Three Windows to Linux Migrations (and Vice Versa)

daria42 writes "In this extended article, ZDNet Australia goes under the hood of three enterprises that moved their back end servers from Windows to Linux and open source software. Two of the companies ended up eventually going back to Microsoft, with the third one still going strong with Linux."

Comments

There and back again... A Hobbits tale

[CastrTroy]

This sounds like a pretty expensive procedure of going to Linux, and then eventually switching back when you find out that it isn't working for you. I think that with the right people, with the right knowledge, that it would be a good change for those involved. Buy you don't have to move everything all at once. Maybe just stop using windows for new things, and then eventually move the old stuff, or not. There's no reason to take down a working server, and try to replace it with something unfamiliar. replace little things, one at a time, and keep what's working for you. If you try Linux mail servers, and you just had a better time with Exchange, then leave exchange working. But if your database servers are performing better with Postgres, then leave that in place. There's no reason why you can't have a mixed environment.

Re:There and back again... A Hobbits tale

[ElleyKitten]

The problems with Linux for the two companies that switched to Windows wasn't switching headaches - the one company had used Red Hat for three years, and the other one since '99. Their problems were that they wanted features they weren't finding in Linux, but did find in Windows. Your advice for switching is solid, but it's not relevant to the problems brought up in the article.

What works best

[Billosaur]

So we have a breakdown of 3 companies, 2 switching from Linux to Windows, 1 from Windows to Linux. Is there any great wisdom to be gleaned from this? The only bit I can come up with is that you use what works best for you with the infrastructure you need to support. It's easy to say Linux will work well for everything but that's just not realistic. It's also safe to say that Microsoft sucks universally, yet there are plenty of sites running SQL Server and IIS that seem to be doing ok.

If you're smart, you analyze your needs and then add 50% for growth and ask yourself if the infrastructure and technology you plan to use can handle it. It's simpler than getting caught up in the Microsoft vs. Liunx battle for supremacy.

Re:What works best

[hey!]

Is there any great wisdom to be gleaned from this? The only bit I can come up with is that you use what works best for you with the infrastructure you need to support.

I think it's interesting to contrast the foci of the switchers.

The Linux to Windows switchers were looking for an OS that was an all-around general purpose operating system to support a wide array of day to day internal IT uses. The problem they have is scaling up their Linux support to keep all the endless bits of software they organization needs working together. The "network effect" applies here: there's lots of companies with their needs and (low level of) resources, and those companies by in large use Windows. Therefore vendors in the Windows space address their needs to do a wide variety of things good enough with limited staff expertise.

The Windows to Linux switcher was looking for the best platform to host a single application they were designing. The consumers of the platform were, in effect, the development team, which was small and a higly focused center of expertise. They are looking for maximum performance and stability to support a universe of software they define. Joe Blow in accounting having to put three passwords in to use the VPN is quite low on their priorities, compared to, for example, hitting an unanticipated wall in the performance curve.

In short, the Linux->Windows switchers viewed software as a support function -- back office stuff. The Windows->Linux switcher viewed software as a line function -- outward facing stuff.

Of course a sample of three is nothing. But anecdotally, it's intriguing.

Skill problems

[__aaitqo8496]

TFA exposes the "problem" in both instances that the company reverted back to Microsoft:

Lacking skill set

Under that scenario, any OS switch would fail. You can't blame Linux (or Windows or any other OS) for that problem. Linux should be viewed as Linux, not Another Windows. You need proper IT support.

Some of the problems were simply lack of knowledge. There were complaints of having to claim 3 passwords for VPN access and not utilizing a worldwide-accessible central information store. That's just laziness.

Re:Skill problems

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree completely. Any of what was described is workable by Linux. I know, because I've done it. The fact the the heads weren't willing to put the effort into it is their own fault. I would be more than happy to run my business on MS, but the fact is, it is NOT a stable or safe environment. I got so sick of the reboots and viruses and support of so many desktops that I went to RedHat and a central Xserver. I almost put myself out of a job as their are some days that I get NO support calls because everything just works. It's too bad that more companies can't be willing to put forth the effort because, in the long run, it would only make open source, or Linux in general, more robust and ready for an "Install and Work" OS for business.

Re:Skill problems

[JWW]

I don't know what will happen with mods on this, but here goes....

In my experience I've found a striking number of highly technical, free thinking, smart IT people absolutely REFUSE to learn anything about Linux. Their world is all windows and if you try to get them to open up to new ideas they put their hands over their ears and shout "Na, na, na, I'm not listening!!!".

