Linux Growth In The Workplace Slowing

BrainSurgeon writes "According to a Business Week article Linux growth numbers have slowed for the first time since SG Cowen & Co. began tracking it on their survey. The biggest reason for the slow down according is due to the hidden cost of consultants." From the article: "That doesn't mean overall Linux use is slowing. The survey only shows that a smaller number of companies not using Linux plan to try the software than in previous surveys. Most analysts expect Linux use to grow at the companies that have already rolled it out -- and do so at a healthy rate. And analysts say Linux is picking up steam outside North America, which the Cowen survey doesn't cover."

Comments

I am not surprised

[Skiron]

BACK TO MICROSOFT. Take Independence Air, a low-cost Washington (D.C.) carrier that had been running the reservation system on its Web site with Linux. The company, which uses Microsoft's Windows operating systems in most other pieces of its business, needed to hire consultants who could write code for Linux, since its Windows developers couldn't.

What can 'Windows developers' do? Use a mouse?

And if this statement is to do with the code running on a web server (Apache, I presume), then even more so I feel they hired the wrong 'developers' to begin with.

Just more FUD - move along.

Multiplatform Deployments

[maynard]

Take Independence Air, a low-cost Washington (D.C.) carrier that had been running the reservation system on its Web site with Linux. The company, which uses Microsoft's Windows operating systems in most other pieces of its business, needed to hire consultants who could write code for Linux, since its Windows developers couldn't.

"That cost was killing me," says Stephen Shaffer, Independence's director of software systems. After eight months, he replaced the system with Windows and a batch of other Microsoft applications, which he believes will cut his costs by 70% a year.

Naturally, Microsoft sees the Cowen survey as proof that Linux is finding resistance. "This data completely validates what I've seen," says Martin Taylor, Microsoft's general manager for platform strategy. Not only is Linux maxing out on Unix users but it's not finding new customers among stalwart Windows users, he says.

These statements are skewed to show that Independence Air's Linux deployment cost too much in consultant fees, and therefore Linux is "expensive" to deploy in comparison to Windows. But they really say no such thing. Independence Air's problem was not its Linux deployment, but the fact that it chose to deploy a small part of their infrastructure without in house knowledge. They already had hired a Windows skill base, and therefore the comparison in utility between their Windows skillset for the entire Windows deployment against a small Linux deployment was bound to come out poorly for Linux. One sees savings with Linux in scale, not individually. Deploy hundreds of hosts and you'll save huge. Deploy a few hosts to drive a small piece of corporate infrastructure and not only will the savings be marginal, but you may have to hire external help to support the deployment.

So. Don't deploy Linux for small tasks if you're already heavily invested in an alternate technology. Duh. But to claim poor savings across the board as a result of this anecdote is simply stupid. With in house Linux (or UNIX) personnel and a large deployment - of course you'll save big. Which is why the UNIX houses have dumped commercial UNIX desktops for Linux. And why so many have dumped all their small UNIX servers for Linux (and BSD) on Intel. Because it's cheap. Very cheap (and cost effective). --M

You are probably right.

[jd]

HTML doesn't vary between servers. (Duh!) Neither does PHP. Cold Fusion could be a problem - but Cold Fusion is always a problem. :)

Java servlets? Java is Java is Java. Perl is, well, Perl. :) Python is most definitely Python.

What does that leave? Well, ASP. asp2php and other conversion tools help, but that would need new skills. MySQL and PostgreSQL are different from Access and SQL Server, but the GUI managers out there are plenty good.

There's the business of configuring Apache, but there are GUI tools for that, too. In fact, between the excellent stand-along GUI tools you can get off Freshmeat, that come with Fedora, or are provided with Webmin, I can't think of much you can't do with Linux in a purely graphical context.

This means that when people complain that Linux isn't "friendly enough", what they really mean is that they're determined not to like it, that when they complain they can't use it, what they really mean is that they don't want to.

There's nothing wrong with choosing not to like something, but it is better to be honest about the fact that it often IS a choice and not something intrinsic about the target.