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Red Hat CEO Says Economic Crisis Favors Open Source
arashtamere writes "Red Hat president and CEO Jim Whitehurst predicts the enterprise open source software business will emerge from the economic crisis stronger than the proprietary market. 'I've had a couple of conversations with CIOs who said, "We're a Microsoft shop and we don't use any open source whatsoever, but we're already getting pressure to reduce our operating costs and we need you to help put together a plan for us to... use open source to reduce our costs." And we've had other customers literally looking at ripping and replacing WebLogic or WebSphere for JBoss ... I think we'll know in about six to nine months but there is no question that open source will come out of this in relatively better shape than our proprietary competitors,' he told Computerworld."
I feel as if thousands of MCSE's cried out in pain and were silenced.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
as an engineer, with 10+ yrs in the industry, it still boggles the mind that closed source, proprietary software has such a stranglehold on the way businesses percieve 'value'.
all too often, you see a business with a couple of it 'support' staff, maybe developers too, and someone has a day at the golf course and comes back with 'great news, we've managed to secure a long term contract with IBM...'
i still loath cognos reportnet some 4 years after that guy came back from the golf course... whats that ? ibm bought cognos? greeeeeaaat!
Were they using the Billy Mays awesome auger to run cat5 near gas lines?
Has anybody checked the price of a Red Hat subscription lately? It ain't cheap. In fact, it's cheaper to get M$ bundled with a server than it is to get a one year Red Hat subscription, given that you need to renew (read= pay more $$$) each year, and Linux engineers can command more salary simply because there are fewer of them than there are Windows engineers (oxymoron, I know.).
So yes, open-source as a "whole" (Articles of Confederation-type whole) will do well in tough economic times. If Red Hat wants in on this, they'll need to either lower their prices, or perhaps rethink they're "software as a service" model.
Anybody want my mod points?
Why is it that every story evaluating open source as a replacement for proprietary software starts with, "We want something cheaper." It's encouraging that people are comfortable with the reliability and features of OSS that they are comfortable putting businesses on it. But I would be concerned as an employee at these shops that management had fully evaluated the the needs of the company with respect to these packages. I've seen it a few times already at places where I've worked where a manager says, "This is cheaper, lets get this." and then doesn't realize that he needed someone who actually knew how to configure and manage things like the Linux box it was going to go on, etc.
If you could just go ahead and convert all of those windows servers containing all of our business value into linux, that'd be great, mmmmk?
Wouldn't it be cheaper for them to just stop upgrading to the latest and greatest and stick with what they've already got?
(I am a linux fan and don't even run windows, it just seems like it'd be more money and less cost effective to start switching over just leaving things alone).
The year of the Linux desktop is finally to come.
...again.
True. But Red Hat owns and supports JBoss, so, uh, what do you think they're going to be pushing to their enterprise customers?
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I had a customer who needed to start from scratch with a new business. They could allocate about $5k for the whole database server. I priced out an NT+SQL Server (what they requested), and then priced out a Redhat ($50 at the time) box where we spent the same $ on hardware that we would have spent on software... so they got a kick butt system with $4950 worth of hardware versus a piece of crap machine with $3000 worth of software. That company is now worth something in the 8 digits range. (Wish I had an equity stake now!) That server also served their needs for 5 of the 8 years until a hardware failure, and all we did was move Mysql/Apache and the source to an externally hosted platform.
meh
Red Hat CEO Says Economic Crisis Favors Open Source
No! Really? I'm shocked!!! Who would have thunkit????
Free Martian Whores!
A lot of businesses may become increasingly unwilling to take risks, such as radically switching their technology.
It's easy to take risks when business is good and there is plenty of cash sloshing around, but changing mission critical systems during bad economic periods will be seen as a bit too radical for many businesses.
Having said that, I think smart businesses will be willing to make the change in many cases, especially when there is an OSS drop-in replacement, or where they are implementing a greenfield system.
Paul
Paul Leader
Here is a situation where potentially thousands of people in the industry are going to be laid off because of this economic downturn, and all he can mention is how great it's going to be for OSS. I mean, I see his point and it may be a valid one, but he could be a little less gung-ho about it.
Maybe he's hoping to hire some of those laid off workers. I do see your point though, I warned a relative about debt levels, houses, etc. Now I'm keeping really quiet about it. It's a really hard situation for people who didn't know how to evaluate the situation and went with what seemed like good advice because it was popular, only to be stung.
That said, it has seemed obvious to me since reading the GPLv2 and seeing RedHat 7 where this thing (OSS) was going, and I've always been a bit surprised that most people don't see it too. Proprietary licences are designed to benefit the business, GPL is designed to benefit the user (and the users they distribute to, in perpetuity).
How hard is it to work out that the software distributed in a manner that it benefits people (customers) will eventually gain dominance over software that is distributed in a manner that restricts customers for the benefit of the distributor? It is very unlikely that any other consideration will outweigh that in the long run although they often do in the short term. Tough economic times require purchases to be evaluated more thoroughly, so yes it is likely to benefit OSS.
Likewise, how hard is it to figure out that if you allow corporations to produce the money supply out of thin air as loans that you are headed for financial collapse? Tighter regulation can do nothing to prevent the collapse of a financial system based on money that isn't worth anything.
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I agree that there are cases where PostgreSQL or will not do. But they are not "many cases". In many cases, Oracle is an expensive overkill. In many cases Oracle introduces more overhead supporting the database than it is worth.
