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Unilever Ditches Global IT Linux Migration
GP writes "One to stir the open source debate. The CIO of global consumer goods giant Unilever says in this interview with silicon.com that the company has ditched plans to migrate its enterprise IT platform to Linux running on Itanium. He reckons hidden support costs and security issues have emerged over the past two years with open source and that proprietary vendors have also raised their game in response to the 'threat'."
Hmm, not to troll or whatever, but why do we care what OS does some company use? It's not like I ever work for the company, the most that change is going to affect me is the 404 page will say IIS instead of Apache. And it doesn't mean that one OS is better than the other, just that that company decided to use one. I'm not a company, I'll go with whatever suits me.
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
Well, the problem must be Linux.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
He reckons
Well gee, I sure hope he did more research than that!
WASTE - The Secure P2P
... and mangles a big victim under its wheels.
I work in a *very* big company (can't say right now, in the office... but we're possibly the biggest on Earth by at least one metric) and recently the focus is on LAMP for servers, intranets and databases.
Linux
Apache
MySQL
PHP
I'm not in IT, so I don't see the scope, but I think this is global for us.
"Raised their game" = "massive discounts", the standard MS tactic in this situation.
I am not your blowing wind, I am the lightning.
It pains me greatly to see such a respected multi-national organization to shy away from a large-scale Linux deployment.
My guess, is that won't bring unwanted attention to their IT iniatives and its strategic partners were probably not well-versed in Linux support and enhancements.
But I'm certain that other conglomerates will continue to see Linux as a true reliable OS.
Which is nice.
"support costs and security issues"
And what of the costs of lock-in, and giving up freedom?
I'm not a big company but I often choose slightly 'worse' free/open source software in comparison to closed source simply because I value and put a premium on freedom.
You've got to weigh the pros and cons and be pragmatic - but I'd lean towards the free(dom) choice since it seems freedom is often undervalued.
The snippets of text in the article imply that Linux was the part that no longer makes sense, but I suspect that switching to Itanium was also part of the reason they stopped. I can't believe that attaching massive Itanium use to any major infrastructure would increase its cost competitiveness. Sure, you could argue that Itanium in a few niche areas gave better bang for the buck than x86, but for the global IT infracstructure of a company? It can't be a good idea.
"Unilever CIO Neil Cameron, said the cost benefits of migrating en masse to an open source platform are no longer as clear cut as they were two years ago because of security and support issues."
Sounds more like he got his ass handed to him by an enterprise architecture team after attempting to push through a bad idea based on a flawed financial model.
-- lk t lv ll th vwls t f wrds. T svs lts f tm t wrt bt ts pn n th ss t rd nd mks m lk lk cmplt dpsht.
Its obvious that in this case, the state of the Linux market has changed dramatically in 2 years. Alongside its increasing acceptance within corporations, Linux has been getting a lot more attention, bringing to light increased security risks (due to market share) and legal/patent issues that may have been previously unconsidered (SCO lawsuit, risks from Software Patenting). What's interesting to see is that Linux is now fighting on a level playing field along with the other contenders (like Microsoft and Unix companies), something that waas far less the case 2 years ago...
Business Voyeur
A few years ago, there's a need for a fair to middling department store chain to develop and deploy an epherimal business monitoring system. The current in place at six test stores is doing well and promises to provide detailed and instaneous headcount monitoring data to the central office which, when fully deployed and combined with sale pricing, inventory and geographical demographic data, offers an unprecedented degree of feedback to the decision makers. Consequently, the decision was made to give the project the go ahead.
In a nutshell, the current system listens to the infrared people detectors that go "bong" when people walk into the store and "bong bong" when people walk out, and feeds the data over the token ring to the store computer. But this won't do for the rest of the stores because they're using wireless networks.
The general idea thus becomes to make these systems wireless and functional out-of-the-box so that a store clerk can take it out of the packaging and situate the device near a source of power and within listening range of the people detectors. And since there was a great deal of buzz about achieving a lower TCO with Linux the company's "Linux on new installations" initiative meant they wanted to switch from Windows (used on the prototype machines) to Linux on the new devices to avoid per-site charges and network worms.
That's when things start going downhill -- not from an inherent flaw in Linux mind you, but from the fact that the original app was compiled Delphi and the compiler was in Norway with Jacques, the former IT developer, who returned to his family to work on their penguin conservation efforts (I imagine a matter of keeping the penguins fed and the polar bears fed with something else.) The current guy, a Linux enthusiast familiar with Wine, figures that instead of trying to rewrite the application from scratch it'd be quicker to wrap the Windows binary in a layer of emulation and wrap all that with a layer of Perl to interpret and route the results over the wireless network.
