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Enterprise FOSS Adoption Beyond Linux Servers?
An anonymous reader writes "I am working with a couple of large companies that are purchasing web and collaboration software stacks from Microsoft, IBM and others. These are for thousands of end users and are (supposedly) ready for multiple data center deployment and other big-corp requirements. I have suggested some open source alternatives such as Liferay and Drupal, and the technical people are interested but management types are not. They have given a few reasons, such as concerns over supportability and enterprise-readiness, but my feeling is that they are being won over by FUD from large vendors and the fact that most corps do not have significant deployments of FOSS technologies beyond Linux yet. All this seems to be in line with a survey on Web-app servers by OpenLogic. So my questions are: How have you persuaded larger enterprises to adopt server-side OSS, beyond server-room Linux and a couple of demo JBoss boxes under someone's desk? And which products are truly ready for enterprise-scale deployment?"
Could someone re-write this story without the buzzword "enterprise" substituting for the actual requirements?
Until then, I will have to mod this down.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
I've plugged this before... but Sphinx is a great full text search engine. I've helped with a couple of production deployments and folks have been happy with it. The Ruby on Rails integration is good and the API is easy to use... for a simple demo including excerpt highlighting, try some searches on my military reading list site.
The Army reading list
I work for IBM, but don't speak for them in an official capacity. Open source is customer driven and not vendor driven. There is little incentive for anyone outside your company to push open source software because it reduces their profit. Ask your vendors to come up with solutions that use open alternatives, otherwise they are just going to push what makes them money. Software margins are high and ISV's are bribed to push it. I think MS gives 6% kickback to vendors that sells a license, which is a revenue stream lost when open source is used. Ask your vendors to present an open alternative alongside their proprietary ones. Same support that management demands, but less risk.
their own version of Open Office (Lotus Symphony) as the official internal standard this year (I work for them). MS Office will not normally be approved for internal use.
Maybe not true FOSS, but close.
Hard to argue for free software when the buyer's bonuses are based on saving % off MSRP (as it is in government contract procurements). Also if a big name like IBM or Microsoft crashes and burns nobody points the finger at you because there's an entrenched certification system for the monkeys maintaining the damn thing.
moox. for a new generation.
To evaluate the success of your recommendations, take a look in the mirror. What's your credibility to suggest anything at all when you have to come to (of all places) Slashdot for advice?
Large corps have lots at stake, and they really, really, REALLY are terrified of any solutions that aren't basically guaranteed to work by large, trusted vendors. Stuff that they consider to be a competitive advantage will be enshrouded in mystery while everything else will be outsourced to the most commodity vendor.
Now, compare 'Drupal' to 'Microsoft'. Maybe everybody HERE knows how painful it can be to get MS stuff to work, but nobody is going to be fired for saying MS because it's the biggest commodity vendor in the software space.
Look in the mirror: are you trusted there? When you are fired, who is MEGACORP going to go to when there's a problem?
These questions are being answered by PEOPLE who are afraid that if they make a risky decision, they will suffer the consequences. (get fired/sued/whatever) To sell your OSS solution you have to that there's no/little risk in going with it.
Good luck.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
I encountered this when I offered to set up open source web filters in each of our locations and save significant money compared to other solutions. Management agreed ipcop did everything we need, and would save a lot of money but was still hesitant. When I located local contractors in my city who could make changes if I was ever "hit by a bus" they gave me the go ahead.
If you are looking at open source consider opencms which has commercial support that your company can use when you leave or get promoted to another position.
Free Software invariably gets into the Enterprise as a skunkworks project. The managers you are talking to have a budget for a business portal. They want the project to succeed, so that they look good, and they aren't really interested in having money left over in the budget when they are done. They are shopping around for a solution, not a project.
If you really want to get Free Software into your business the proper way to do so is talk the manager in charge of the project into spending most of his money on a proprietary product that won't actually work. There are plenty of commercial offerings out there that are likely to be a bad fit for your business. Talk the manager in question into purchasing one of those, but make sure that he takes all of the credit. It shouldn't be hard if you spent the first part of the purchasing process pushing for Free Software.
Watch the portal project crash and burn.
Now fire up a basic portal on the Free Software platform of your choice. If possible pre-populate it with data and tie it into your existing authorization and authentication mechanisms. The idea is to have a working demo of most of the functionality that the executives wanted.
The downside of this method is that, if you do it enough, you eventually end up being forced into management yourself.
They are still recovering from having to replatform web servers to J2EE after some enterprising (courageous) hacker developed their first web site using PERL (before mod_perl days too...).
The "real programmers" looked at it and in their assessment they said that variables should not have $ or % or @ preceding them, that the code was hard to read because they couldn't understand that name => value syntax, and besides, there were all these cool J2EE framework things to play with that had containers and required lots of servers and n->tier architecture stuff that they learned about in their computer science courses.
Having done enough J2EE to suit anybody, and with a clear understanding of when n->tier architecture is appropriate (seldom for most web applications), and having done enough commercial database work to know my way well around all the big players, the real answer is that FOSS easily meets these needs (as you already know). I have seen enlightened companies deploy PHP frameworks including Drupal, a growing use of MySQL, adoption of XEN (it must die, please) and KVM, and you'll not find corporation doing any Java work that isn't taking advantage of an IDE that's built around Eclipse and includes all the lovelies like AXIS and EMF.
Patience grasshopper. Use business terms to win.
--> Scalability
--> Ease of Acquisition
--> Return on Investment
--> Speed to Market
Then point out that there are some awfully big companies who have done wonderful things on Open Source platforms that made them leaner, faster, and stronger. Companies like Sony, IBM, Oracle, Amazon, Viacom. I'd leave out that Wall Street uses a ton of FOSS to run their back office. They don't seem to be doing that well these days and we don't want FOSS to be blamed for anything ;-)
[Is it possible to get modded +5 Redundant?]
