90s. For the Windows API.
Have you reported the incompatibilities between Wine and those apps both to the Wine developers and to the app developers?
Coursey is a familiar open-source basher and well used to distorting the picture. He has even been quoted as saying that commercial software firms do the innovation while open source mostly copies. This myth has been well debunked before but in case you missed it consider MS and tell me:
who "innovated" DOS, gui computing, windowed applications, mouse based ui, menus, word processor, spreadsheets, email client, address book, database... you get the picture. Such willful ignorance of the facts is quite staggering and makes for good reading/flaming.
Which causes me to wonder if Coursey really believes what he writes or if he's just there to create reaction. eWeek has more than a few OSS fans and Coursey knows he's kicking the nest. Maybe he's just having fun?
So, to sum it up, 27% of midsize businesses use Linux, and a further 27% are interested in doing so. 54% of midsize businesses either use Linux or are interested in doing so.
Surely the ones "spinning the results" would be those who would take the results to mean Linux is "not even on the radar" for midsize businesses, when in fact a minority according to their own results have no interest in using it (or are unsure).
What is the robbing of a bank, compared to the founding of a bank? -- Bertolt Brecht
Someone trusts Acme Security for a nightwatchmen because they have a reputable business. However, that same trust should not be implict for FlyByNight Security.
"Reputable business"? Tell that to Wile E. Coyote, who has had to RMA more Acme products than you can imagine.
Unix admins are almost always as good at windows as a windows admin, plus have the unix knowledge. A unix admin for 40-60K will be able to replace the existing windows admin, not just suppliment him/her. And every competant windows admin I have ever come across has been perfectly capable of learning unix very quickly, so if they don't want to replace their admin they can simply train them. The fallacy of windows admins being cheaper and unable to admin unix machines is only true if you have incompetant windows admins.
F1
Nice, I just saved you a lot of money.
Does this mean I am an MCSE now?
I have yet to encounter a problem in Linux that can't be resolved by googling
It may be easy for you, but it's not as easy for other people to find just the right keywords to make Google return relevant results. Yes, that makes you valuable as a sysadmin. Besides, what if you can't get to Google because you have trouble getting the networking hardware to respond?
or calling the vendor.
Some vendors, when telephoned, often refuse flat out to provide GNU/Linux drivers for existing paid-for hardware or to provide support for running an application in Wine.
"There's a saying in spanish "mas vale malo conocido que bueno por conocer" which roughly translates to "better something bad that is known than something good that is unknown" (don't know if there is some saying in english similar to it)"
;))
;))
There is an English expression to say the same thing: "Better the Devil you know than the Devil you don't." (That is, a known evil at least has limits you're aware of and can work around; an unknown evil may surpass those
Cheers,
timothy (just not logged in at the moment
You already know about terminal server obviously, so what's the problem with custom windows apps?
Ever try to get a non-postscript printer to work on Linux? Some work but many are nearly impossible to get working. What good is a free OS if you have to go out and buy a bunch of new printers. There are other issues but this is bigger than you think. Many offices still run on paper and if you cannot print then no matter how superior it may be in other ways, it is useless to them. I dislike Windows but nearly any old printer can be used effectively and until this problem is solved, Linux will have trouble penetrating that market.
6F 9E A9 1E 96 9F 74 27 ED B8 81 6D 0C 4E 1E 78
My other Sig is a 229.
Is a business with a turnover of about $200 million really considered a small business in the US?
As a side note, I can't believe people actually like Outlook. The damn POS is so confusing, I wonder how people actually get anything done using it.
Not only that but Outlook management demands a huge amount of time from the individual users. Outlook starts to run very poorly (if at all) once you have too many emails in your box so most modern office workers are specifically trained to use their email in a non-intuitive and inefficient way (delete as much information as possible, do not keep records, print stuff out and file it etc).
In a world where 1GB of storage can be had for less than 50 cents, it is ironic when an employee wastes a few hours every month deleting a few hundred KB of email so that their "productivity" application will continue to function.
Of all the phenomena I've seen in the industry over my career, none have been as inexplicable as the continued success of Outlook/Exchange. I once worked in an R&D center for an F100 company that had decided to go to Outlook. By the time they completed the rollover, our facility had spent enough money on the conversion alone to keep the existing service running for over a century, the ongoing costs were going to include at least 10x as many servers and more than 2x as many support staff and there was NO operational benefit. They briefly experimented with the resource scheduling system but the old pen and paper way turned out to work better. Many staff, used to a functional email system, had to delete enormous amounts of information (did I memntion that we were an R&D facility?). Finally and most ironically, more than half the staff had Unix workstations so 1) half the staff couldn't even use Outlook and 2) half the remainder had to be issued Windows laptops so that they could.
Suffice to say, that facility no longer exists and the company is now a 2nd rate player on a long slide to oblivion.
I've spent a lot of time thinking about this lately and I'm no longer worried about MS's domination. In every case where I've seen two competing companies where one is using Linux/Unix infrastructure and the other Win-based servers, the Unix company ALWAYS has lower IT costs and greater productivity. You can produce all the studies you want but ultimately, the company who's actual costs are lower and who's actual systems are more reliable and less of an obstacle to the mission will win in the market. It's sad that the dinosaurs will never even know what killed them but that's evolution for you.
I'm IT manager for a a relatively small company, with 20ish salespeople on the road, trying to sell our (one shot) product. My company uses exclusively linux (SuSE 9) servers except for our accounting software, about 20 (yep, 20) of them. mail, printing, file sharing, firewalls, VPN, ...
Well, we decided to outsource the appointment taking for our salespeople to another company and provide our salespeople with PDAs to sync with their calendars instantly because the less time they spend on the phone trying to get an appointment with customers, the more they sell, logical...
So I went shopping for some linux distro that actually provided outlook connectivity (these damn PDAs don't have anything but outlook on them it seems).
After being fooled by (SUSE) Novel OpenExchange and their advertised "Seamless integration" with Outlooks (from Outlook 98+, their website advertises), I had to come to the conclusion that there was seemingly no linux distro that provided that kind of functionality.
My solution is now either to get one of these windows boxen with exchange on it or outsource the calendaring connectivity as well...
This need of mine is a real need, and not just fancy wishes based on nothing but comfort as you seem to imply, after all our other 30ish employees are very happy with sunbird but in this case, it's not an option...