But the damnedest thing always seems to occur in these situations; it never takes as much time to rewrite as it does to kludge. Everything looks right after a week or so, functionwise -- these were embedded systems and therefore difficult to debug, but the development was done at a workstation that had a .wav recording of the "bong" sound that could be played into the
unit for testing. The system listens, transmits a byte over the wireless
when it gets a hit, and the central computer tabulates the data. No worries.
Except that nobody seems to be leaving the store. 0 counts for exits, average stay is 16 hours (from open to close.)
To say the guy was frantic at this point is an understatement. There were five days to go until the devices needed to be shipped to meet the deadline, and they're only half functional. To add to the problem there is now no time to rewrite, he's no good with a disassembler, and the embedded environment thwarts his further attempts at debugging.
Nevertheless he keeps at it. GCC/GLib are at stable versions, libraries are properly loaded as are the drivers -- indeed, the device isn't crashing and is able to speak with the network. He checked LKML, he stopped by #linux on EFnet, downgraded and upgraded the kernel all to no avail. His last resort was fervered e-mails to Jacques to see if he knew anything about the situation.
Fortunately, at the last minute Jacques was able to let him know what the problem was and that, in hindsight, it was both trivial and obvious, and everything ended up working out. But he swears that next time he'll start with a rewrite and leave the fancy stuff as a last option.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
It is likely that they ran the numbers for the cost of migrating all their custom apps and systems to linux (from unix) and said to their Unix vendor: "We can ditch you and and save $XXXXXXXXXXX. Either you drop your price our we walk." Their linux "migration" plan was probably nothing more than project proposal that they could have moved forward on if they had too.
That is not to say they weren't serious, but if you rtfa it sounds like they staid with their current non-ms platform for their SAP stuff.
Just my fitty cents.
They bit off too much and are now throwing the baby out with the bathwater? What a cliche! :P
Anyway, they should've switch over to Linux one location at a time and then try to tie everything together at the corporate level. If you try to impose a top-down corporate-wide solution, it might cause more problems than it solves.
So they were dead sure (for a while) that the right course was freakin' Linux on Itanium, and then they realized that of all the possible downsides of that combination, the straw that broke the camel's back was Linux!? WTF?
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
You choose to create your reality around your preconcieved beliefs.
well done!
I've never understood the anonymous coward thing
From TFA: ...announced plans back in 2003 to cut £66m from its IT budget by switching from a Unix server platform to Linux running on Itanium.
I don't want to come across as a troll or tinfoil hat wearer, but I sure hope their "Unix server platform" isn't some strain of SCO unix.
-Scott
My other sig is a Glock
The point is not whether they use an Open Source operating system for its own sake. Comparitively speaking, Linux security is much, much better than Microsoft, even with all of their ongoing patches. The more people use Linux/FreeBSD/OS X/DOS, the more secure the internet will be and the less the rest of us will have to deal with our data that is stored on their machines being compromised.
OK, so two years ago, Linux on Itanium (kinda leaves a bad taste in your mouth, dosen't it?) was cost-effective against other big-iron Unix implementations, and today that's no longer the case. Meaning that Sun/Solaris, IBM/AIX, or HP/HP-UX on their own platforms have decided they want the business and have come down enough in price (in a REALLY flat market) to be competitive today. Can't say I'm blown away by the news.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
You'd be surprised how many high level IT decisions are based more on who the CEO plays golf with than what would be best for the company...
Get your torrents...
Or it other words, this guy just doesn't know how to secure a Linux system, or support it with any tech know how. Moreover, he probably just doesn't want to know or care either.
It would probably just be easier for him to not do the extra work involved in a migration and just get his cookie cutter salary.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
andthe problem had nothing to do with linux or oss but a asshat programmer that did not leave his source code for the person that bought it.
and if the boss did not buy the sourcecode then the problem lies in the management's incompetence.
so your story is about a linux guy that bulled a miracle out of his ass in spide of all the obstacles and refusal to help that management gave him.
Seems like a typical day in IT.
Let's guess. Their current Unix platform is HP Unix on PA-RISC.
:p (yeah, yeah!)
They've been told that HP is 'lowering the emphasis' on Itanium. Basically, HP is putting Itanium on the back burner ('supplied as required') for the foreseeable future. However HP doesn't want anyone to know about this for the obvious reason. Therefore the cost of migrating from Itanium in a few years time is not something Unilever want to risk. They'll stay with PA-RISC, which is still earning 5x the amount as Itanium does for HP. If they stay with PA-RISC, they might as well keep their current setup.