Of course that means that they really aren't the highly technical, free thinking, smart IT people they're making themselves out to be.

Re:Feeling homesick?

[AKAImBatman]

Read The Fine Article more carefully. The businesses they're talking about didn't use Microsoft Windows. They went directly to Linux and have been running it for a long while. Coffey, for example, had standardized on Mandr[ake|iva] back in 1999. They came to the eventual conclusion that Linux wasn't meeting their needs, and so they went shopping. They (unsurprisingly, yet frustratingly) settled on Microsoft software.

Using Linux correctly?

[Rekolitus]

"Previously, all the e-mails were effectively stored on the desktops and there was no central location of the data,"

Perhaps it's just me, but it seems like these companies weren't applying Linux quite the intended way. Linux isn't a magic plaster you can throw over your IT problems, and frankly, I'm sure it does need a little more maintenance than Windows, but it seems like the people that set these systems up didn't put any thought into their infrastructure.

Storing emails on the desktop isn't a problem that Linux creates. Windows seems more akin to something that says "This is the best way to store emails", whereas Linux is more like "Where do you want to store emails? It's up to you. I can't give you any advice." I'm sure these company's Linux-based experiences would have been much better if they did a bit more planning into the structure of the services in the first place.

David Braue

[dajobi]

Anyone know anything about the author of this story? That first story, the one about Austereo, looked kinda schilly to me, especially comparing what the author wrote to the quotes from the interviewee. Compare:

After three years with Linux, however, Austereo began reconsidering its choice as continued growth in the company led to increasing complexity within its IT strategy -- exposing the limitations of the Linux-based environment in some very painful ways.

This time around, things are working much better, with a full range of Microsoft server applications providing a deeply integrated, highly effective IT infrastructure that has significantly improved productivity and transformed information management within the company.

Working with Microsoft consultants, he and his team sat down to map out their future infrastructure and found that their requirements could be easily met using an integrated suite of applications built on top of Windows Server 2003.

After thorough discussions, Austereo committed to a move away from Linux onto an architecture combining Microsoft SharePoint Server, Exchange Server and SQL Server as well as Office 2003 and BlackBerry-related add-ons like the BlackBerry Enterprise Server. It was a hard decision, but even Forgione concedes he was impressed when comparing the company's existing and potential computing environments.

To:

"Importing our network environment and applications onto a new platform required some fairly specific skills, and those skills were not abundant within the group. As the business started to grow and we realised we needed to provide additional services to help people accomplish their day-to-day tasks, it became a very obvious and glaring issue."

"The problem was that just one or two people in the group [out of 15 IT staff] could do that, and it was hard finding people who understood that [open source] isn't just about playing with these tools, but delivering something."

Braue's version: Linux wasn't good enough, a Microsoft "solution" was required.

Forgione's version: The IT staff didn't know how to use Linux. For some reason we didn't think hiring competent staff would be a good idea.

What do you think?

It was about the applications not the OS

[LWATCDR]

For one company it was all about Exchange and Sharepoint. Which are two weaknesses with Linux right now.
Thunderbird is a great email client as is KMail. I use Thunderbird as my email client. What it lacks is the intergration of calendering that Outlook plus exchange offers.
You can talk all you want about how a Calendar should be a stand alone program but Outlook as made the intergration of of the two very useful and in some cases mandatory.
I have looked and looked for a good open source alternative and couldn't find one that was currently complete and worked for both Windows and Linux.
Sharepoint also doesn't have a good open source alternative.
Not every company needs these programs but it seems like a good number do.
Now the other company that complained about needing three passwords for it's vpn? Well they sound like they needed someone that knew how to setup LDAP.

Here would be a great project of an Ubuntu like disto. A small business server that included LDAP for a single sign on, Samba, a Sharepoint like portal, a CRM like Sugar or Tiger, optional VPN, and mail server with calendaring integrated right from the start.
I want one.

Why does it have to be either/or?

[denverradiosucks]

I hate Microsoft as much as the next slashdotter, but being an IT manager, I wouldn't want the headache of using one OS.

Linux has its advantages. I was able to scale an old Windows 2000 server, Windows NT Server, and a useless company proxy server into a single, consolidated Gentoo System. Does that mean I want to switch everything else, including our accounting databases over to Linux? I couldn't handle the headache. Microsoft's AD is easy to use, we have 2 2003 DC's, including one Terminal server. There is no way I would use something line Wine to get Great Plains working with any sort of consistency. They work reliably as they are now, upgrading to service pack 1 was easy, and managing user accounts is simple (not saying account management in linux isn't).

