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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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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'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
I don't see much difference in this and contracting out physical security services. If Acme Security provides the nightwatchmen for you and also for your rival down the street, are you going to worry about them letting your rivals come in the back door and rummage through your place at night?
There is no conflict of interest in providing security for competing businesses. You have a contract with each business to protect their network infrastructure. You do not have a contract to help their business succeed or to assist them in any other way. You specifically don't have any interest in helping one company to accomplish illegal acts of corporate espionage. Your interest is to protect each network and there is no conflicting interest for you to take any other action. It isn't at all like the case of, say, a law firm representing two competing businesses. While there may be a small number of managers who won't grasp that, most business people are familiar with a company providing services to multiple organizations, including competitors. Do you think they worry about the power compnay cutting off their power in order to help a competitor? How about UPS letting the competitor look through their packages? The phone company letting them listen to phone calls?
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
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.
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.
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.
"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
And that's the problem! Here you are taking the jobs away from five or six Windows administrators that are now panhandling or something! Good God, man! You're single handedly destroying the entire IT economy as we sit here! Have you no shame?!?!!
That is all.
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.
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
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.
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 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.
"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.
- 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.
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.
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?
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?
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
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/
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.
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.
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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)
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.