Considering the cost of a decent Itanium server that just happens to be running Linux, I think you would find these pricing issues. Maybe they're going FreeBSD on Opteron!
Unless he thinks they owe SCO $695 for each install of Linux that is!
Some excerpts:
What are the main drivers pushing you towards open source?
Fundamentally, open source is about flexibility and ultimately about cost.
What applications are being taken across to open source?
At the moment the migration of applications [is] purely infrastructure, firewalls [and so on]. It's been at that low level and I think we're being appropriately cautious.
There are other ways today of moving from a legacy cost and performance structure into other available products.It's not quite step-changing but giving yourself a significant benefit that narrows the gap between that which has been available, and some of the open source opportunities. One can walk towards the edge without jumping over it.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Err... scratch that idea. They'd never notice.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
Would definitely view image again A+++++++++
Love your work, do you have a newsletter that I can subscribe to?
They have closet psychopaths and the abjectly clueless at the top. So for the sake of "consistency", they hand down edicts from above, never mind that the consequences of the decision in question. They don't care about the technical merits or demerits. They don't care about the actual long-term costs. They don't care about much more than the next quarter- they want to make their numbers "look good" for the quarter so they don't get in trouble.
I keep seeing it played out, time and time again. Mediocrity only knows itself. It doesn't understand and is intrinsically afraid of excellence.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
See that, right there ---> "...layer of Perl... "
that's your problem.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
How it is going to change the relationship between Unilever and OSDL0 03/2003_07_24_beaverton.html>
URL:http://www.osdl.org/newsroom/press_releases/2
RTFA moron..The platform they're going back to is UNIX.
Maybe it's time for the Big Playas like Red Hat and Novell to start playing this game?
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Old-fashioned influence peddling.
I'm thinking maybe three scenarios:
1. Lower license fees from existing vendors. Re: "If you don't give me a deal (and some extra incentives in my back pocket) I'm walking.." Possible, but too much change for such a large company.
2. Muckety-mucks have Microsoftie muckety-muck friends. Despite what the troops may want and may be able to justify, those muckety-mucks gotta keep each other employed in their over-paid jobs. (likely)
3. Old-fashioned thinking from very high-up the chain of command. They expect to pay sh*t loads of money because that's the way it's been done, so something that might cost less *can't* be trusted. Maybe the idea could have worked and the employees had it planned well, but it was likely too different from whatever they do now. (very likely)
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
CEOs of huge corporations usually make decisions like this based on the 20,000 foot view. They just see the large objects, not the details.
So, if he sees more articles in magazines talking about Linux being insecure (right or wrong) and at the same time he sees that software companies say they are "addressing the threat" he decides that Linux isn't good enough anymore.
Support. We are talking about any kind of software, hardware, configuration, etc.
For example, RedHat 7.3 released in 2002, I can't get Promise drivers for the FastTrak SX4100 (released recently) on it. At the same time, I can't get RedHat EL4 drivers for the SuperTrak SX6000 (released in 2002?). It is frustrating.
Another example is gtkglarea. It was pretty popular until it got 'deprecated' for whatever reason. Where is the backward compatibility? Now there's no upgrade path for software which uses it.
Also, anyone notice that there is a tendency not to have backwards compatibility for anything? At least have a wrapper ABI, migration tool, something.
I worked for Unilever IT until quite recently.
There was never a serious itent to migrate to Linux. It was invoked more as a threat in 2004 to get big suppliers like HP and MS to cut prices when dealing with Unilever.
I guess it worked, and now Unilever can drop the pretense.
"Please RTFA. They were migrating from a Unix platform to Linux. Microsoft is not involved."
But, but. Where are we going to get our Microsoft hit?
Seriously why should anyone be surprised that the commercial software market is reacting. Were you all that naive to belive that the rest of the world was just going to roll over and let Linux eat their lunch?
...oddly, they can't be fielding the absolute top-end Solaris (which would be the only thing that'd make "sense" from a Unix perspective- all the other Unices are mostly "dead" because of Linux being available...) which would be the only reason to field that as a component. Now, considering that all the other Solaris boxes are much more expensive than the Linux boxes- and that there's more than enough Linux boxes on the high end, I just don't see where this CIO's off talking about "security" issues and overall costs.
It doesn't make sense to say the least. Honestly, it doesn't.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I have some cynical views. Going back to MS is the easy option and this is the direction that a Unilever or PHB in any large corporate would take. Once some concessions have been made by Microsoft they must be getting a good deal, and moving to another platform is hard work.
