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Unisys: We No Longer Have A Way Out
rbochan writes "Some of you may recall a couple of years back when Microsoft and Unisys decided that a multi-million dollar ad campaign against *nix was in order, dubbed 'We Have A Way Out.' The results weren't what they'd hoped. ZDNet is now reporting that Unisys has done an about face and is now touting Linux as 'a mature technology and the right cost-effective option for many companies.'"
From the article:
The same ad depicts a scene in which a computer user has painted himself into a corner with purple paint. Sun's servers are manufactured in a shade of purple similar to that in the ad.
Sun responded to the campaign in a statement. "Sun still does not see Microsoft as a real threat in the datacenter market where reliability, availability, serviceability and security are key," the company said. "As for Unix being 'inflexible,' 'expensive,' and 'complex,' we feel those are terms much better suited to the closed and proprietary world of Windows."
Well, if the target was Sun as the article suggested, it seems to me things worked out just dandy from Microsoft's perspective. I would venture to say that Microsoft's market penetration in datacenters has grown quite a bit since 2002, while I'm equally certain Sun's has faded.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
... the site first went up. IIRC, it was hosted on Apache on Solaris (or some such *NIX). A day or so later, it was pulled and replaced with IIS on Windows [NT|2000]. After that, I never payed it no nevermind.
Research shows that 67% of those who use the term "research shows", are just making shit up.
This is why running a smear campaigain is a bad idea. Every now and then, it works, but it more often than not comes back to bite you in the ass. You're much better off to say nothing, or to say something that just casts yourself in a positive light.
Think about it -- you're interviewing two guys for an important job. One talks about all the good things he's done at his last job. The other talks about how screwed up things were and how he 'fixed' them. Who are you going to hire?
OT: People do this, too; there was an individual (name and gender withheld) at a previous place of employment with a resume filled with things like "Took a mis-managed department and brought it to productivity." Not only was this one of the worst employees we ever hired, but said employee got canned after six months because they did *nothing* but complain about how other departments were stopping them from doing their job.
The replacement had a more positive mindset, and caught up on the backlog within two months. Needless to say, he got promoted a couple of times.
--
I Hit the Karma Cap, and All I Got Was This Lousy
One issue is that the company does not have great visibility outside its core markets. "Customers say, 'We wish you were better known,' and we have to address that," he said.
That's an easy request: just patent more popular graphics fileformats with submarine patents and then start enforcing them a few years down the line. Instant Press!
Well, it's possible they meant it as in "suicide is a way out". It's true!
You said it, but I don't think you understood it -
The tech people say it's time to ditch Microsoft.
The business people don't necessarily get it. I talked to a guy yesterday who owns a group of companies such as an ISP, a computer repair shop, computer retail sales shop, web design firm, and business tech consulting company. He was showing me a home-grown web application that was quite impressive... until I asked him if it worked on Firefox. He laughed, looked at me and said, "No. Why would I support a browser with less than 1% of the market share?" I corrected him - 11% according to recent articles and as high as 40% on many of my clients' websites. His response was something along the lines of "when it gets to 40% across the board, I'll consider supporting it."
The point is, he's a business owner in our industry. He's a smart tech guy, but he's fully adopted Microsoft and defends its use. He can make a strong case for them to his clients, which are many. Business people don't see the world the same way that the tech folks do.
Way to narrow it down.
As much as many are devoted to Linux here, isn't this a case of Microsoft has not had a real OS refresh in years while, during that period, Linux has been constantly improving?
As much as it appears Unisys was in it for the money, it could just be they have reached some kind of tipping point where they believe that Linux now is a viable alternative to MS where they didn't previously. You know, opinions changing when the facts do . . .
A disclaimer: I am a Unisys employee.
Unisys is definitely making a move towards widespread adoption of Linux (Red Hat and SuSE) as a development platform, and various other open source development tools (eg, Maven, Eclipse, various parts of Apache Commons, etc). Regardless of current marketing hype from Blackmore and McGrath (the CEO), this is very much a bottom-up driven initiative. Open source software is finding itself in an increasing number of Unisys solutions, to the occasional consternation of management. So what you're hearing from the Unisys management publicly now is "hooray, Open Source," but what you would have heard a few years ago was... well, nothing, unless you worked for Unisys, in which case you probably would heard "stay the hell away."
Note: when I say "finding my way into," I don't mean "being stolen." Unisys is being extremely careful as to what the various license requirements are for the things it's using, so developers and architects are cognizant of the implications of the GPL and other similar "sharealike" licenses where their efforts are concerned. My experience with the developers here has been that they are pretty agnostic about everything except efficacy - they just want the stuff to work, and they want to get it done right for as little money as they can spend. I find that to be a healthy attitude.
