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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
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
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
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
- 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
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?
What complexity? In alot of cases it is WAY easier to run certain apps on a citrix server, even if its windows software and windows desktops, and this has been the case for years. The time savings of having desktops act as dumb clients that boot off the network and run all their apps remotely from servers is immense. Its so much easier to manage a medium to large sized network this way, and managing software upgrades is a breeze.
And your savings comes from the time spent, you need WAY fewer admins to manage such a network. Also, you gain additional savings from the fact that you gain control of your infrastructure. You no longer have to upgrade hundreds of desktops when microsoft tells you to, often having to upgrade hardware too just to support the latest version of windows that provides no benefit.
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.
There is no way in hell *anyone* can trust WINE to run such a business-critical application. A failure of a database that runs the factory or the warehouse can easily cost $100,000 per hour. Cost of Windows OS is not even a factor here.