It is a general trend that large corporates don't pay the best, they have the brands you want to work on, they have the global opportunities, and the working enviroment is good. So why pay well as well. At the entry level of employment they get all the best grads with starry eyed hopes of working for their dream company, because of the other aforementioned pros and the experience that one gains at a giant market leader. Unilever is exactly like this, they recruit the best people, the good ones get pissed off pretty quickly and move on, leaving the not so agressive and/or not so hard working behind to get promoted trough to senior management.
I was amazed when Unilever made it's inital move to Linux, the move back to MS is not surprising at all to me.
This leaves small to medium enterprise to perfect and gain advantages from Linux, and they will and get good growth from it. Don't worry about poor old Unilever they will buy one of these more advanced smaller players and get dragged up to date at some stage.
God bless capitalism!
Wrong. The article says that the CIO nixed the switch to Linux, but the article does not say that the CIO will return to UNIX.
LOL! But that's okay. I read the pitcures and look at the articles too.
And, sadly, as of Wed Aug 31 21:03:06 EDT 2005, this is marked as 0 and there is only a lame-ass perl whinge marked 2. yay, /.
That's probably exactly what happened. They announced the move and then were confronted with incentives to stay with their current vendors. This happens all the time in business. A lot of times you (the business) are not getting the bottom line unless you are prepared to move on to a new vendor. And chances are they did not even migrate very much at all, if any.
Quality Hosting e3 Servers
This saga is quite typical, and it does not depend on the operating system, compiler or anything else. It's just what happens when stuff is poorly designed and poorly written by insufficiently qualified personnel.
But if you are the last person using it, there won't be anyone else developing for your OS, now will there? It's not about people telling you how they like something you like, it's about improving things.
...seems to be a very bad idea in most cases IMHO--at least if it can be avoided. I should hope any CIO that would suggest that sort of thing would have his ass handed to him by his team.
Is it just me, or does it seem that most big, all-encomapssing IT projects are unmitigated disasters? It doesn't matter if it is Unix to Windows migration, Windows to Linux, VMS to whatever...or even the initial implementation of a big system like SAP--it is extremely difficult to pull off. Really, what "financial model" could possibly show that uprooting the entire IT infrastructure of a large corporation all at once would be favourable? Is there no risk analysis done? Hell, does common sense not even come into the picture?
There are only a few situations that I could see where a massive enterprise project like this would be justifiable--and in the case of large corporations I would say that such situations would be due to neglect and incompetence--for example they've got a bunch of elderly Win95 PCs, a VAX that you cannot get parts for anymore, etc. and if anything bad happens to any of it the results would be catastrophic. So even if a massive IT project is not a foolish idea, it was foolishness that led to the need.
The article says that Linux is still part of their plans--it is just going to be used more strategically and selectively. I don't really see where the big argument is here. I'd rather see a large number of smaller success stories than one huge successful Linux project if it means hearing about 4 more Linux-based disasters that Microsoft could use as ammunition (ignoring the fact that the failure rate of massive Windows-based projects would be at least as bad).
"hidden support costs"
Meaning nobody wants to support Itanium? What a surprise...
You'd be surprised how many high level IT decisions are based more on who the CEO plays golf with
:P
An idea: Teach your boss to play World of Warcraft and the trends will slowly shift to Linux / Open Source
"And what of the costs of lock-in, and giving up freedom?"
How about the fact that not everyone who uses commercial software is oppressed. It must give all you RMSers a warm rightious (slew the infidels) feeling to believe that everyone's living under jack-boot, goose-stepping, brown shirt-wearing, oppression, and the GPL is some kind of holy saviour, that if you only believe, you'll be saved from lock-in damnation.
You mean open source doesn't solve every software problem?
I found the "religion" comment particularly amusing. I wonder how many managers have been turned off of open source because they have some employee running around screaming about source code freedom and writing stuff in emails like M$.
He reckons hidden support costs and security issues have emerged over the past two years with open source
"Hidden support costs" struck me as a rather unusual thing to say. Then I read the article. It doesn't say anything about "hidden support costs". It says that support costs are one thing that is different from two years ago.
A PHB reading that summary would think that there are additional costs that a feasability study cannot spot. In actual fact, it just means that the market is different to what it was two years ago. There's no "hidden" about it.
We care because the more large scale installs of OSS there is only helps keep it alive.
Remember, OSS is being attacked from several directions, and every bit of 'support' helps ensure that in another 10 years you get to choose what OS you use, like you can today.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Different companies have different requirements so they'll come to different conclusions.
There's no need to evangalize over this. For them open source wasn't the right choice.
You use the right tool for the right job. Period.
Wow, talk about postus interruptus. You had us on the edge of our seats ready for the big climax then...
