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"Get the Facts" Campaign Working
brontus3927 writes "According to a Reseller Advocate Magazine write-up, Microsoft seems to be winning its war against Linux. Info-Tech Research Group recently ran a survey that is now being used on Microsoft's Get The Facts campaign. In it were some surprising results. 'After polling 1,400 IT managers and CIOs in SMB corporations, his group found that 48% were not interested in Linux, 15% were not sure about Linux, and only 10% plan to evaluate Linux." Despite this, two-thirds of all webservers run Linux. The disparity in these numbers comes from the fact that most smaller companies' websites are hosted by service providers running Linux servers even if the company itself isn't."
A lot of Apache webserver installations are used by hobbyists, not companies. You can't say the same for IIS.
Unfortunately Microsoft may be winning the war. And more scary in my opinion is Microsoft has shifted to more subtle means. What could be less intimidating than a web site dedicated to gently walking managers through the maze of technical issues ostensibly improving their (the managers) effectiveness?
For me, all I need to do to consider which platform costs less to manage is look back over the span of my career... I've managed Windows and Unix systems for over twenty years (which means I've managed Windows systems for "x" years -- you pick when you first think that might be -- I know it hasn't been twenty years). And when I weigh how much I invest to keep systems running, Unix (linux included) always wins, easily.
Of course, I found it unusual for management to ask me or any of my technical peers for recommendations, they typically get/got most of their advice gladhanding on the golf course, or from nice glossy brochures, and now, from slick benevolent web sites.
Microsoft is one of the best at PR, and their "Get the Facts" campaign may be one of their most impressive successes (oh that Microsoft would be so successful developing and creating safe and secure software). But, Microsoft knows perception is 90% of reality. What they say only has to feel true and assuage the fears of managers justifying manager's choices to stay with Microsoft. Unfortunately it has become a Nobody ever got fired for choosing Microsoft world (remember when it was IBM?), and with Microsoft's huge lead and head start in controlling the marketplace I don't see this changing any time soon.
What bugs me is when it bleeds into my area (I prefer doing my work in the Unix world...). For example, the time our team got a new member -- a new sysadmin who previously had been working and support Windows machines at our company. Our main server was a workhorse Sun Server and I had with reverence watched it chug away doing good work with an up time that had finally exceeded 550 days (not a huge record in the Unix world, but it was fun to see it go...). The Monday of week two of our new admin I was dismayed to see that our trusty Sun server now only had an uptime of less than two days. Sigh. Wasn't sure why, but reboots/crashes happen. Before I could do any more checking, "Bob" (not his real name) dropped by positively beaming and let me know he had noticed that luna (the server) had not been rebooted for a long time so over the weekend he had rebooted it for us! Universes collide! Sigh, again.
I'd love to see good technology prevail -- unfortunately today the combination of effective PR and FUD campaigns combined with Microsoft's products turns out to be good cough enough.
what are the percentages of IT managers and CIO who were not interested in Linux, were not sure about Linux, and planned to evaluate Linux before the Get the Facts campaign started?
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
That survey only shows what people are thinking of Linux now. Suppose that before the campaign, only 5% were thinking of using linux and 90% were dead-set against it? Then the campaign would be backfiring. Without any data points on what people thought before, or what a control group of people who haven't been exposed to the campaign think, we can't tell how effective or inneffective "Get the Facts" has been. -Drachasor
I don't think the article is surprising news at all...
At my job we are NOT considering Linux, and probably will not anytime in the foreseeable future.
We have 10+ years of infrastructure built on Windows. We have over a dozen servers all running Windows, talking to each other, running programs built for them.
We have 10+ years of expertise (well, 4 people with at least 6 year each)
Switching now would be insane.
It's not a choice of which one is 'better' (for one of any number of reasons) but which one works best for us.
No reason to lie.