Oh, and by the way, the "outlook connector" of Open-XChange works on about 50% of the windows XP machines, not all of them...
These two aspects (accounting and calendaring) are the points that prevent me from providing linux on the desktop throughout the company, everyone already uses firefox, thunderbird, sunbird, OO.org(except for the odd excel thing openexchange can't handle). Linux is cool, but it's not yet fully ready for all my needs...
One shall speak only if what one has to say is more beautiful than silence
You really should scope out hula.
Very smooth and getting better fast. Lots of cool things happening around it. LDAP backend coming soon. Based on Novell's NetMail.
Enjoy.
It surprises me that hosted computing services are not as wide-spread as they could be. The IT infrastructure of a typical small or midsize business can and should be outsourced: broadband is not a problem these days, and, I assume, Linux would play better (than Windows) in an environment based on the use of thin clients that are not expensive to set up or maintain.
A side remark: "comprise" is a synonym of "include". The author means "companies of this size compose the bulk etc.". These latinates are not equivalent.
You can say:
Don't say "is comprised of", which is to English what "Microsoft security" is decency. :-)
--
Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
Good for the mid sized not to see the writing on the wall. Once these mid sized were small busineses and I can without hesitation say that todays small businesses have greater stamina than the half old mid sized have to survive. Ignoring technology is not good. Wasteful usage of investor money is not good. So all in all it will be their own downfall. Problem is that they have already spent way too much in MS/Big Iron solutions that they have already shot themselves in the foot. I am personally not even flabbergasted at their position because their solution was done by idiots for idiots. The smart will prevail unless someone like Stalin culls the business climate.
I heard a saying some time ago "You won't get fired for choosing IBM. I think you can easily say the same about Microsoft. Many managers deal with consistant problems, missed deadlines, etc and would get questioned to no end if they were using (publicly) a cheap (inexpensive) or free solution. In my experience managers would rather not take the risk of a cheaper solution having issues, and not having a clear direction to point a finger if something was to go wrong. I often hear things from my management like "Microsoft is helping us work through this issue", in reality it's not a Microsoft problem at all but it gets the manager off the hook.
I have found the easiest way to get Linux into business is just do it, and do it quietly. It's very hard to say "Can't we do x with Linux?", but much easier to do it quietly then when the day comes up where a manager suggests a Microsoft solution to x you can say well we are already doing that with Linux and it's much cheaper (all costs considered) than the Microsoft solution. Try doing this the other way around and you will get shutdown 9 times out of 10.
Well,
Most office drones don't ask for that configuration per say... they just want certain things... outlook happens to have those and suddenly its not those features they want, but its outlook functionality. Actually, I have had more then a few feature requests for things outlook doesn't have. When you can pose the question, "What do you need in your day to day routine or what would make things easier|more efficient?" You really would be surprised what the brighter bulbs say.
Breaking the outlook mentality was my first approach, but the tools available at the time did not fulfil our feature list. Though I have to say, I had some good progress patching up the cvs of moregroupware at the time. When it came to a review we decided to wait for things to mature and continue to use our current infrastructure.
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
That a business that already has 10,000 windows boxes deployed is reluctant to perform 10,000 Linux migrations? Why, that's amazing!
Plus, Windows is amazingly stable if one is only running 1 or 2 windows apps at a time with all the other customary desktops apps running in native Linux. Deciding to run it is probably the best computing decision I've ever made.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Why don't these dorks ever ask my company? 1800 total employees. 250 desktop users across 24 locations in the US and Canada and *ALL* desktops are either LTSP diskless workstations or a few are actually disked.
All of the Winblows sys admins I know can't believe how lucky I am to be able to handle updates, upgrades, problems and how LITTLE it costs to do so...
I love to get the MS sales saying, "we want to help you with you software costs"... after I stop laughing at them, I take a deep breath and laugh for a while longer.
"Well, who do you think the sysadmins are working for?"
I work as an IT director for a large transportation company, and I ask myself that every day. Its a damned good question, and one that appears to be unanswerable.
And no, I'm not joking. Not even a *little*.
If you don't understand the email/calender relationship, then you don't understand even the most basic parts of it.
Apart from the fact that people don't like having 5 or 6 apps running all the time and getting in the way (think alt-tab and having it cluttered with apps you have to run all day like email, calendering, etc.. to get full use out of them), email integration provides an eays way to invite and manage meetings.
I create a meeting and email the invites to the attendees. They click a single button to add that meeting to their calendar if they accept, or to decline (automatically informing MY calendar that they declined). If I reschedule the meeting, then everyone is automatically sent out reconfirmations, which again get automatically updated when accepted or declined.
With seperate calendaring, I have to manage the meetings (or assign someone to manage them). Integrated works much better.
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
Since we are only in a review process for open xchange the outlook connector problem could be interesting to solve. The painful problem I've had in the past is due to variances in the ldap structures the various versions of outlook and outlook express support. Somewhere, sometimes ago, someone documented some various differences. Note, this wasn't even regarding the connector.
The trick for me was configuring ldap with an sql backend and my ldap tables were created upon request. (additional overhead, but it cannot be helped)
At no point did I mean to imply it is a petty need. It's a problem I face currently and thus I've delved a good bit into the subject.
Building most everything from the ground up, I have had the luxury of standarizing on software deployments.
The PDA problem is going to be interesting, but our sales force is not to that point. Mainly because the product doesn't ship more then 2 weeks from contract signing and they don't necessarily need to sell in quantity.
I still do have windows servers on the network and I honestly think it's a bit of a pipe dream to be a 100% linux shop here. (Sometimes you are forced to go with a less expensive product and your vendor lies about linux support... I kid you not)
In any event, my original complaint was only regarding the "eggs in one basket" mentality and your particular situation looks to be the resultant of attempting to implement a still fairly young project into an existing shop.
Here, I've tried to ensure we are not tied to a specific implementation, as I look for feature sets that ensure we have the ability to build upon what we are given and manipulate that data through exterior methods if warranted.
So far... everything is working out... still more problems to tackle though.