So what exactly fixed the problem?
For those of you who haven't dealt with CIOs--like I have at company after company--the overwhelming vast majority of them don't know anything about technology. Some of them have never seen a line of code in their lives. They're money guys and they listen to the bean counters.
What I'm saying is that this decision is no reflection of the merits (or lack thereof) of Linux.
Two "bongs" don't make a byte.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Seems to me the only problem with migrating is that they were going to migrate to Linux "on Itanium" - who on earth would migrate their entire infrastructure onto Itanium???
I'm a Linux fan and I still say good move - just don't give up there and check out other platforms like Opteron... or POWER
Anybody considering moving to Itanium really can't be taken seriously.
Anyway, it sounds to me like they were using Linux mainly as a bargaining chip with Microsoft.
"hidden support costs"
Meaning nobody wants to support Itanium?
I don't know about you, but anyone who picks Itanium as a desirable platform to migrate to, can't be very bright.
Also- who is Unilever?
Please help metamoderate.
I did RTFA, but if it tells what unix they are headed back too, I missed it.
Does anyone know what unix that they are headed back to???
OMG!!! I *actually* groaned when I read that! Brilliant!!!!
KangarooBox - We make IT simple!
Wrong. The article says that the CIO nixed the switch to Linux, but the article does not say that the CIO will return to UNIX.
They never left UNIX in the first place.
Suck it up, figure out why, and move on.
Its fans and contributors prefer hot air to action, which is somewhat ironic given the "hands on" ethos behind the operating system. Anyone criticises Linux or doesn't want to use it, they are a moron. And Linux continues on its user-unfriendly path into irrelevance because some guy in his mother's basement thinks he knows better than the head of IT of 800 million dollar company about corporate technology procurement.
Because that's what's going on. Big company threatens to jettison MS. MS steps in and offers a deep discount. Company goes out and tells all his friends. They all do the same thing. Pretty soon the corner drug dealer has to cut prices.
I hope that MS has to cut its prices 50% in the near future. BTW I am an MS stockholder.
Oh, man. That is so bad it's really good.
3 things about computers: they're alive, they're self-aware, and they hate your guts.
Having evaluated linux on many platforms and having moved a 6TB Data warehouse oracle app to RHEL3 on AMD, I can tell you we bailed on performance, configuration, and cost of itanium.
It is awful. Not to offset bribes to CEO's from Microsoft.
Mediocrity only knows itself. It doesn't understand and is intrinsically afraid of excellence.
Posts like this make me wish there was a button on the screen called "Add to list of Favorite Posts"
Thanks.
CIO Neil Cameron, said the cost benefits of migrating en masse to an open source platform are no longer as clear cut as they were two years ago because of security and support issues.
Who was he buying support from, slackware? As far as security, be real.
But he said the emergence of Linux as a cheaper and viable enterprise option has been good for competition because it forced proprietary vendors to raise their game.
Agreed.
It drives a bit of competition into the marketplace and stops suppliers being complacent. I think suppliers through open source have become more responsive. Suddenly I can do things with more proprietary products at a price performance that says actually the gap between that and open source isn't as wide as it was two years ago," he said.
Name one Gap instance. Microsoft has improved security, but with IE still running at the core, all bets are off. With Linux your company would have saved the SUN/IBM/Microsoft License fees.
This is not a good anti-Linux slashdot story. It's more of a Sun/IBM/Microsoft gave me a discount so I don't have to change my platform story.
Enjoy,
It's just the normal noises in here.
You do know they own Ben&Jerry, right?
It's going away. You heard it here, first. Remember that.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
The aim was to eventually migrate the company's massive SAP systems onto the Linux platform.
They probably spend more for SAP than they do on UNIX and all the overpriced hardware they run it on, and ERP downtime can be far more costly than whatever they spend on licensing. Their UNIX investment is a sunken cost, and you don't want to f*ck with the servers running your ERP. They did state their intent to use Linux in other places.
Why consider this? I don't know that much about the Itanium chip except that it was supposed to provide great FP performance (right?), and that it is (probably) a failure in the marketplace.
There are good reasons to stick with more standard hardware configurations.
The story sounds like a bit of a troll.
Linux is a pain in the ass, plain and simple. I used Debian for years before I said FORGET IT. Updates to packages would turn something off in what seemed a totally random way (i.e., networking) and without developer docs readily accessible, there was no recourse.
FreeBSD has it's own handbook, a calm development group, and an escape from "37337" developers without engineering standards.
The Death Penalty: Killing people to show others that killing people is wrong.
