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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.
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?
The year of the Linux desktop is finally to come.
...again.
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
Cheap is a valid metric for evaluation. The employees will use what the company gives them to do the job the company asks them to do. These aren't personal gaming machines at your house.
I have found that combining Windows XP with FOSS is a good thing. You give people an OS they are know, along with software that doesn't cost you anything but the time it took to create the gold image.
My company saves money by buying our PCs used. We buy off-lease Dells for a pittance, and they already have the XP Pro sticker on them. Microsoft Tax? Not in this company. And we aren't talking about slacker machines, either. P4 with 2Gb RAM for a tad over $200 each.
Cheap PC + Windows XP sticker + FOSS = IT being able to buy more toys.
Bearded Dragon
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
Do not trust this signature.
As a manager, with 20+ years in the industry, I have solved the mystery.
"Golfware" is a term I invented to describe any combination of hardware and/or software that is purchased after a golf outing. Golf is powerful stuff; it enables non-technical people to make far-reaching technical decisions without spending the time to learn the details. You don't see open source on the golf course, and you have to understand open source to effectively utilize it.
There are people who actually CREATE solutions and those who merely SHOP for them. The "creators" can only rise so high in the org chart. Inevitably, somebody with a non-CS background becomes the "creator's" boss. Such people are inevitably "shoppers".
almost.
what they need to do is stop investing in vendor lockin.
dont write that new app in dot net, do it in java with open source libs.
dont use oracle/sql server, use postgres.
with that first step tidied up, moving to an open source app server running on linux is very simple.
or even moving to a closed source app server on linux. or aix. or solaris - your apps, if well written, will not need to change one bit.
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'.
Depends on the business. I got the top tech spot where I am precisely because of my background in both Windows and open source. Moving away from Windows as a host and development platform resulted in significant cash savings. We've even replaced a lot of our commodity workstations with Ubuntu and our productivity apps with a mix of GoogleDocs and OpenOffice.
Not only have we saved a lot of cash in licensing costs, but discovered that all the hype about increased training costs is just FUD. We haven't had any massive staff training costs, not even many calls to the help desk. The only ongoing annoyance is so many vendors want to use GoToMyPC and it doesn't support Linux. So we have to go scare up a Windows client.
Higher maintenance costs...FUD.
The line about paying more for qualified open source techs and developers is also FUD. We didn't have any problems replacing Windows only staff at competitive local rates. And our operating environment is so much calmer and more productive. You don't realize how much time you spend serving the Windows platform until you move away from it.
It's a pity it takes an economic crisis to get companies to look into a better way of doing business. You'll never make any progress taking advice from people invested in the MS platform, even if they're on your staff. The .NET developers said it would take us months to duplicate some of the systems they built, we did it in weeks. In one case days. We're down to converting the last couple core systems and the mood among the remaining .NET developers is grim. This is a bad time to be out looking for a job but I gave them a chance to get on board with the new order. We're shutting them down in the next couple months. Even the outsource vendors. I gave them the right answers the first day we met. Months later they're still trying to push .NET solutions.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
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.