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Windows Drives Company To OpenBSD
Barry Lyndon writes "Computerworld reports that the nightmare of windows is driving PriceWaterhouseCoopers, one of the world's largest accountancy and business consulting companies, to OpenBSD and open source in general." From the article: "'My predecessor spent too much [so] I was told not to spend any money.' When asked what argument he used to convince management to use an open source solution, Uemura said: 'They didn't have an argument because they said don't spend any money.' 'They trusted me,' he said. 'The whole office was relying on one domain controller which was dying.' Uemura said a lot of work was done 'behind the scenes'. 'My experience is that if something has to be done, just do it - don't ask! They will thank you later,' he said."
I wish I could pull this off at my current gig...
Even if the software is free it seems to me that the most expensive thing is always the developers, training, implementation, etc.
~S
BSD is free and great but there's still costs for retraining, reconfiguring, and ferreting out things that don't quite work the same way as in a Windows environment. Good luck, PWC, and please share your results about this switch!
Seriously the Just Do It type attitude will more often than not lead to an IT disaster and subsequent loss of job scenario. Adding or changing architectures needs to be managed and approved. It just isn't smart not to go through the entire development lifecycle and not to get senior leadership involved right off the bat. You may think that implementing this new, cool architecture will be great for the company, but you might not know you are breaking something in the process. What about legal issues? You might think oh I will just install X copies of freeware Y and then it turns out that the software isn't free to corporate users... Stick with a lifecycle set of processes, good change management and make corporate leadership get involved so they semi-understand the possible pro's and con's of what will be done... Otherwise be prepared to get slammed if something goes wrong and you didnt do due diligence up front...
News Reporters Make Tasty Polar Bear Treats!
OS brands aside, one system admin has the power to completely restructure the IT infrastructure in a huge, multinational accounting firm with no prior approval? This may be a good report for Open Source, but for PWC, it is a bit embarassing, IMHO.
Either that, or he's overexaggerating the accomplishment and he really just replace the OS on a few PCs and a server. The phrase "one domain controller" tells me that this is not a large environment. I wonder what the home office thought of this little stunt.
Public use of any portable music system is a virtually guaranteed indicator of sociopathic tendencies. -- Zoso
I guess they do need to save money considering they are losing clients. It appears that many companies are moving to smaller accounting firms to cut costs and saying no the the "Big Four" (Deloitte, KPMG, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) and Ernst & Young).
From the article it seems to me that they are mainly moving the servers to OpenBSD, not the actual workstations. From a user point of view this should be seamless, with their existing programs still working for the large part. As for the retraining cost; it seems the guys in charge already are fairly well versed in the OS, so retraining cost should be minimal.
Right, now thats said lets have no more of this "what about the hidden training costs?" and "will the programs still work" which seems to be the ususal comments for any switching to Open Source solutions.
Most of the time the people higher up have no idea reguards to technology. I have been in the situation where something had to be done to either get off of an NT Server solution, or to re-implement a Windows Network that was drowning fast. In every situation I deployed a Samba/GNU/Linux solution and no one actually cared as long as it worked - and they always work better than any MS Solution (IMO)
The only place that actually asked, I gave them 2 quotes, one with a $8500.00 price tag for the server software alone, and one of $4500.00 which included a Dell PowerEdge 2800 w/6 SCSI drives....Guess which one they chose.
Why would they do their taxes on a firewall?
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
So they replaced some (not all) of their backend systems with OpenBSD systems. Primarly security systems (firewalls) because Checkpoint on the windows systems was not working real well.
There is a significant DUH factor there.
Now it would have been real news if they had replaced all their backend systems as well as their desktop systems with open source alternatives. That is serious news. But no, like most companies out there they just have a mix of unix like systems along with their Windows based servers. It would be interesting to know if there is any company at all that runs purely Windows systems (or for that matter purely unix like systems). I doubt there are any. So running a mix of systems is pretty much standard. Sure the percentages will vary. As such this is not really big news.