This is the CIO of Unilever, one of the world's largest mega-corporation conglomerates. This guy makes big decisions that make a difference to a lot of people. My guess is that this guy didn't get his job because he's an idiot. I'd listen to what this guy has to say over an academian, any day.
I don't respond to AC's.
Every time I've seen Open Source fail in the enterprise it's been because of personal issues.
;eave them high and dry.
You can't fire the entire IT staff and replace them with (half as many) new Open Source aware folks. It's just not possible. The people who are from the closed-source world don't understand the ramifications of open data structures and 'built-in-house' middleware, so they fight it because they don't know it and they see it as a threat.
I've seen it time and again, most recently at my current employer when I proposed a NAS based on Linux that would cost less than half of what we ended up buying (the difference, mind you, was more than I get paid annually). The manager in charge of purchasing it didn't 'trust' that 'this Linux thing' would stay free or that he'd be able to keep it running if I left for another job. I've even been asked to do all my work on the Active Directory cleanup with Excel instead of grep and sed because they're scared that I might leave with my 'toolkit' and
Open Source necessitates a trust of people's goodwill and happiness, while commercial software relies on vendors' goodwill and contractual obligations. If I could get the contractual part down, I'd be able to implement open-source AND make a bunch of loot, but until then, my employer trusts vendors and sales reps more than their own employees.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
Whoever made this decision doesn't appear to have sound reasoning skills to me. This is evidenced by their choice of Itanium over Opteron. Even two years ago it was a bad choice.
Management comes, management goes. As management changes projects can lose their sponsors and be axed for no other reason than that (politics and ego often have more to do with business decisions than reason).
From TFA though it sounds like someone attempting to be buzzword compliant. A sure recipe for failure...
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
"...we should just trust our president in every decision that he makes and we should just support that." B.Spears 2003
Linux is for the people! not the Corporatations! Tux will bite you capitalist pigs in the ass every time!
That is STILL running Fedora Core 1... yes folks, FC1... it is a network firewall and router. The guy who ran it, followed that concept of "hardening a router instead of wasting time endlessly patching".
He's had it up and running since 2000 and the only time he gets "downtime" is when the power goes out (once every 6 or 7 months) and the UPS doesn't last the duration of the blackout.
~Daedalus
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
"My guess is that this guy didn't get his job because he's an idiot."
You've never heard of the Dilbert or Peter principles?
Anyone who says they're going to migrate their entire anything from one platform to another is a moron. Nothing to do with Linux, Itanium. Exactly the same would apply to Windows, AIX, OS X.
Deleted
Oh... umm... I guess now I have.
And the funny part is that when I asked him "why not upgrade?" he asked me "are you nuts?!"
Seems he prefers to build a bastion host the right way, and leave it on, than to constantly patch systems so he can "have something to show".
Linux is constantly getting updated, but it is much like BSD... once you've built an application specific rig... perhaps the ONLY things needing updating are things that are broken... which on truly "secured" hosts, should not be broken. New updates can sometimes introduce holes that break a system... This is why many organizations do not blindly apply patches ESPECIALLY to their Microsoft systems. Microsoft's patches ROUTINELY break functionallity and security on older apps, regardless of the fact that half the world uses them... (*cough* Nmap *cough*)
Anyways, enough of the bitching. If a corporation wants to run something other than Linux, let them. Corporations run whatever they please. They are all the equivalent of psychotic axe wielding murderers for a neighbor... if you base your faith on corporations, you're downright fucked... Look around at what "corporatism" has brought us.
Because we are a corporately owned nation, we can buy, sell and genocide entire defenseless nations (*cough* Iraq *cough*) but we cannot easilly recover from a strike against us... is George Bush going to declare war on weather now? It is sad when one little natural weather event can trash "the worlds mightiest country". Would the Chinese be as crippled as we are? Probably not, because they don't depend on greedy corporations to dictate prices on vital resources... they just take them if they need them. Do you care if Unocal uses Linux and Exxon is a windows shop when they both slap you in the face with 4.25/gallon??
~D
PS - Making critical applications server centric nowadays is like putting 1/3'd of the nation's oil refineries in one VERY EASILY FLOODED valley 60 feet below sea level... in other words... A DISASTER WAITING TO HAPPEN... well... guess what... it happened. Everyone give a hand of applause to idiotic design in action. Perhaps now the morons in charge will notice what guys like me were saying... "don't build a house of straw in a windy valley and worry about the big bad wolf coming to huff and puff... worry about the wind, the valley and the straws". For those of you who are republicans (i.e. unthinking puppets, I will explain my quote: "do not be worrying about a terrorist attack, when the true enemy is the companies that have been fucking the nation with the help of the greedy pigs in the republican party... worry about the fact that our nation can be so easilly hit by a storm and everyone panicks. That is what worries me. If a nuke had gone off, everyone would be up in arms, and invading another helpless country... who're we gonna invade now?! God? Obviously there's a message here that we've been saying to our "leaders" for the last 5 years... **stay the fuck out of other people's business if you can't even run yours right** but rich republican right wingers don't listen... so let them watch nature at work.)