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
Novell's linux distribution is oriented exactly towads mid to lage companies. However the distribution is not in it's prime stage yet but in about a year there would be a viable option for mid to large companies to try. Unlike Windows NLD is designed for the corporate world and nothing but the corporate world. Also right now there isn't a single mid to large company in the US that does not use at least one Novell produt. Novell know that very well and they would have never devoted tons of money and developers to the new OS (for them) if there wasn't well over 50% for success. So give it some time and you will see a lot of larger companies switching over to linux. There are different reason for different markets though. You can't even think of pitching linux to a large company with the promice of saving some money. Those companies hate changes and uncertanty because it causes them to loose lots of money on the stock market. (i.e. less investors and less potential for growth) However for many of those companies switching from a flacky windows to a rock solid novell is a very good option and this is ecavtly the way that Microsoft and Novell are known in those circles.
most people equate email with Outlook
Hmm, from what I see, it seems that webmail has taken the market. Everyday people seem to primarily use free webmail sources, since it stays constant when they change providers. Organizations now seem to be shifting or seem to have shifted toward webmail, since it's accessible from any location, and it keeps people in contact even if they travel and move about.
I don't think Outlook can even come close to competing with this level of mobility.
GNUstep does this too with GNUMail.app and AddressBook.app, which come from two different developers but communicate through the Services menu.
It's all a great big fucking pile of FUD, no matter which side it's coming from.
"Not to go crazy on this one, but what is the big deal is requiring your calendar and address book be tied to your email client. I guess somewhere along the line everyone got mixed up and decided this is the way life should be."
It all runs through exchange server. Other people in your groop, for example, can see your calendar or ToDo list.
Also, it means only one app to sync your PocketPC with. It works pretty well, and yes, it's useful even if you don't have an Exhange server.
"It would be nice if Evolution had a win32 port."
That'd be nice. I have yet to find a suitable Outlook replacement (Note: NOT Outlook Express) with the features I mentioned above. Info appreciated.
"Derp de derp."
Microsoft now supplies free IT employees with their expensive OS?
No, but it is superficially easier to install and manage until you have some virus-related calamity.
I can understand thinking Windows is cheaper until you have some virus infestation or general system corruption, but after that it's unconscionable.
You must not have ever used the Outlook web component. It is almost as full featured as Outlook.
From the user viewpoint, at the most basic level, i.e. the level at which most clerical users use applications, there's not a lot of difference between Word, OO-Writer or Textmaker or WordPerfect... minor menu differences, usually in functions the average user has never heard of. I've been using office productivity software since the 1980s and never had occasion to use mail merge.
Changing from whatever to OpenOffice Writer (which IMHO, sucks) should be no worse then upgrading from Word 97 to Word 2000. Do businesses require an extensive training program for this?
The main question here is where the average document the user interacts with is going. If it's going to someone within the organization, it doesn't matter as long as everyone uses the same thing.
If it's going outside, then compatibility matters, and the "minor issues" quoted by most writers on the subject are MOT minor when the Word-using external customer is annoyed by them.
There are places where it matters in-house. Accountants used to using Excel should continue to use it... either on a Mac or on a Linux/Win4Lin combined platform as I do.
IMHO, the great majority of organizations can save money by going to a rollout of a thin-client desktop with office suite... but they have to have a clear idea of who within the organization should NOT be using it and should be using a standalone workstation running Mac or Windows/Win4Lin/Linux. I recommend the combination because in my experience, it's stabler than Windows running by itself and will permit in this case, organization-standard Linux apps to run within the box as well.
Another example of people who SHOULD NOT BE GIVEN A LINUX BOX are the graphics people. GIMP2 which is not a substitute for Photoshop and Corel Draw. (GIMP doesn't do vector draw... and can not be made to do so, there is no workaround)
The other consideration is hardware. Are all the boxes the same, which allows a single image to be rolled out to all machines? This will allow the question "will Linux distro [insert name here] run on this box" to be asked and answered once.
Using Desktop Linux where it makes sense saves money. Using it where it doesn't make sense will cost money.
Intelligent planning is the most important part of a Linux Desktop rollout.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Small businesses are run by people directly responsible for the revenue and expenses.
Huge companies are run by people only interested in their stock's value and who don't give a damn what the "techies" do, so they let Linux in.
Mid-size companies are run by people who aren't responsible for anything but their incompetence but don't want anyone rocking the boat.
Their problem is that as Linux takes over small business and huge business, they're going to have to deal with it anyway because those other businesses are who they have to do business with.
Otherwise, the study is just more propaganda - "Look! No one's using Linux! You better not!"
Bullshit. That attitude is WHY you're a mid-level business and not a big business - you're not willing to push forward hard enough.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
What a bunch of heartless bastards.
Fristy Psot is free, but the support for it is not.
Not to go crazy on this one, but what is the big deal is requiring your calendar and address book be tied to your email client. I guess somewhere along the line everyone got mixed up and decided this is the way life should be.
It started because there was no good free calendar software. But now it is exactly that, people think that they need to be together (as they think they can only use one kind of messager) and it is very hard to them to change their mind.
Rethinking email
Linux is dying.
I personally am a systems administrator at a small computer security consulting firm, and I recently built a Jabber and OpenXchange server. Both were time consuming and did not always compile and install like you would hope. I'm still kind of a n3wb linux sys admin, I've only been doing it for about 3 1/2 years, and I don't know how to code or script, therefore some of the erros I receive are very cryptic when installing open source software. I probably put 20 hours in getting the OpenXchange server up and running, and for the price, (what I cost per hour compared to the cost of M$ 3xchange) we could have bought M$ 3xchange and been done with it. Pop in the CD, run the install and tah dah! Two hours later, we are up and running. Plus, I have to be a jack of all trades in a small company like ours, we only have about 30 employees and I'm a one man IT shop. I would have to say that overall cost is probably cheaper when you compare M$ solutions to open source solutions.
You must not have ever used the Outlook web component. It is almost as full featured as Outlook.
No, I haven't. But now that I look it up, this seems to essentially put Outlook server-side, and detaches it from the client interface. (Which is good.) This would also make it easier to substitute other webmail software, should one become dissatisfied with the Outlook backend.
I could not agree with you more. Outlook is the biggest POS I have ever used.
I think people like it because they have never used anything else or it comes with office. I can't imagine anybody actually prefering it to the competition.
evil is as evil does
Roughly 50% are interested in it, but he says Linux isn't even on the radar and basically has no place in the market?
Did G.W. Bush write this?
Let me guess, you are a slightly advanced PHB :) Sorry.
