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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.
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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
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.
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
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
The problems with what they claim is that while the initial support costs might be there, the ongoing ones AREN'T. Typically, most of the CXO crowd doesn't look at the long term picture- only what they read in a marketing piece and what the sales reps will tell you.
Really bright idea, guys.
Windows is a security nightmare, moreso than Linux- all one has to do to realize this is to take your blinders off and see all the worms, spyware, etc. and know this to be the case. And people keep using this stuff for mission critical stuff...
I wish the CIO of Unilever the best, but he's just put his company at a disadvantage with respects to others- the ones that aren't bound up with the lock-in will be the ones getting ahead in the long run.
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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!
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).
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$.
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.
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 did post a correction, that we're using MySQL for intranet apps, and Oracle for other stuff (HR, data warehousing, etc).
Nice use of childishness though. Well done. When you grow up, perhaps you'll learn how to reply in conversation. Capitals are occasionally nice, as well, as is grammar and correct punctuation.
At least you refrained from using "LOL!!!" in your post. Well done, you.
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.
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.
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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+
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
Obviously an armchair IT manager.
You are forgetting about
a) the ability to play multiple vendors off of each other.
b) the ability to get the best of anything
c) the hurt you will be in if you have a problem with your single vendor.
If you're a megacorp, you can buy every platform out there and still get the big discounts. They're just that big.
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