Slashdot Mirror
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.""
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Having worked in MS Support (MS Word), I can tell you that you are 100% correct. Microsoft goes out of it's way to ignore ANY kind of input from users. THey even have a fake bug submitting system, which is directed to /dev/null at all times. They are de facto conning their own support agents.
All the bug fixes they put out are a result of corporate support packages (we're talking millions here). An ordinary Joe that calles MS tech support has ZERO influence.