As near as I can tell, it is the tool of an overgrown middle management. Any lower and you can find the person directly. Any higher, and well, they probably still have their own assistant. Not to mention, I have seen many cases where calenders where not remotely accurate-and do you really trust a piece of software to automatically schedule a meeting and the people to show up without further contact? If so, that is truly impressive (or a sign that they don't have anything useful to do), otherwise it is not nearly as useful as people think it is.
Look, meetings ARE needed and CAN be useful. But I strongly suspect the easier they are to call, the less useful they are.
I only see a few situations where such features are truly useful. Otherwise they are used because they exist.
What's changed? Well, current Linux distros are cleaner, simpler, and better documented. And TCO of Windows went up and up as their feature bloat, poor docs, and total mismanagement of security issues got out of control.
But back when I sailed my Yggdrasil CD into the trash, my first thought was not to simply go back to Windows and stay there. The obvious alternative was Solaris x86. Sure, there was a license fee. But there was also decent documentation and a support organization.
Then I discovered that Sun had little interest in seriously supporting, or even selling, Solaris x86. To them, it was just a migration path for people who had outgrown their Wintel boxes, and needed to be shephered into "real" computers: Solaris/SPARC workstations and servers.
I've long thought that Sun missed a big opportunity by refusing to consider Solaris x86 a serious product in its own right. Which they did eventually -- but only after Linux had taken over a market they could have dominated.
You have to buy a separate license for every god damn user for TS and for all custom apps they use.
My poit was that I can see Linux can be complex to deploy first time, but _managing_ it is a breeze. To get something similar you'd have to use Altiris on windows. And it's pretty spendy.
Tight isn't required, but I'd love to see Apple release a more powerful version of Mail/iCal/AddressBook (maybe as part of iWork?). I hate Entourage, but the interface concept makes sense after a while if you use your calendar for everything. Contact management takes this to an even further level and it's used all the time in business (ie: when was the last time I called/emailed Bob? Do I need to followup?)
First, I always leave mail running. iCal sometimes runs (reminders tell me what to do), AB doesn't unless I need to change something. Which means I need to launch the appropriate app first. Second, I can't transfer information that easily. I want to take an incoming email request and turn it into a To-Do item easily. I can applescript, but again, that requires launching iCal.
Apple's design is to not integrate things (back in OS 8.x/9, the web was just another application), but it can make sense sometimes. As long as it's an option, I don't see much of a problem. I'd love to see Apple's interface on a contact manager type app.
I use Macs to up my productivity, so up yours Microsoft!
Yea Yea Yea i have heard this so many times now it is becoming very boring .
..
..
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It is also noted that not long after this sort of comment has been published there is always a dramitic change of mindset and the people that were slating Linux off on day are then singing it's praise the next day
The WindBloZe world needs to get it's ass sorted and shut the F*** Up
Pete
To each their own... apt & synaptic have me sold on Debian based distros. The variants like Ubuntu are great as well... and I have used them.. and pretty much all the others.. Slackware, Mandrake(iva), Suse, the old Redhat ... pretty much you name it, Ive tried it (as long as you don't name Fedora which I haven't tried)
and I am where I'm at .. (Debian Sarge) because it's the best experience I've had.
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
Take a look at Scalix - in our testing so far it seems to integrate with Outlook.
sPh
Small businesses are adopting Linux, and really big businesses are adopting Linux too. Both sides are starting to do it deeply.
I would bet that most of these midsize businesses are running Linux *somewhere* such as public web servers, firewalls, etc.
But a deep migration of line of business apps is a very serious challenge to all customers. The midsize businesses are too big to start from scratch and too small to have the resources to make the really big changes necessary.
So,of course at the moment, this is the last thing on thier minds. However, as time goes on, those who have build their businesses on Free architecture will find that they have a competitive advantages, and they will move ahead. Those who are chained today will sink tomorrow.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
how do i get my kb to work on linux. i'm using teh gnetoo, thx.
Quote: "Linux is free, but the support for it is not."
Microsoft is offering free tech support now? How did I miss THAT?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I work at a company that produces an autonomic distribution of Linux designed solely for small and medium enterprises. Obviously SOME medium enterprises are considering Linux.
Solution: A charity-run Linux and free/open source software (F/OSS) support program that takes donations and provides free support for any business that wants it. If there aren't enough donations to make the support free, then support could be provided for a very low price, undercutting proprietary solutions.
Who would contribute to such a charity? Money-making organizations that make or use F/OSS and want to see it spread could provide the bulk of such funding, as it would enhance the use of that software, and benefit them. If support for all F/OSS came from one centralized organization that had it all dialed in, issues that crop up in many places could be fixed once and forgotten. There will be almost no further reason to use proprietary crap.
I'm guessing you've never used Outlook. Meeting notices work fine. It's a heck of a lot easier to add a meeting to my calendar by clicking one button in the meeting notice than by copying and pasting meeting details from an email app to a separate calendar app.
I'm sure there are other ways to achieve this now, but Outlook has been doing it for at least 5 years. Probably longer, I don't remember when my company rolled out Outlook.
Only 27 percent of respondents currently have Linux installed.
Okay, 73% left without Linux.
Almost half of respondents said they had "no interest" in Linux.
We're good here (so far). 27% with Linux, ~50% with no interest, and 23% undecided or with interest in Linux.
Of the companies where Linux is not already installed, 48 percent have no interest and an additional 15 percent are not sure.
Hold the presses. That means 48% x 73% ~= 36% of the total respondents have no interest (not 50% like above) and 15% x 73% ~= 12% of the total are undecided.
Something doesn't add up. The last statement leaves at least half of the total respondents with interest in Linux or having already deployed it, in direct opposition to the second statement and to his "conclusion". Complete FUD.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
It's pritty well known that I am a Linux expert around here.
... Especally people who don't.
I keep telling people "I don't know Windows talk to Jiexi" (Jiexi is the tech kid and resedent Windows expert).
Yet every so often people come to ME for technical problems with the Windows boxes.
As a result I've been forced to learn more about Windows than rest of the staff would need to learn of Unix if we were to switch to Unix.
But EVERYONE knows Windows
I don't actually exist.
Sure you can download free versons, but those come with no support, no updates of any kind, at it will be atleast a year behind the computer times.
Debian and Gentoo both are:
With respect to the support issue. I cannot think of a time when you could ever get free support --- other than local interest groups like Linux linux users groups. So, I dont see how you can say that Linux isn't free anymore, and list this as a reason because the support mechanisms that were in place when you considered Linux free before are still in place today.