To the company's that switched from one OS to another, mixed environments are easier, at least for me. Each OS plays an important role, and has advantages/disadvantages. Sure, you had to pay $1,000's to buy Windows software, but you would probably spend that much hiring Linux guys to come in and support your system because there isn't enough expertise to handle these systems. It's a two way street I have found.

Any sort of penetration into

Stockholm syndrome

[metamatic]

There's nothing new about the phenomenon, either. I remember research back in the 90s showing that Macintosh users were all familiar with Windows, but that Windows users were mostly completely ignorant of the Macintosh.

In other words: Mac users who said that Windows sucked, generally did so from a position of knowledge, whereas Windows users who said that Macs sucked, generally did so from a position of ignorance. I expect it's still the case today, and I wouldn't be surprised to find out that statistically, it's also the case with Windows vs Linux in the enterprise.

My conclusion: it's all about services

[brokeninside]

In the linked article, 2 out of the three companies migrated to Microsoft solutions based on services available from Microsoft because their internal IT departments didn't have the requisite knowledge to keep entirely open source solutions up to speed with regards to internal growth. The third company remained with Linux as a result of Linux services offered by Sun as part of a package with new Opteron based servers.

The other interesting bit is that a key part of decisions made in all three cases was the available software. The first two companies went with Microsoft because of Sharepoint. The last one stayed with Linux on Sun hardware because of 64bit J2EE.

If you...

[jd]

...change "setup time" to "setup thought", I would completely agree. The problem with Linux is not the time to set it up (which is roughly comparable to Windows, sometimes less), but rather the time it takes to figure out what you actually want.

A simple example would be deciding on your e-mail system. Sounds easy, right? And it is. If you know - in advance - what sort of e-mail system it is you actually want. Just saying "e-mail" doesn't tell you very much. If you need a great deal of power in the mail processing engine, you're probably going to want Sendmail. If you need to blast through vast quantities of e-mail very quickly, Postfix is a better bet. If your company is relying on Exchange services, then you're looking at something like Open Groupware. If you aren't using Exchange clients, but do need similar services, then OpenXchange might do what you want.

That's just for e-mail! Then you have to think about all other intranet services, which have a similar level of flexibility. Internal web services with static web pages will be better off driven by Tux. Java servlets, these days, really mean Apache, as they're the ones mostly working on that capability. Basic scripting with reasonable power and reasonably dynamic content would probably mean Roxen.

If you want virtualization, you've three entire tiers - total machine simulation (vmware), heavyweight containers (xen) and lightweight encapsulation (vservers). If you want to admin the box, do you edit the config files, use Red Hat's scripts, use Linuxconf, or use webmin? And the list of options goes on and on and on.

On the one hand, the choices give an aware user a fantastic level of power and almost superhuman control over their system. On the other hand, it means that you cannot approach this with a turnkey attitude. This should be no great surprise. You can drive a roadcar with a turnkey attitude and expect to get from A to B in one piece. This isn't going to work in a Formula 1 racing car or an X-15 experimental aircraft. Why should it? If you act as though these are all one and the same, your efforts to transfer over WILL fail. This is not a limitation of these vehicles, it is a failure to recognize that simplifications that are true in one case won't hold for the general case.

Let's look at one of the big complaints I've heard for Linux - a lack of wireless card drivers. How many of those who are complaining have actually looked for additional drivers? My guess is that half the complainers have not, and that the majority of those would find that a project just as madwifi would provide the drivers they want. There are a few others listed on the Linux WPA Supplicant page. "But we don't want to install 3rd party drivers!" That wasn't the complaint - the complaint was that the drivers didn't exist. If I can find the drivers, and they DO exist, I will have zero sympathy for those who then come up with further excuses - because if the complaint has to change each time it's proven wrong, then all it is IS an excuse.

My guess is that almost every single case of a company "needing" to switch from Linux to Windows will - on closer examination - prove to be a case of nobody bothering to figure out what the company actually wanted, OR nobody bothering to figure out how to get Linux to provide it. There will be VERY few cases - although such cases will happen - where Linux really isn't a good fit, which is a limitation of Linux, but I seriously doubt that more than one in a thousand migrations from Linux to Windows fits into that category.