If you do the equation above, you find that 37% of responses *AREN'T ACCOUNTED FOR*. Could it be that 37% of managers is using linux or PLANNING on using linux? Seems to be the logical conclusion to draw when 48% aren't planning on using linux, and 15% say they may evaluate it in the future.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
Those Apache servers are not all Linux. A lot of Apache servers are BSD or other *IX systems. A few are even Windows boxes. There's probably a MachTen box or two in the mix.
I think Linux is the cat's pajamas, the bee's knees; it does not need to steal credit from BSD and other projects in order to deserve praise.
Cool, so 52% is interested in Linux. Only 15% was unsure about Linux, the remaining 85% have already made their mind up about running Linux or not. Finally an amazing 10% of all SMB corporations is already planning to try out Linux.
I think that's pretty impressive.
How would you like to spin your statistics today?
Microsoft isn't really fighting war with a free product here, they are fighting a war against expensive IBM and Oracle products that are based on a free product. If you actually "Got the Facts" (read the reports), you'd see this.
I don't totally agree with the conclusions, but there's nothing really wrong with pointing out the price tag of WebSphere and Oracle.
There's a certain amount of FUD here on slashdot where MS is the expensive vendor and Linux users all run Debian & Postgres for free. The reality is that Linux is being positioned as a high-end Enterprise product and is priced accordingly. I don't see any movement from RedHat and Novell to sell Linux to Small/Medium Businesses.
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
have always mentioned Linux as an option
Don't sell them "Linux"
Sell the mom and pop company a "File Server" and a "Web Server" and an "Email Server"
Don't sell them a Gentoo box with Samba, Apache and Postfix. They'll say "WTF?!?!"
MS products generate so much revenue.
MS Products would generate a lot of revenue, but free software generates a lot more income for us.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
I disagree with the tone but not the sentiment. This is a minor set-back for Linux and OSS software in general. It indicates that Microsofts marketing is now effective and the solution is to stop complaining about Mircosofts skill in marketing and start countering it.
There is a need to redouble our evangelisation efforts, to concerntrate on pointing out the flaws in Microsoft paid for studies, to extole the vitues of our software, in particular how these virtues impact the bottom line of the CIO's we are trying to convince.
As OSS advocates we should primarily be concerned with writing good code, filling bug reports and generally producing high quality software. But those of us who engage in marketing need to learn to push the right buttons the same way Microsoft pushes the right buttons. The difference being is we don't have to mislead to market.
Many of us balked and laughed when the Microsoft FUD guns were trained on Linux TCO. This study indicates we (myself included) were wrong to laugh, and we need to appreciate that Microsoft has suceeded in changing perception with thier marketing. We should stop complaining about how good Microsoft marketing is, stop dismissing Microsoft marketing as 'just marketing', and fight back against it.
At my job we are NOT considering Linux, and probably will not anytime in the foreseeable future.
.... or anything.....
;)
It starts out small. You say to yourself - Why are we paying Microsoft $5000 just to serve files for 20 people? You dink around with a Linux/*BSD box and manage to barely get Samba working. It takes you a day, but after that it works! A year later, you notice that you haven't had to reboot it or 'fix' it, or virus scan it, service pack it, change the CAL licenceing
It starts out small.
But it is infectious.... after all it's 'viral' according to Balmer
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
"polling 1,400 IT managers and CIOs"
Polling who? Trying polling the people that actually do things. Those CIOs and managers probably don't even know what Linux and Windows are.
48% are not interested in Linux.
52% are somewhat interested in Linux.
15% are not sure about Linux.
Which leaves 37% who have deployed Linux or are testing Linux for deployment.
The company I work for sounds similar to your's. We have LOTS of server apps that will only run on Windows. Except we have more servers.
Possibly. But "now" isn't "tomorrow".
The key issue is whether you're talking about an EXISTING installation or a NEW installation.
Because you have an existing installation, your company has already spent the money to evaluate and deploy that system.
But, at some time in the future, there will be an upgrade. And you will have to spend more money on your system.
