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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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
Please RTFA. They were migrating from a Unix platform to Linux. Microsoft is not involved.
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."
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
While I'm not often a big Linux advocate, I have to question a few assumptions here.
Is security reduced through exposure? I'd say not, so long as the design is fundamentally secure.
Windows is not. Linux, Unix and OS X are. Put the ***x OSs at the same marketshare as Windows and some holes will emerge, but the fundamentals of the OS are more secure. They will not suffer to the same extent as Windows.
Windows is (thankfully) moving in the right direction but it seems to have the same tight turning ability as a supertanker in a narrow harbour.
****
Is SCO a real risk? I'd say not. I don't believe the case they brought will survive much longer, and already they're considered a bit of a joke.
The FUD was strong though.
****
Is software patenting an issue for Linux? I had heard it was covered. Maybe through something like OpenBSD. How is it less an issue for Windows?
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
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.
If the company's that big, then you're pretty much guaranteed to have at least one of everything somewhere within the organization. No Fortune 50 company would standardize on LAMP for all of their systems either - it just doesn't scale well enough yet. MySQL in particular is a lightweight when compared to Oracle or UDB (or even PostgreSQL in many ways). In any case, the article is talking about their SAP system.
Err... scratch that idea. They'd never notice.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
See that, right there ---> "...layer of Perl... "
that's your problem.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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.
Sometimes you win, but sometimes you lose. As I see it, everybody's game has improved.
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.
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!
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$.
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.
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.
Two "bongs" don't make a byte.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
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.
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.
"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)"
Microsoft?
Or maybe they have the fattest employees?
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
Also- who is Unilever?
You're kidding, right?
Let's just say Unilever isn't a dude selling bars of soap on eBay.
resigned
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.
My guess is that this guy didn't get his job because he's an idiot.
uh. have you met many IT professionals and corporate executives?
The next comment I write will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
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
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+
"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
I think the biggest reason (also in the article) is that the Open Source strategy played out very well for Unilever, in terms of getting cheaper software from providers like SUN, HP, etc. Maybe even Microsoft. 800 million IT budget is a large fish.
My guess is that this guy didn't get his job because he's an idiot :)
Of course not. He got his job despite being an idiot.
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
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