Wake me up again when they have switched all their clients or even a significant portion of their clients to open source alternatives. That will be real news.
2) This is a firewall in Japan.
3) What PricewaterhouseCoopers uses for tax accounting is not something you want to be doing your taxes with.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
'My experience is that if something has to be done, just do it - don't ask! They will thank you later,' he said.
It's easier to get forgiveness than to get permission.
Did anyone actually READ this article?
This company just replaced some of their windows firewall servers (running checkpoint) with OpenBSD. How is this a story? Where's the nightmare?
Quoted from the article:
"most of the migration to OpenBSD was replacing network security devices with Intel servers"
Ok, I don't as a general rule respond to these Windows vs Linux in the back end stories, but I have to on this one. The line in the first page says it all: 'The whole office was relying on one domain controller which was dying.'
This has *nothing* to do with Windows being teh suq. Rather, this has everything to do with the previous admin not knowing what he was doing. You don't run an enterprise shop with one DC (be that either NT4 or AD.) You have numerous DCs, and leverage this new fangled concept called redundancy. AD in a large scale corperate environment works just fine, I've seen 200k+ user networks using AD, and it scales fine. Many of these shops also use Exchange for their mail, and with a proper (and not disproportionately high, I might add) number of servers, everything runs smooth as silk.
This sounds like far less a case of the Apps being responsible, and more like a case of some "admin" who didn't know his ass from a hole in the ground being put in charge of a system far larger than he could handle. If I ever see anyone pull out this site as a case study in FOSS/Windows, I'm going to laugh in the presenters face, as they clearly don't understand the software.
In this case it worked because the network is a black box as far as end users are concerned.
As with any advice, you have to know when to apply it.
For this guy, things worked out. Maybe it's more like "just do it if you know what needs to be done and are sure of your success".
Then again, there are some managers who dislike anything that's not their idea or at least didn't require their blessing. If that's who you work for, though, I'd say get the hell out and find someone who rewards productive risk-taking and successful initiative. If you're the *head* of your IT department, you should be given a fairly serious amount of control over how things are done, *especially* if you've been tasked with taking over a high-cost failure, as this fellow was.
I suspect our friend here had perhaps a bit more buy-off from upper management than it appears. He was probably instructed to "fix it, don't spend money, and don't bother us with the details". Does the fact that he succeeded without a load of bureaucracy bother you, or is it the adoption of OpenBSD ( no problems with corporate use there, BTW ) that bothers you?
Again, I'm agreeing with you generally- going it alone is often a poor choice - but inaction is fairly often worse than action, and it's hard to argue with success. People tend to view successful execution of an independent plan as "initiative". It's only "insubordination" if you fail. The lesson? Don't fail.
Age-old adage of corporate beauracracy once again rearing its head.
If you want results; just do it.
If you want to tread water and waste time, then by all means keep going to those meetings!
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
The point of this story is that PRICEWATERHOUSECOOPERS started using OpenBSD! This is a BIG FOUR accounting firm! Every IT exec in the world can now say "If it's good enough for PWC, it oughta be good enough for us." So this is a big win for open source.
PWC advises many Fortune 1000, Global 1000, what have you on IT issues; there is a chance that this sort of internal use of open source software will lead them to recommend use of OSS to their clients. The C-level decision makers are talking to PWC and others, and probably not reading Slashdot.
"Lack of technical competence coupled with the arrogance of power, as usual, leads to no good end."
Buggy software that affects your entire company will cost you much more in downtime, missed due dates, frustration, hatred of IT and quality of life. From the article:
Then PWC was hit with a virus affecting network traffic and the Checkpoint firewall was running at 100 percent CPU capacity which was effectively a denial of service. "So we had to put an OpenBSD firewall in front of Checkpoint," he said. "We saved seven salaries worth over one year. It was so dramatic they gave me a big raise and I was promoted from system administrator to IT manager. And because of the savings we get more productivity out of old hardware."