For a guy like me whose roots are pretty heavily in open software, there's more than a little irony here. You may recall Unisys' spat with the Free Software Foundation, or... well, really a whole bunch of people, including Accuweather, over software patent issues.
One last thing: Peter Blackmore has identified outsourcing as a major component of the Unisys strategy. He's not kidding. Tons of Unisys developers have been axed over the last few years, and much of the development activity has been given to Caritor employees, based either locally at Unisys offices, or in India. The ones I've worked with are good guys, but there's more than a little discomfort between the two groups. Many Unisys folks see his biggest impact on the company as having been the guy who sent Unisys jobs to India.
You may label this as a rant.....
I worked on Unisys Sperry Mainframe equipment for almost 7 years. I can tell you categorically that Unisys tried every possible way to kill products it's customer wanted. When IBM was bleeding money Unisys had the better Mainframe OS (OS2200). Since then IBM has done more to innovate the mainfame market (moved to CMOS, embrased UNIX/LINUX, enabled OS390 for the Internet world). Meanwhile Unisys tried to get in bed with Microsoft and changed their product line so that anything that was not MS centric was basically a "legacy" platform where they just wanted the old Sperry/Burroughs customer base to dump their investment in older technologies and move to WinNT/Win2k servers.
The history of Unisys is that they put their finger in the wind see which way it's going and join the crowd YEARS after the initial party is over.
The only GOOD thing I can say about Unisys is that my contract (I was a Lead computer operator/batch scheduler) ended as a result of them promising equipment to the customer at cut rates that they then dragged their feet delivering...and as a result I quit and found a better job, doing LINUX!....thank you UNISYS!
http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;75408 4996;fp;16;fpid;0
It's unofficial: Microsoft bets business on Linux
Rodney Gedda
04/11/2005 08:31:35
The next time Bill Gates sends an e-mail through Microsoft's shiny new Wireless LAN it will be passed through a behind-the-scenes Linux-based network appliance.
Earlier this year Microsoft and Aruba Networks jointly announced the two companies will work to replace Microsoft's existing Cisco wireless network with Aruba's centrally-managed infrastructure, which eliminates the need for individual changes on the access points.
Aruba Networks was selected to provide the networking equipment for what is considered to be one of the world's largest next-generation wireless LANs, serving more than 25,000 simultaneous users a day in some 60 countries. According to an Aruba press statement, Microsoft's new WLAN will be deployed in 277 buildings covering more than 17 million square feet using Aruba mobility controllers, mobility software and some 5000 wireless access points.
What the press statement didn't mention is that Aruba mobility controllers run the Linux operating system which Microsoft has aggressively targeted as being inferior to Windows as part of its "Get the Facts" marketing campaign.
Mark Robards, Aruba Network's Asia-Pacific vice president, said the company's mobility controller switches provide integrated security, including a firewall, VPN, and hardware encryption, and they are "all Linux-based".
Robards said the network rollout with Microsoft is going well and is likely to take two years to complete and will contain as many as 7000 access points. Indeed, Aruba is recruiting Linux developers to work on its mobility controller software. In an advertisement on the company's Web site, Aruba is seeking a senior Linux software engineer with "expert knowledge of Linux and extensive Linux kernel experience".
Sunjeev Pandey, senior director of Microsoft IT, said the company is "pleased to be partnering with Aruba in the upgrade of Microsoft's next-generation wireless LAN".
"This partnership will allow Microsoft to leverage a cutting-edge wireless and mobility platform that provides us the scalability, performance and security that our environment demands," Pandey said.
Pandey's appraisal of Aruba's technology is in stark contrast to Microsoft's "Get the Facts" rhetoric which places Windows as a more secure, and higher-performing choice over Linux.
Need I say more?
-- Cheers!
Have gotten her to finally consider that maybe all she needs is a good chunk of network storage. I've shown her how she can put 400GB of mirrored storage onto the network with long warranties on the disc drives using a NetGear SC101 for $600. She's considering it right now.
While Unisys may aim towards the higher-end markets than this, a Linux solution with good multiprocessor support and zero cost can make a significant difference in this ever increasingly competative environment -- especially if you're flogging Intel iron against AMD Opterons.
Besides, some things really do run better on Linux. IIRC Oracle 9i is a prime example.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I remember when they first came out with "WeHaveTheWayOut.com" campaign.
:)
I dutifully registered (expired last year) "TheyDoNotHaveTheWayOut.com"
and merrily pointed it to go to FuckMicrosoft.com
Now you know how I feel.
He doesn't have to "support" firefox, or IE or any one browser. He just has to write standard, correct HTML and do a little more testing in different browsers.
Really, what costs more, loosing even 1% of his online sales, or doing the above?