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
...where the penguins live! Didn't you know that? Jacques just needed an excuse to get away from the horribly failing project ;-)
But seriously, why didn't you just compile with FreePascal? A bit of porting might be needed, but that is probably easier than installing and configuring wine...
This is evidenced by their choice of Itanium over Opteron.
Large corporates don't base purchasing descisions soley on the best technical solution. Vendor support, volume discounts and "Roadmaps" play a major part in selecting a solution.
Two years ago, Itanium probably made a lot of sense to Unilever.
You're saying the global sales tracking software depends on data collected by an embedded Delphi app running under a Wine layer that listens through a microphone to a specific sound and runs some Perl to collect the results over a wireless network. WTF!? I assume it also sends this to global sales HQ via carrier pidgeons?
Hah! Take that, you fiends!
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
microsoft will wait till they are all cozy and comfortable with using Windows and one day put the squeeze on them for maxumum cash flow, then they will feel the pinch and wish they stuck it out with Linux...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
As I look around my room ( both at home and the office ) I dont see a microsoft OS. Havent for several years now.
Sure, ive had to go thru hoops at the office to be compatible, but there is choice out there. ( and i chose to abstain, using your examples )
Last time i was at the compute store, i saw PCs there with lindows, and a few Apples with OSX.. Again, a choice.
Now, if we just had the marketing power the microsoft has to go out and market choice...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
In computing platforms, I think any possible benefits of diversity (as you say, more protection from malware) are greatly offset by the cost of having to have multiple teams of sysadmins.
Sure, having Linux, Solaris, Windows, OS/X, FreeBSD, BeOS, OS/2, HP/UX, AIX, etc pretty much ensures your entire infrastructure won't be taken out by a single virus. It also ensures your support costs, virus or no virus, will be much higher than having an environment of one operating system.
I'm a big tall mofo.
the compiler was in Norway with Jacques, the former IT developer, who returned to his family to work on their penguin conservation efforts
Ha, that's funny.
Maybe this is an example of why some corporations are apprehensive about relying on Linux.
Serving Suggestion: Defrost
So did he find any penguins in Norway yet? :-)
Please, I'm sure their press release in 2003 helped put Sun's price back inline. He got his cost reduced and didn't have to spend the time and money migrating.
So did he find any penguins in Norway yet?
See, you'd think that would be stupid right? I mean, penguins in Norway?! But in fact one of the Norwegian army's sergeant majors is a penguin. No, really! The Norwegian army has penguin soldiers!
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
I expect that porting code to not only run under Linux, but on the Itanium version is more at fault than just Linux itself. Remember, there are a lot of issues here.
Itanium....that was a dead end. It cost a lot for the systems, and because the Linux kernel and libraries, and everything else is different, I am sure that many packages needed to be hacked in order to run.
If you spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not more, on a transition to a new platform that they decide will be dead by the time the transition is complete, it's better to change your plans than to continue going on.
Had they gone with a standard x86 implementation of Linux as their transition platform, it might have gone quicker and there might not have been a reason to stop the transition.
And what exactly does this article have to do with Microsoft, and why are you bringing them into it?
Your sig is broken. I presume you wrote "#include ", slashcode sees the as a html tag and strips it out.
I am trolling
If you follow the discussions about graphics and sound on Linux, you will find that poor support by chip vendors (especially ATI, to a lesser degree NVIDIA and Creative) is a problem.
The more people use Linux, the more attractive working with the kernel developers and releasing decent specs will be. A company may ignore 5% Linux users on the desktop, but ignoring 20% will hit the bottom line enough to be visible.
C - the footgun of programming languages
>Linux security is much, much better than Microsoft
If by configuration practices, yes, Unix SA's traditionally are more security and configuration focuses than their Windows counterparts. However, with Longhorn/Vista/name of the moment Microsoft is adopting many of those same philiosphies that the Unix guys developed from learning the hard way it's not a good thing to let a ueser stomp the kernal on a machine that is used by more than one person. Concepts such as least privlidge will go a long way.
As far as basic code security (buffer overflows and such) I haven't seen any conclusive evidence that Linux, Unix, Mac OSX or MS is better or worse than anyone else - mainly because no one knows! If we knew, we could fix it and the software wouldn't be vulnerable now, would it?
