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Unilever Ditches Global IT Linux Migration

Posted by samzenpus on from the free-as-in-not-using-it dept.

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'."

12 of 295 comments (clear)

  1. The FUD Train Rolls On... by GaryPatterson · · Score: 1, Informative

    ... 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.

    1. Re:The FUD Train Rolls On... by leerpm · · Score: 2, Informative

      Big global companies, don't mandate things like across the board. It's left up to the individual business units, and the divisions within them to decide what makes the most sense for the particular line of business.

    2. Re:The FUD Train Rolls On... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      " Big global companies, don't mandate things like across the board."

      Some do. Where I work, 200,000+ desktops and huge data centers. You either align your business unit with corporate policy or support yourself. And getting on the corporate network would be a bitch of red tape, security and legal policy reviews (could take a year+).

  2. Re:I wonder. by Anakron · · Score: 2, Informative

    RTFA
    ..switching from a Unix server platform to Linux running on Itanium
    (Emphasis mine)

    --
    There are 11 types of people. Those who understand binary, those who don't and those who are sick of this lame joke.
  3. Re:Raised their game? by Anakron · · Score: 2, Informative

    What does MS have to do with this?
    They were thinking of switching from UNIX to Linux.

    --
    There are 11 types of people. Those who understand binary, those who don't and those who are sick of this lame joke.
  4. Re:Raised their game? by AcidPenguin9873 · · Score: 2, Informative

    Please RTFA. They were migrating from a Unix platform to Linux. Microsoft is not involved.

  5. Link to article about original decision by GillBates0 · · Score: 2, Informative
    This should probably have made it to the article summary. Here's the original interview with Neil Cameron where he announced his decision to switch to open source and Linux last August.

    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
  6. #1 reason why corporation isn't adopting Linux by DraconPern · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:#1 reason why corporation isn't adopting Linux by jcupitt65 · · Score: 2, Informative
      GtkGLArea sucked quite a bit, it's been replaced by GtkGLExt. Porting is quite easy, certainly less work than gtk1 to gtk2, which you will probably also need to do.

      Of course if you don't want to port, you can always run the old version.

  7. Summary is wrong by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

  8. Re:Itanium...smart? by quanticle · · Score: 2, Informative

    Unilever is a giant umbrella corporation that's the parent company of brands covering everything from soap (Dove) to food (Hellmans mayonaise [sic], Bertolli pasta, and Lipton tea). A significant fraction of the brands in your local grocery chain are owned by Unilever.

    --
    We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
  9. Another valid reason: Itanium will soon be dead by postbigbang · · Score: 2, Informative

    It's going away. You heard it here, first. Remember that.

    --
    ---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.