Now if you want to pay for support, it's easy to find unix sysadmins who can support most common Linux distros. If you are looking for one, email me and I can forward your request to some friends of mine who... get this: are paid to support linux.
You were modded as a troll because what you said was inflammatory and incorrect.
-- john
I work for a fortune 500 company (utility). They WASTE so much money on proprietarty software because the IT people don't get any say so. One person decides what platforms to use and I've listened in when he was making fun of open source software. That one guy is costing the company MILLIONS of dollars. They also have 2 ERP systems that do the exact same thing. Why? Some other group decided that the new ERP system had a feature that they couldn't live without. Guess what? Hardly anybody uses that feature and they have a team of 20+ people to support it. Can you say WASTE?
I used to work for a Lotus notes shop and absolutely this was the best to get a meeting where people showed up. It went even further.
The room and any additional AV equipment was automatically tied to the meeting which was tied to the people. If the meeting was cancelled the room was freed up.
The people were automatically contacted and once they hit the agree button any else who tried to schedule a meeting with this person at the same time would know about the conflict automatically.
The people themselves could just look at their calandar. They also got a reminder 10 minutes before the meeting sent to their desktop.
In my company ALL corporate IT software is Microsoft (even though the account I'm on is supporting UNIX/LINUX thank GOD!). The fact of the matter is, a major reason why people choose MS is the same reason people choose CISCO. Even if there is a catastrophic failure....viruses blast all the PC's, constant crashes. People DONT get fired because they chose Microsoft. They can pan the excuse..."Well...it's windows what do you expect?". Management shrugs it off because to admit that they made an error choosing ONE vendor for their entire IT infrastructure makes them look bad. Choosing LINUX means that if it were to fail they would get panned for taking risk. From an individual manager's perspective there IS no personal career risk from choosing Microsoft. If it breaks...well everybody uses microsoft so it's not his fault (mentality)
Why? Because it keeps you employed. Crashes occur and because expectations are LOW to begin with using MS software there is almost NO risk. The more problems occur the more work you have and work is a GOOD thing.
I'm a mac user and I am constantly frustrated at how poorly AddressBook ties into Mail. I should be able to examine an address with a right click on an email. I should be able to edit address from the mail screen, etc...
Bloomberg data/news/analytics is the Street's core app, and it ONLY runs on Wintel or Solaris.
I've even tried running it on a Mac via Virtual PC. No dice.
Tech support for non-MSFT platforms is literally non-existent in finance. Vendors act like you have herpes if you even MENTION non-MSFT platforms.
I just spent months wrestling with this, and I had to submit to assimilation.
The can only mean that there's a huge potential market for those offering administrative or other support services. As the number of adopters continues to grow, the lower TCO might eventually be perceived as a competitive advantage, and thus, provide more incentive for people to look a Linux as an option.
I work for a mid to large size non-profit and we looked into using Linux for our server farm only to find that Red Hat (at that time, 2002) wasn't even interested in working with a company looking to roll out less than 50 servers. We run Novell and Windows now as a result. I have one server that made it into production as an SMTP / Mailman box. Sad but true. In order to get support we were going to have to work through a third party vendor which wanted an arm and a leg over the Windows / Novell support company.
AF-Design, web development.
In a mid to large cap company a good CIO should have started moving their critical business applications to a web-based interface at least two years ago. Provided that interface isn't layered with ActiveX components and mired in dll hell, then they'll have better footing for platform flexibility.
Until CIO's start losing their jobs because they're not keeping pace with current technology, then it's going to be a long road out of the wilderness.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
"Windows is expensive, and the support for it is even more expensive"
Not at all, in fact it's MUCH more userful for us underlings than for the upper ups. As you mentioned, they have assistants. I don't. I don't want to spend my time managing my meetings, I just click accept and then get notified before they occur.
I spend about 10 hours a week in meetings. If I want to get other stuff done, I don't want to spend another minute more than I have to worrying about them.
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
all the while Microsoft is spending millions advertising how bad Linux is.
What this means is the Microsoft sales staff are running into price checking and are having to give half of their commission away to keep their clients. All because of this free irrelevant non interesting non capable and obviously evil operating system and software stack.
The full weight of the Microsoft opinion control mechanism is being applied. This means one thing; Linux is hurting Microsoft.
Derek
Care to provide us with some figures regarding this assertion? I'd venture that small companies actually form the bulk of american business in terms of employment.
That's what I have been looking at for a while.
It's nice to have a snappy client too. The complete network dependance can sometimes pile up painful screams of sales personel.
So far, not having any one product to fill my needs, I've began integrating most things with a common authentication backend. (ie ldap)
One of the last pieces is email. (Thanks to all so far for their insightful comments)
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
You can tell that the media still lives in the clouds :) I am in charge with OS deployment at a mid-size company (fitting the $$$ profile described above, toward the high end, actually). I have been encouraging and approving deployment of Linux for years, but there is a huge difference between what I want the market to find out, and the competitive advantage I find by "hiding" the fact that I am not using high-cost Windows, Unix or Mac solutions, to the rest of the industry. I much rather prefer my competitors spend their money on highly-priced solutions, by "feeding" such data, myself, in public surveys, and encouraging the FUD surrounding Linux, then publicizing Linux utilization inside my company. This brings me two huge advantages:
- reduced cost per solution
- keeping geeks around, 'cause apparently nobody else needs their services
Are you kidding me? What's better - feed the media morons with proper info, or increase my profit sharing and bonuses?!? ;)
This type of survey is no different that the ones about salaries: who is the idiot who would trust those, when we are all interested in filling the surveys with the lowest possible end of the salary levels, so that our employees do not look "across the fence".
Media ... hmmm ... c'mon, Linux guys ... you gotta know better than that!
I really wish for shared calendaring to become standardised and commoditised soon.
Exactly! Where is the imap-postfix of the calendaring world?
Must discredit study.
Discredit author, backer, funder, anyone you can.
Looks like the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Not so...
You confuse integration of services with integration of applications.
In the situation you described... this was all the function of a calendaring application. Email notification being simply the avenue for alerts. I'm not sure even the contestants of the perl obfuscation contest could role those actions into 5 or 6 apps.
There are a marvel of architecture concerns that could be implemented to do everything you want it to do.