TCO fact, baby.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The corporation I work for has PWC as their Sarbanes-Oxley auditor. As soon as someone did this, the first question asked by them would be "Where is the Infrastructure Control Review? Security Control Review? Whats the access control procedure? Where was the process?!" Particularly for something as significant as a firewall.
I wonder if the standard response, "send a patch" on #freebsd convinced away from FreeBSD.
a ges.html#why-pkgsrc
For example:
Q: Are there plans to fully support EXT3 in FreeBSD? I read that it mounts it as EXT2 and that mounting it with read/write causes problems.
A: Send a patch
Q: I don't know FreeBSD coding. I want to try FreeBSD but my Linux hosting company says they won't offer FreeBSD until they can mount FreeBSD volumes using Linux--it is how they allow their users to create/delete/resize virtual EXT3 partitions from a browser.
A: Send a patch
Seems to be the standard response on #freebsd to pretty much anything asked these days unless they know your nick or you discover their secret handshake.
I hope OpenBSD and NetBSD gains more marketshare. I'd like to see a thriving BSD distro other than FreeBSD.
In particular, the pkgsrc of NetBSD looks very promising given that it supports Linux and non-NetBSD platforms. And they seem to project a more professional image (at least on the website). But at under 6,000 packages it has a lot of catching up to do.
http://www.netbsd.org/Documentation/software/pack
Perhaps that is true at most places. The places I've worked (which is admittedly not many), the boss wants to know everything that is going on and give the final blessing for any implementation. Perhaps it's because I work in government, perhaps it's because the boss is a major micromanager. Either way, this experience hasn't been that different from my other jobs. Maybe I just suck and he wants to make sure I don't screw up :>
Unless it fails, then you will be blamed.
However in my opinion, open source fails far less then Windows...
That is the problem with big corporations, no one wants to put their asses on the line. You have a solution, you ask for your boss to aprove, he don't want to put his ass on the line and ask the superior, and this goes on and on until someone simply says "no" or it gets to the CEO. Corporations buy from MS because they can, on the theory, blame them for problems.
I believe that this man had balls, and he solved the problem that his predessor could not solve (and probably got fired). He puted his ass on the line, if he had failed he would probably be fired. But he did not, he had confience that this would solve the problem and he did.
Im getting tired of this days that anyone is trying to point fingers to everyone else, for problems that are probably their. And this is happening all over, from the crusade against video games to the xxiaa with their crusade against their customers.
[]'s Victor Bogado da Silva Lins
^[:wq
Nothing ventured, nothing gained...
The safe thing to do is ask. When you're told "no" or given the indefinite "we'll think about it", you're stuck.
But, if you're sure of yourself and know you can do it - then give it a try. Sure, you might fail, and lose your job, but that's a risk.
In studying succesful people and organizations, the one thing that seems to stand out is that none of them ever did things "the way they're supposed to", and they tended to put everything on the line for a shot at success. Sure, they sometimes fail, but they keep trying, and they are willing to risk everything.
There's a poster on a wall here, in a building named after the athelete who said it that sums it up pretty well:
I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career.
I've lost almost 300 games.
26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed.
I've failed over and over and over again in my life.
And that is why I succeed.
Playing it safe gets you a steady paycheck and a steady job. Taking risks may get you burned, but it may also lead to great success.
...to live in a world where you have carte blanche, no accountability, and no process auditors to report to.
In my world substituting infrastructure without due diligence and approvals gets you fired.
That may be true, but most of the places I've worked, the upper management looks highly on those who kiss the rings. Maybe my field is different than yours.
I'd still like to ask: What if his decision blew up in his face? Who do you think would be held accountable? I doubt his superiors would take the heat.
It seems to me CYA is a common motto among today's management.
You hear the one succes story about how someone did this -because you look for succes stories.
You don't look for stories about miserable failures, so you don't hear about the 99 people who tried this, and failed.
Couldn't agree with you more and the examples in the BSD (at least OpenBSD) man pages are just amazing. Nothing else compares.