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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."
From TFA:
IT managers who want to deploy an open source solution but are worried about company politics should go ahead and do it without asking, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) Japan IT manager Mark Uemura.
That sounds like a FANTASTIC idea. Just come in one weekend and change the entire network over to BSD without running it by anyone. Why bother with the pesky work of drawing up a well-structured arguement for what you want, and then run it by the people who sign your check? That would be highly irrational IMO...Screw politics, they'll thank you when it's done - With a nice pink check.
What does Linux has to do with this? He uses OpenBSD. If you read the article you would know that they still use Windows on their workstations so they can still use what ever tax software they used earlier.
The really fun part of this article is that they need to put an OpenBSD firewall in front of their checkpoint firewall to keep it safe.
And that's great! Since a financial company did it, large software houses can no longer say "Yes, it's free (as in beer) to use, but eventually you'll have to pay more to get competent Open-source techies and invest in more/different hardvare that if you just went with Our Solution(tm) all the way."
And that is how you gain mindshare - not by making a bunch of extremenly technical reports saying how it's better then everything else, but by hitting them on the wallet.
The downside is that because of using such "cheap" software, some other techies working for large software houses can get underpayed or sacked. We'll just have to see what the net balance gets to be.
-- Sig down
I recall a couple of similar situations where switching the server to and OS/OS was the best answer. The first time, it was a startup ISP (back when everyone dreamed of starting an ISP) who suffered the same problems as described in the article. The problems were limited to the mail server and it was simply unable to keep up with the load it was given. I took a machine of far more modest capacity, installed Slackware on it, set up mail, ported over the user list and it all became quiet almost suddenly.
Another case was when I took a job as SystemsAdmin for an ATM service company... similar situation except a bit worse... they had this bizarre mail server/proxy server thing running on a Win95 box. I almost wet my pants when I saw it. I built another handy-dandy linux box, updated everyone's proxy settings to "off" and set them up with NAT and everything was running smoothe as a baby's butt... again, almost completely sudden quiet. It was very rewarding.
These were all back-end systems that people don't see but use frequently. And only when the stuff you've got ain't workin' is when this sort of strategy (as described in the article) is a good idea. I think it would be a completely different story if they took something that worked and made this tremendous change... that'd be noticably stupid.
You said a mouthful. My department is in currently fending off a company wide, IT imposed standard for computers. They're demanding we run critical 24/7-live multimedia apps on the same budget model desktop provided receptionists because "its the standard" and they get a good price in bulk. A 'well documented, carefully considered standard' can still be a cluster fuck. Two years ago the 'carefully considered standard' was a different manufacturer's model because the company bought advertising with us. I'm given the choice of rolling over and accepting almost certain disaster or protecting divisional business at personal risk to my career with the company. But there are always other companies.
Therefore I have been experimenting with other Alternatives, such as Apple's OSX Server. OSX to my surprise is an organized way of working with Unix. So in the past months i have been learning how to use OSX Server and have polished my skills into using it in "Hybrid" Environments, with the most excellent results.
One of my clients was a Windows Shop, It took me several months to convince them to change the server into OSX. The prerogative was simple: Apple offered us the perfect growing up environment for a company of 20 something employees that could get as big as 50 in the next couple of years. How? Well Apple's Xserve and Unlimited Lic. OSX was the key. When I presented them with both investing plan's, which consisted of a Dell Server and Windows, and an Xserve and OSX, it basically came down to a 17k dollar investment to do with the Dell, Windows and all its licencing, and 4 terminal stations. In comparison with the Apple Equipment, the Xserve (2.0Ghz PowerPC, 1gb ECC, 80gb sata hdd (expandable to 3 hdd in sata raid 0)) and OSX Unlimited + Apple Remote (Unlimited), It only went up to $11,075.00. When I presented them both quotes, and told them that with the mac we could have interoperability with Windows XP pc's accessing the server as well, better security, easier configuration and other options, the company decided to take the dive and went the Apple way. Recently they had 20 more employees added, in which this would have meant an increase in licencing of over $2000, the company kept hiring and keeps growing without any problems and the IT Structure is solid. For applications, we Use Quickbooks 2005 for Mac and Quickbooks 2005 for Windows XP, Office for Mac and Office XP for Windows (althought we are going to change to Open Office 2.0 in December 2005). The reason we have a couple windows machines, is for some industry specific applications that we cannot find on mac, so we use them on windows. Everything else is run on the macs with no problems.
I want to add that the Remote Desktop of Macs is an awesome tool. I can make OSX Deployments far more easier than it is in Windows Server Environment. The next client im going to work on this week, Im going to propose the same change, in a bigger scale... I know ill be successfull because the previous client is in love with his system at work.
Nom de dieu de putain de bordel de merde de saloperie de connard d encule de ta mere.
"Uemura said PWC chose OpenBSD, an operating system he is comfortable with..."
"My predecessor spent too much [so] I was told not to spend any money."
Seems to me the reasons they switched are spelled out pretty plainly in the article -- Uemura was a *nix person and OpenBSD was free. Yet somehow the abstract of the article claims PWC switched because "Windows was a nightmare".
Yes, there was mention in the article that their Windows servers were bouncing alot. But the main reason given for the switch was to "spend no money". I suspect if Uemura had not been a *nix type and instead was a good Windows admin he could have fixed the problem without spending any money by instead properly configuring and patching the Windows servers.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
I don't anymore, unfortunately. But I'm on one of the craziest networks you can imagine right now: Windows, Unix, Linux, BSD, OSX, and OS 8-9, and I can drive hardware choice depending on the type of solutions I develop.
If you've got a choice, and someone asks for a product without telling you how to do it, do it the right way, and don't give them too much information.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
One of the things I used to do is put together a nice solid system on a lan party box, then take it to the company I was trying to sell to, plug it in, and let it do it's stuff. Usually the sight of hardware that you can just plug in and have working in minutes was enough to cinch the sale.
I know a guy who developed this crazy thin client app/server setup, piped through pptp, that booted off a USB key. So he'd take it to a potential customer, jack it into one of their computers and it would hook into his servers, and download the whole system. Ran fast as hell. Pretty incredible. He'd jack it into an old system, and be zipping through heavy applications like Photoshop so quickly that the old graphics card couldn't keep up. Impressed the hell out of people.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Take the place where I'm working for example. Medium sized company in Europe. Four countries and exspansion in more. After some bad moves two years ago by one of our operations the whole company got in trouble. Management decided to fire some 20%, vut back on outside consultants and retire everyone above 60. They also orchestrated a salary freeze and a max overtime cap. So we lost many of ur most experienced people from the downsizing or from people that decided to leave. In my office I'm the only IT guy left. The CEO told us in IT to cut back on new projects and frooze IT spending at x percant of turnover. Since most of our costs are locked in service contracts, licenses and scheduled hardware upgrades it's very hard to replace aging systems. We had some legacy systems that we just HAD to replace and that almost crushed our budget. So at one of our IT-guys meetings we just decided to stop renewing some MS products and went with Debian on some DNS, file and printer-servers.
Some six months later our local management found out that we had deviated from the "Microsoft-shop policy", but what could they do? They complained for a day or so before they realised that it was the only way we could stay withn the budget. In an environment where one can get fired for failing to stay within budget as well as failing to provide "service" to other units sometimes Linux is the only way.
Sorry for the bad English.