A calendaring program with simple tray functionality would solve all of that. Email notification as an auxilary component of the calendar server would still be an option, but not the rule.
All in all, I never heraled seperate data sources which is what you seem to infer. Data can be shared and managed centrally with no problem. In fact, my point was data should be central and client applications need to be fed what they need to know.
Everything you describe could easily exist as seperate applications manageable via multiple front ends or via one front end. The idea should be further stated "seperation with central data sources."
I believe it was confusing because you are not looking past email only functionality. There are many data sets which could be related to one particular object... most of which your address book doesn't give two bits about. (literally)
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
The reason most mediums sized businesses use Windows is that's where the apps it needs run. Wanna use ADP for payroll - Windows. Fixed asset applications for the accountants - Windows. UPS and FedEx shipping software - Windows (yes I know they have web interfaces, my company is a chemical manufacturer and you can't ship hazmat with the web stuff they offer). Our ERP system is only available on Windows, it's coded in Open Road. Is there Crystal Reports for Linux, Photoshop? ( the real thing, not a knock off).
The list is almost endless. Like Microsoft or not, they realize that the platform with the apps is the platform with the market share. Not everything can or should be web based. Linux is too fragmented for software vendors to target. Windows is a much easier OS to target your software at than Linux because of this. When Linux runs the apps medium sized businesses runs, it will get looked at. Until then, Linux should be happy if it gets to do a little web hosting for a medium sized biz.
Everything you describe could easily exist as seperate applications manageable via multiple front ends or via one front end. The idea should be further stated "seperation with central data sources."
In case you weren't aware, that's precisely how Exchange/Outlook works. Exchange is a central datastore, while Outlook is the "frontend" to it. If you wanted to, you could create seperarate applications to front end them, but why? Nobody wants 3 or 4 apps running all the time getting their way. In fact, having even one such application was annoying to me and was greatly relieved when Outlook 2003 offerend the ability to minimize to tray and get out of my alt-tab list.
But in any event, the email app has to have a facility to accept/deny the calendaring items, and there has to be a facility for updating the calendar automatically. Simple emails won't do this (or at least not elegantly).
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
Seriously, any business with hundreds to thousands of desktops does not allow users to install anything. If users need some software, they request it be installed for them. Do you really think these companies want to pay lots of sysadmins to wander around uninstalling comet cursors and such crap all day? Joe average user can go home and fuck up his own machine, when he is at work, he can stfu and do his damn job, that's what we let him use a computer for.
An OEM copy of XP Pro is around $70-80 (if bought from Dell, HP, or other big manufacturer). A TS license last I checked was $100 per connection or something like that. Plus you pay lotsa money for W2K3 and CALs (yeah, you need to buy CALs in addition to TS licenses).
"Quote: "Linux is free, but the support for it is not."" oh and Windows support is free? I serviced small business for a couple years in the late 90s and I wish Linux was then where it was today as I could have helped solve a lot of those companies problems. I saw a huge problem with "piracy" in those business' (these are "real" small biz, sole proprieter, partnership, etc...). Some of the biz's had proprietory software too where support for it would cost several thousand dollars a year so they usually opted to NOT have the support and instead hire me whenever they had an issue. 9/10 they were hardware related issues anyway so all their "software" support would be doing is telling them to plug and unplug things and so on thereby wasteing their time and paying big bucks for it.
They talked to "IT Managers", at my last job (a midsized company revenues of about 500m/yr) we had 20 servers in the racks, 10 were windows and 10 were linux, and we were migrating everything we could over to linux as quickly as possible, file servers, web servers, intranet, database, the only thing windows was still doing was print servering because our printers didn't have a reliable linux driver...
Anyway, my point is that the IT Manager didn't have a clue what we were running. He said "Make x happen with $y". Often times (we're talking 99-01 here) the $y was prohibitively small to achieve anything with windows... IE, smaller than a single license for windows 2k server. So being good admins and programmers we figured out ways to make x happen without spending any money (or spending very little). This actually was well rewarded in the form of bonuses and stuff (the company was good about taking care of their people). If they called my old IT Manager he said "we're using windows" cause that's whats on his desktop, and he doesn't know the difference between samba, php, apache and windows, asp, and iis. He doesn't see the difference cause we did our jobs right.
From my experience in dealing with my clients. Mid size companies can't make a switch to any significant level because they have one or many custom Windows based app on which these guys have spend atleast million and they don't have any intention to redo them just for Linux. Development on Linux is tougher then on Windows with all its visual trickery plus there are almost no devs available for jobs. Most companies would happily live with older versions of Windows as far as these custom stuff worked.
Lets forget about the large and small buisnesses who are also not using Linux. I think the problems that face all of them are similar, except in terms of scale. Maybe if we make Linux as full featured, fast, and compatable as Windows, but more stable and open source, then people will come around. As is, to switch to Linux, you have to A. Reformat your hard drive, B. Learn a whole new way of doing things, because installing programs in Linux is not easy, C. Give up hope of your hardware ever working right, because Linux drivers are not available for many major devices, and for many more, driver installation is incredibly complicated for someone who does not know Linux. I am the vice president of a very small IT company. I tried to switch my personal machine to Linux a few years ago. I am very computer literate, as that is what I make my living doing. I tried 4 linux distros, and was utterly confused by all of them. Some crashed constantly, while others did not support parts of my hardware. Many had a lot of trouble installing packages. Open source community. Stop fragmenting yourself. Make Linux as easy to use AND install things on as Windows.
Linux sucks ass, plain and simple. It is a dead-end technology, with no hope of ever excaping the imminent bubble-burst, much like the one that happened in 2000. With all the hype and ballyhoo, Linux stands to plumet like a rock any day now. And with superior technologies from Microsoft, Linux stands to be doomed to a memory in a few years. Personally, I can't wait. I've always thought FreeBSD and Windows were superior OSs, and Linux was always a steaming pile of some of the shittiest code ever spewed forth from slightly talented programmers with massive ego complexes. Here's to the extinction of linux!
The statement about support not being free is an important one. It shows concern for on-going cost containment. It should be easy to show how low-maintance Linux systems improve cost-containment. Also, one can show how training current employees can increase retention, improve morale, and lower TCO.