Human beings were involved in writing code. Human beings are fallable. These same Human Beings are arrogant and say things like "I like to use C because I like to manipulate pointers and be in control" and then being humans they make stupid mistakes and we get things such as buffer overflows.
And don't even start with me about that "with open source lots of people can review the code". Can and do are two seperate words. Who is this mythical legion looking at code? How the heck can I tell that the code has been reviewed? How the heck can I tell the code has been reviewed by someone trustworthy? Because I'm in the majority that is not a hard-core OS programmer/designer... so to me, that "win" of OS does nothing. In fact, it's more a liability since if no one I trust is reviewing the code, and anyone can change the code...
Anyway, that's not my point. None of this is easy. My point is, just because software comes from a commercial vendor it doesn't mean it's automatically insecure - and just because software is open source, doesn't mean it's automatically secure either.
I think suppliers through open source have become more responsive. Suddenly I can do things with more proprietary products at a price performance that says actually the gap between that and open source isn't as wide as it was two years ago," he said.
yes, he said it, you read it.
and i'm guessing he did a lot more than that, sounds to me like he might have been smoking something while saying it.
They are currently using winnt.
Oh? Never had the munchies and ate an entire bag of chips ahoy? Plenty of "bytes" there...
But he swears that next time he'll start with a rewrite and leave the fancy stuff as a last option.
heh, let me guess who "he" really is...
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
Moderators on crack!
/. non-thinking post.
:(
First of all, the Itanium comment is pure uneducated drivel, typical
Secondly, THIS HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH MICROSOFT YOU DOLT!!!!!!
What the hell happened to this place? It's nothing but the blind leading the stupid around here lately.
If you read the article and read between the lines you realize that the CIO was really just threatening to move to Linux to get more responsiveness out of his current suppliers. The most powerful use of Linux these days is as a threat to the status quo. If he hadn't of gotten what he wanted he probably would have started moving some non-critical systems to Linux just to back up his threat.
Another slashdotter was correct. I don't think the CIO is a moron or that he ever really intended to wholesale move his systems to Linux.
Isn't capitalism great!!
"Meaningless!, Meaningless!" says the Teacher. "Utterly meaningless!"
Linux: -Buy RedHat and buy 24/7 RH support -Buy a multi processor/8gb of RAM Intel box. -Buy Remote console and power on/off management ability -Buy fibre cards for SAN connectivety -Buy Veritas Volume manager Sun: -O/S Free, support comes with the hardware -Buy a Sunfire V210, dual proc, 8gb of ram. Hey look it's also 64bit -comes with remote console and power on/off ability -buy fibre cards for San connectivty -buy Veritas Volume manager If you think Linux is cheeper go price out the above. A Dell or HP or IBM server with the above feature that you need to have in your datacenter for a server will easily run you more money then a "comparable" Sun. Keeping in mind that, that Sun box is also 64bit and even in the very low end is faster then that intel box. Mind you I love Linux and I think Linux has some great fits both in and out of the data center but anybody who says "lets replace all our ***x hosts with linux cause it's cheeper." is a absolute moron. There's many good reasons to have Linux servers, but "it's cheeper" isn't one of those reasons. FYI I just priced a base dual proc Dell at $13,000 and a base dual proc Sun 210 at $8800. Now take that Dell and add remote management etc. Seriously WTF. Linux on intel is way more money then Sun.
My definition of being successful is at odds with "selfish, destructive, anti-social greed" - (the latter attributes seem very common amongst CxOs especially in Corporate USA).
It's a bit like playing one of those MMORPGs, sure you can be selfish, amoral, sociopathic and amass great wealth and power through dubious means, but lots of people could still consider you a loser.
I've no issues with rich people. If people do a great job, hey they should be rewarded.
But there are too many slash-and-burn CEOs - I don't think they should be rewarded for boosting a company's bottomline for just two or so quarters by doing stuff that is likely to damage the company in the long term.
Sure the system has weaknesses, but exploiting the flaws for personal benefit while causing great harm to others (job losses, destruction etc) is not something I would find commendable.
In many games/sports (e.g. golf) there are lots of rules in addition to the core rules, if you see some of the written rules you might wonder which asshole they had to write that particular rule for, so that the game remained fun for everyone else.
But thanks... I didn't even notice the error. (I got out of college in '00 so I consider that to be the "beginning" of "hell" :)
~D
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
Maybe they're afraid switching to Linux will lead to someone getting the idea to develop an OSLD (Open Source Laundry Detergent)?