There are 3 items to consider when evaluating a system.
#1. Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) - how much does it cost to run this system day after day.
#2. Return on Investment (ROI) - How much revenue with this system allow us to generate?
#3. Migration cost - How much will it cost to deploy this system.
Now, even though Linux may have a far lower TCO and a far higher ROI, the migration cost can be too high to make a business case for it.
But when it is time to pay for the next upgrade, the migration costs need to be compared. So if it would cost $1 million to migrate today, but it would take the company 10 years to make that money back, no one would migrate.
But then you have to pay $500,000 for the next upgrade. Suddenly, the Linux system doesn't look so bad. Particularly if you're looking at ANOTHER upgrade within the next 5 years.
So you (being the pro-active guy you are) get in touch with the people working on the Linux systems. You have the time and they have the incentive. Can they cut the migration costs to $250,000 within the next 5 years (estimated time to your next upgrade)?
After all, it's just 0's and 1's.
If they can do that, then the next upgrade will cost MORE than the migration.
It's called a "migration plan". Only idiots or people with an agenda try to migrate ALL of their systems at once.
Start by learning Linux and seeing where it can be deployed, reasonably, in your existing network. We're running it for DNS/DHCP/backup/webpages/etc. I also have it protecting an old GroupWise system. I'm also trying to establish OpenLDAP as our standard directory service.
The longer you wait to start, the more proprietary infra-structure you'll have to migrate.
Your IT department needs a plan. Otherwise, you'll be driven by the vendors. And the vendors are only interested in getting more of your money into their pockets.
And "staying with Microsoft" is not a plan.
Not when the skillset is itself ignorance. That works equally well on them all.
Sure, NT 3.5, 4.0, 2000, XP, 2003 are all different, and so the skills needed to administer and use each is slightly different. Which means that your statement of `exact same skill set' is technically accurate, though extremely misleading.
In reality, people install NT 3.5, then upgraded to NT 4.0, and updated their skill sets somewhat to add any needed NT 4.0 knowledge. Then Windows 2000 comes out, they upgrade, and upgrade their skill sets. The incremental knowledge upgrades are relatively minor. And while somebody who knew everything there was to know about NT 3.5 would be somewhat lost with Windows 2003, he'd pick it up quickly enough. (And while I'm mostly a *nix guy, I know enough about Windows here to know what I'm talking about, even going back to NT 3.5 and even earlier.)
The same is true with Linux, or any other OS. If somebody who was familiar with Redhat 1.0 suddenly was confronted with Fedora Core 3, they'd be lost ... for a little while. Then they'd be OK as things started falling into place. (And remember, NT 3.5 came out slightly before Redhat 1.0 (both in 1994.))
And you expected it to work?
I now systematically install Firefox as the default browser on all machines, but I first used it myself for several months (started with v. 0.7 I think, called Phoenix), and only recommended it to computer-savvy friends. Then I set it up for a few users (it was at version 0.9 by then), and waited a couple more months. Then I asked for their feedback, before deploying it to normal users. (The feedback was positive).
And that's for a simple web browser.
I understand why your employee isn't at that company anymore, but I don't understand why you didn't leave with him
Most of the statistics are pulled from Netcraft surveys, so unless "the gods chosen few" who run BSD lie in their server string, Linux has a huge numerical advantage.
What mom and pop want is Quickbooks. Try and sell them on GNUCash, and they'll respond "That's nice, where's Quickbooks"? And they'll have a reason for that question, believe me.
Mom and pop pay some nice people $20 a month for their business's webserver and email, and they're more than willing to eat that cost if it means someone else looks after the computer (which includes the hardware and the net connectivity as well).
Linux is a fine desktop, and does great on the server. Web surfing, check, email, check, web serving check, databases, check. It does lousy on the mid-end. Appointments? Billing? Bookkeeping? Where do you start? Freshmeat?
I am no longer wasting my time with slashdot