Here, again, we see a good example of where management's mind is. Many see that Linux can be a money-saver, and can be used in place of MS solutions in certain situations. It also shows that what management wants is calendar and address book solutions. Show how these can be provided on Linux and one can negate that argument. If this feature is not available (I do believe there is a solution out there), it sounds like a good product and a way to increase Linux adoption.Articles, even articles that bash Linux, can be used to see what things can be done to improve Linux and OSS adoption. They show misconceptions, desired functionality, and objections that need over-coming, sometimes just by sheading a little light and knowledge.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
I still use it though, because it is the simplest way to use our internal Exchange server with a Linux workstation. For me, it's better to use a crappy email solution on a good OS than the use a less-crappy (but still crappy because it is Outlook) email on the annoyingly locked-down Windows (a crappy OS) we get from the IT people. On balance it is less crap.
Heh, not only is Outlook/Exchange a server hog, it is a bandwidth hog. The location I am working is upgrading its T1 link largely because Outlook cannot handle network latencies. The source of the latency? Congestion caused by (among other things) Outlook's own traffic!
It must be too expensive, because they are afraid to give any hint of the price on their website. If it is 1/2 the price of exchange, its too expensive...
Wow, you hit the nail on the airhead. I've noticed this going on over at EWeek quite a while ago, that's why I mostly stopped reading them. Take a careful look at their point/counterpoint articles/editorials. They are written specifically to inflame the reader, incite a reaction, draw out a response, create controversy. Some of the single author articles over there are written with the same goals/style as well. This has been going on for some time with EWeek. Probably as far back as when the tech bubble burst and banner ad spending dropped like a rock.
EWeek business plan:
write inflammatory article
get posted on slashdot to make up for dismal traffic
profit
And good call on Coursey as well. He's been bashing/fudding Linux going back to when some readers used to actually read the dead tree magazines that his articles/editorials appeared in.
Recently I posted a reply to an article about the Linux CLI vs GUI, the gist being that ease of use was all that matters. I was lambasted by the true believers of the cult of UNIX, who assert that it is immoral to make a computer easy to use. Further they argued that anyone who balks at memorizing 150 CLI commands, each with subtly different option flags, is somehow mentally difficent. Well here's the proof of the pudding, clowns. Windows is winning over Linux because it is easier to use. Period. If you care, and you want Linux to ascend to pre-eminence, then DROP THE CLI. Furthermore, your GUI needs to go WELL BEYOND the MS GUI. The Linux user interface needs to STOP being a video game designed to trick the user into doing things wrong, and instead start using a rules-based AI engine to HELP the user figure out what THEY WANT do and do it correctly. I hereby establish prior art for any patent of this idea. It should be refered to as DWIM, the DO WHAT I MEANT user interface.
"Sic Semper Path of Least Resistance"
No, the price is reasonable. Especially because you don't need anywhere as near as many servers as you do with Exchange. But our testing is not complete so don't take my word for it - they have a free test version.
sPh
Problem is for midsize companies, they're big enough to have bureaucracy but not big enough to reap the rewards of defining their own standards. They'd rather pay Dell and MS their tax and support 1000 of basically the same machine than support 1000 different kinds of beige boxes with 10 different linux and windows versions. And there's some sense to that.
Larger companies would roll their own version of linux with custom apps, saving tons of money. But you have to be big enough to make the initial cost outlay pay you back.
so the midsize companies of today are not using Linux much, they were probably small 10 years ago when indeed it was cheaper to invest in Windows then buying stuff from SUN of IBM (aix) or HP (hpux) with support. :| ) which will allow them to add Linux yet again because as the article says, large companies have no problems with adding Linux to the mix.
the article also agrees that small companies are using linux a lot because it makes sense for them, so in maybe 10 years all of these small companies will be mid size and have a Linux infrastructure where it will be more expensive to add Windows and the tables get turned (perhaps this is what MS is already seeing, hence the open source attacks?)
Ofcourse some of those mid sized might have gotten large (or bought up
the future is looking good!
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
Isn't it this exact size of company that has had the highest percentage of layoffs due to operating costs going out of control?
Management at such companies are too far removed from day-to-day to know what is the best option, and yet their companies are too small or young to have made wise decisions based on experience. They are too paranoid, too vulnerable, and too short-view. They take the bulk offers from MS because they look cheap while really having high hidden cost. But "hidden cost" is the sort of thing that always seems to surprise companies of that size.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
You can have a thousand people who use terminal services, and only have 100 licenses. Its just that only 100 people can be connected at once. For software that everyone has to use, all day, every day, its not so great. But for those apps that people use for a half hour a day, its ideal. And keep in mind, you would already have to be shelling out for tons of stupid licenses if you were just doing a windows only network anyways.
One of the good things about being a Linux Guru is that, for me and mine, Linux support is free :) Boo-Ya!
There's no technical reason why you can't do this. It's just that they decided to do it the way they did. In GNUMail.app, there's an Address popup window launched from a toolbar button right on the main mailbox window.
"Nobody wants 3 or 4 apps running all the time getting their way"
That's, again, a "windows-ism". I *do* love having quite a lot of apps running all the time *since* they won't get in my way, but quite the opposite, they will be there waiting for my orders like a faithful majordomo. This is acomplished by the simply means of multiple workspaces any X (unix graphics environment) user know (and love) for more than ten years. Imagine you could have six monitors instead of one (without taking so much space and forcing you to move your neck and line of vision from here to there) then you'd *love* having outlook opened all the time, and a Word copy opened, and... (say the usual five or six apps you usally use).
My example:
desktop one: kontact (kind of your outlook)
desktop two: konqueror (web browser)
desktop three: free for whatever
desktop four: a command line console
desktop five: free
desktop six: karm (a time tracking tool)
The taskbar tells me I have two new mails and that there's not pending im connections. And everything just opens in background when I start my session in the morning without me having to start word, explorer, outlook and whatnot first time I want to use them every single day.
When I use the calendar tool I can choose using it integrated within Kontact (which I prefer) or running it as a single app; when a new meeting arrives, a pop-up rises so I can accept/deny/negotiate; of course free/bussy data sincros with the server so I can see other attendants' schedules. It has been working for months without a hitch, no virus, no hagouts, no reinstalls, no nothing.
"But in any event, the email app has to have a facility to accept/deny the calendaring items"
No, they don't *need* to do that. Within an organization, you don't *need* e-mails at all*1 (a pop-up telling who is the organizer who else is invited and your own calendar showing your free/busy info as well as others' -to the point they want to show to you, of course) is more than enough. Out your corporation, you don't really know what they can be using, so you will end up with iCal messages anyway.