--Coder
First we were afraid
we were petrified
Kept thinking we could never live
with Windows on our drives
But then we spent so many nights
hacking Linux all night long
And it grew strong
And we learned to carry on
but now you're back
your battle lost
I just logged on to read about you
urged by your bosses to save costs
we should have told Novell to wait
We should have raised our service fees
If we had known for just one second
you'd be begging on your knees
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My experience was quite different. My first computer was a second hand box with 95 on it. I was a tinkerer, didn't know anything about anything (malware etc) but you can bet I learned how to reinstall windows 95. When I first installed linux I would dual boot because I couldn't get everything working. After time I got my linux partition doing everything I needed but I was still messing up my windows install. I just stopped reinstalling it. My tinkering just never seemed to render my linux installs unusable. It's good as a home desktop OS and has been for years, depending on who you are.
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No doubt. Red Hat is the only company that I know of that will support other vendors apps to the point of fixing it themselves, or even having one of their kernel devs patch Linux. If fact, Red Hat is the only company that I know of that can really claim that they can get fixes for customers directly in to both the mainline Linux kernel and Samba. My understanding is they'll also support any of the products created by the thousands of vendors that are part of the Red Hat Exchange. Microsoft just can't offer that, even if they wanted to.
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
On paper, RHEL is a tough sell against Windows. The pricing just isn't aggressive enough.
For CIO's with more foresight, migrating from Windows to Linux makes future migrations much easier. Since Linux is a very UNIX-y environment, it's relatively painless to move from one Linux flavor to another, or from Linux to another UNIX-y OS.
Migrating to or from Windows is the major point of pain. Once you can get away from Windows, it actually doesn't make a lot of sense to ever go back to it (again, because migrating the other way is so hard).
Linux, on the other hand, will run on every machine at the company. Everything from your cell phones to your desktops, x86 servers, midrange boxen, and mainframes. Your IT department can become far more efficient (read: less head count) managing UNIX and Linux across the enterprise instead of Windows on the desktops & low-end servers, something else on your bigger servers, something else on your phones, etc.
The Red Hat CEO also reported that the latest sun spots are a good reason to switch to Linux...
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!
Sure. 0 (not 0). Wow, that was easy.
Hey, I finally got my first freak! Took you long enough!
Categorically speaking, you can't prove it.
You can only prove it on a case by case basis. The exact same solution that saves one company money might cost another company more once you figure in required training, infrastructure, and staffing changes.
*sigh* back to work...
Where I work they buy recycled toner cartridges at half the price of new ones. The trouble is, you only get 1/10th as many pages before they peter out, and usually spill toner all over the inside of the printer, necessitating repairs.
I've found that managers aren't very smart.
There is argument about the cost of server software here, and seeing as how it's Red Hat speaking, that makes sense (I have no idea whether RH or MS server software is cheaper to run), but I don't understand why businesses are using Microsoft Office instead of Star Office. Is Star's spreadsheet really that bad? I haven't used it, I have no need for a spreadsheet at home and they use MS at work, but Star's word processor is as good for what I need (at home and work) as MS's.
Nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft.
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'I've had a couple of conversations with CIOs who said, "We're a Microsoft shop and we don't use any open source whatsoever, but we're already getting pressure to reduce our operating costs and we need you to help put together a plan for us to... use open source to reduce our costs."
This makes Jim sound like a complete tool. People who want to save money by switching to open source solutions typically don't go to Redhat. You really want to save money? Switch to CentOS or Debian/Ubuntu. Those are free. In my experience companies usually use free solutions for the majority of their server fleet. For systems that require commercial support (Oracle, Weblogic, etc) they will use RHEL.
And we've had other customers literally looking at ripping and replacing WebLogic or WebSphere for JBoss ...
On a personal note.....DONT DO IT! JBoss blows chunks compared to Weblogic 10. If you want a cheaper J2EE solution, look at Glassfish its getting a lot of attention and having used the last stable version it is actually pretty good.
not necessarily ease of use, but familiarity. Is Windows actually that much easier then Linux? I doubt it, its just that more people are familiar with windows so it gives the appearance that its easier then Linux
And you just hit the nail on the head as to why it will be hard for MSFT shops to switch. MCSEs are cheap and plentiful,whereas Linux gurus are the opposite. So while they can run a free Linux server edition and save upfront costs the first time they have a serious breakdown it is going to cost them. And the support contracts for distros like Red Hat(last time I checked,its been a few years) will eat any savings that they had from switching. Hopefully as cheap Nettops and Netbooks get more popular more when learn Linux and go into the field,but ATM Linux Server admins certainly ain't cheap nor plentiful.
Not trying to flame here,just stating what I've run into in the field. While there are some old Windows guys out there like me that love to learn new Operating Systems and all the little ins and outs,I have run into way too many MCSEs that if you took away WinServer would be as helpless as any non technical home user.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
There is, actually but it's not as well-known:
http://www.lpi.org/
I'm sorta slowly pursuing these. I think my favorite concept is that LPI does offer an Ubuntu-specific exam on top of the regular certifications you can get.
You're doing it wrong. The next time you need an HP Proliant server, ask your HP rep to bundle a 3-year Red Hat subscription/license with it. It will only add a few hundred dollars onto the cost of the server, far less than a Windows Server 2003/2008 license, and you'll get real support (1st and 2nd tier at HP, 3rd tier at Red Hat). Most servers are decommissioned after 3 years anyway.
The myth that Red Hat support is more expensive than Microsoft is just that, a Myth. With HP servers, I can get support for a few hundred dollars for 3 years. For Microsoft, several hundred dollars just pays for the software license. Support costs $300 an incident after that.
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
Nah, they just hire Linux weenies. Kids are cheap. And it's not like there aren't a zillion of them.
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