*1 Usually the "technicalities" end up being e-mails from one place to the other, but you, as end user have no need to know about it).
"and there has to be a facility for updating the calendar automatically."
Yes, of course but, again, that facility has not to be a single monolithical server as Exchange offers (with its byproducts in the form of lock-in and higher costs), it is enough having a means to integrate all this info as needed (and this points up to open standards, another windows-ism being upfront rejecting standards since Microsoft is on an almost monopolist market situation).
"Simple emails won't do this (or at least not elegantly)"
You are somehow right and wrong and the same time. While I already told you don't *need* email at all within this equation, it is really a good means specially when contacting people from *out* your organization. And then, e-mail can really be the right tool. Again, my own example: when an iCal e-mail arrives to my mail client (Kmail, integrable too within Kontact) a filter is triggered which will automatically integrate its info within my calendar with the pop-up showing the info and the accept/reject/negotiate menu. Then that mail will be stored within an "invisible" folder so meetings are, from all I can see "magically" managed *even* when dealing with outside people (as long as they send me iCal info, which in my case is automagically handled by my calender tool too as soon as I mark the "send e-mail to attendant" option when I create a new meeting).
And I can sincro my agenda with my Palm PDA, and securely review my free/busy info and my mail from a web-enabled interface wherever I go.
And sysadmins are very comfortable with the environment too, since they feel (and they *are*) productive and don't feel themselves just figthing fires (currently we are re-studying our backup/restore procedures, since *now* we management/technical staff, do have the time).
Ooops, an alarm: I have a meeting in an hour with a client; I'll have to take the car, so good bye.
Using the same stats, one could claim that MS could lose as much as 10% of its mid-sized business customers over the next three years.
It's all in how the editors choose to spin the story.
"entirely on Linux is, as far as I know, cheaper in the long run"
Depends on if you have access to good admins who know of to squeeze efficiencies out of unix, how to tune, how to adapt and customize. Otherwise Linux is an unstable money pit. (The same can be said about any OS, and IMO, is Windows' achilles heel)
Second, the last time I got quotes, Redhat ES was more expensive than MS!? What's up with that.
The fact is that businesses care about the software stack, not the OS. OSS products run just fine on Windows, OSX, Solaris, and Linux. Get the one that right for you and your employee skillset.
As you already mentioned, your calendaring *IS* integrated in your email, that's why it works. You've done nothing to explain why they shouldn't be integrated.
Also, atl-tab isn't a windowsism, it also works in KDE and Gnome. Try it. I switch beteween apps with the keyboard, not the mouse, and I don't want more than the current set of apps i'm using available in that list. Most typical end users are confused by virtual desktops, so that's not a real solution. You need something that will not annoy the average user, and that means integration.
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"your calendaring *IS* integrated in your email"
No, it *isn't*. My calendaring is iCal based; I can recall it through the filesystem, I can get it by web and (the OS, not me) can *use* e-mail too. Even when e-mail is involved, it is invisible (from my point of view, which is the one that counts).
"Also, atl-tab isn't a windowsism, it also works in KDE and Gnome"
Yes. What I meant as a windoism is not using the keyboard but the way Windows makes people use the desktop: open an app use it and close it; open another, use it and close it, because it is really painful to have more than three or four open apps, both because it clutters your desktop and because how poor is the way Windows let you manage app windows (for instance, I have configured KDE so double-click in the window bar collapses it, focus follows mouse and rise the window after two seconds...). Having a lot of windows opened in any X-Window window/desktop manager doesn't make you sick the way it goes on Ms Windows. Even such a silly thing as my desktop remembering which apps I want opened and where upon login, is really a big advance.
"Most typical end users are confused by virtual desktops"
Most tipical users haven't been *exposed* to virtual desktops, that's very different. But once exposed they are no more confused than when they firstly where exposed to a Windows environment, and in my experience anyway they learn *fast* and you won't find any single person used to X-Window managers that doesn't painly miss virtual desktops, rising windows, etc. when forced to use Windows.
"You need something that will not annoy the average user"
I'm really tired about the "average user" topic. First, people is not idiot at all.
Second, most of you would be really surprised if you really *try* instead of assume what amuses or not your "Joe Average".
Third, those Joe Average *already* demonstrated this: they used DOS/Curses interfaces twuelve years ago; and they did use Win3.1 interfaces ten years ago. Despite of your thougths, the human race hasn't degrade so much in this period so they can't use KDE or Gnome even with minimal or null trining.
In fact, my 71-year-old mother does, and even manages to use an IM app (Kopete) to talk to her daughter 1000 miles afar, and I only spent less than 10 minutes explaining the thingie (and even discovered by herself there were a solitaire card game and learnt how to play with it).
Yes, yourr calendaring *IS* integrated in your email. You say you don't care how it works, but the fact of the matter is, it does work through email. Your email applications are aware of the special messages and provides the facility to accept or deny them, and copy that data into the calendar.
You grossly overestimate the ability of the average user to learn or care. Yes, there are average users that will figure things out, but this is, in my experience, a rarity (and I love it when I find one, it makes my job so much easier). Instead, as my typical experience bears out with end users, you have to explain the same things over and over to them. They say they understand, but they don't or they simply don't care and forget.
If you've ever watched a typical end user use something like MacOS, you notice that before long they have 10 or 15 programs running because they are confused about exiting a window and exiting an app. If the user can't see it, they forget about it. Out of sight, out of mind. Virtual desktops are just that kind of thing.
We're talking about people that can't figure out how to drag their taskbars from one side of the screen to another. We're talking about people that get confused by popups.
Your argument is typical for a power user. "Don't treat me like the least common denominator", but from a management and tech support point of view it's the opposite. You can take care of yourself, the average user can't.
And for the record. The vast majority of users weren't using computers back in the DOS days, and then the applications were much simpler, as were the user interfaces. It's the GUI that has largely allowed "average users" to use computers.
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You buy as many CALs as you have concurrent users, that's the point. See, when you have 1000 people who need to use a particular app, but only use it 15 minutes at a time a couple times a day, 100 concurrent users will be all you'll get, and so all the CALs you need. So if you are audited, they will say "OK, you're all good" and you won't end up paying anything or buying anything.