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Linux
Samba
MySQL
Postgresql
Apache
Perl
Python
Ruby
Gcc
PHP
Java
Asterisk
I think you will find all of these in large corporations. AKA "Enterprise" situations.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Thousands of users and multiple data centers is not the time to ask major stakeholders to leave their comfort zone. "Major vendor FUD" is not the issue, assuming it exists at all. When I have a major investment at stake, I don't need a saleman to tell me where the risks are. The single biggest problem with FOSS is that there is no one to share the risks with.
The time to introduce FOSS is with small non-critical projects. It's about boiling frogs. It's also about demonstrating that community support works without the threat of cancelled contracts and lawsuits. That takes a while.
It also takes some guile. It's a bit like the early days of the PC. At that time the typical IS Manager's attitude to the PC was "over my dead body." So we sold to the end user departments using their office equipment budgets (word processors, fax, telephone, copier) and flew under the IS radar. In one large Canadian federal government department, we had over 1500 PC's and 5 networks interlinked with an X.25 WAN before the ADM/IS noticed (it was the X.25 that got us. WAN came out of his budget). By that time there was nothing he could do. The trick is to introduce it a little bit at a time until it reaches critical mass.
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
Drupal case studies.
http://drupal.org/cases
And for Liferay
http://www.liferay.com/web//guest/products/portal/stories
Next question?
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I'm probably the only one here that read that and thought that migrating from LCARS to Linux might not be in the Federation's best interest. Although I'm sure that 300 years from now, all software is FOSS. ^_^
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
As a minor aside, the linked OpenLogic survey is useless. They only polled the people who joined their webinar--people already involved enough to be interested in a comparison of FOSS servers. That's one heck of a selection bias.
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
The biggest issue you need to overcome with FOSS projects in a business setting is supportability. For example, I'm on a project at the moment where I'm transitioning the customer from a proprietary unix solution onto multiple Oracle RAC clusters on Redhat; Oracle Application servers on Redhat; and Linux Virtual Server load balancing clusters, also on Redhat. This is fine, because the software stack from top to bottom is mainstream, supported by commercial vendors, and after I'm gone there is a well defined set of skills they can recruit against and train existing staff to replace me. Since getting here though I've discovered a few bespoke applications (developed in-house by people who have since left) written using Ruby on Rails. While the apps work well today, documentation is poor to non-existent, and no one is left now with skills to understand them, develop them if requirements change or support them. They aren't backed by a vendor, so if something goes wrong they're screwed. It's kind of their own fault: they gave free rain to someone who either wanted to do this stuff using his own favourite tools, or wanted a tick on his resume, instead of sticking with technologies in line with their core competencies. If you want to do something with Drupal for example, then make sure you're able to wrap it up in a support structure (from a vendor) that can give them the security they need. Another example: I convinced my current customer that switching to Zabbix for their server, application and network monitoring and alert needs would be a good thing, and they went for it. Why? Because while Zabbix is Open Source, it's also backed by a vendor (Zabbix) and they can buy a commercial support contract. In addition, being a FOSS project they could install and test it at no cost for as long as they like before making a decision and parting with their cash. So if you can tick all the boxes, you stand a much better chance of getting your ideas accepted.
And don't listen to anyone who tells you to sneak this stuff in through the back door. If it's under the radar then your employer is in for a nasty surprise if it goes wrong. And if it's business critical you'll find yourself pink slipped faster than you can blink.
JBoss has been pretty good at penetrating the corporate data center. I think Glassfish will do well also since it's backed by a company that already has a presence in many corporate data centers.
Since Liferay is a J2EE app, it should be a little easier since most corporate customers are already using the J2EE stack. Liferay also offers "enterprise support" if that means anything.
This might be a good time to call a Sun rep and give them your requirements and tell them you want an open source solution.
There was talk of Java Enterprise System being open sourced but I don't think that ever happened. If that's a more palatable solution for management, it might be cheaper.
Sun isn't very popular on here but they're good at getting open source into the enterprise... with support.
Dual Opteron < $600
The 'users' of a web filter are sysadmins. These expert 'users' are the ones who interface with the server and router software that runs a network.
In this discussion, we are talking about true end-users and the desire of sysadmin types to make them use a nebulous classification of software ('Linux') that only the expert can competently sort through to make a desktop work.
The management types instinctively know that what the author is trying to sell them isn't something most end-users can grasp. And that just doesn't float in an environment that normally centers around person computers and their distinct operating systems. Management might have to use this 'Linux' thing themselves, despite never really registering its Look and Feel. And they probably never will because it doesn't have one per se.
The only sure way to promote Linux-based desktops in a large corporate environment is to pitch a shift toward managed thin clients, and don't mention 'Linux' until much later. IT management understands that thin clients are a different paradigm than PCs, with the former being centrally managed by one or two sysadmins; they may even understand that Unix/Linux does thin clients well; they also won't let you anywhere near their middle- and upper-management PCs (glorified terminals are for peons).
In Germany and the other German speaking parts of Europe you'd have a hard time with Drupal too - but for entirely different reasons. Here Typo3 pratically owns the portal, intranet and CMS market. That's right. The FOSS Project Typo3 is the market leader for portal software in Germany and neighbours. The secondary market for soltions based on and built around Typo3 is way beyond critical mass and has been growing since around 2001. You have 3rd party vendors, "Typo3 Agencies" (an actual generic term - no joke!), a f*cking regular quarterly Typo3 magazine and hosters specialised on Typo3 with all the bells and wistles. Amazon.de scores around fourty (40!) hits for German books and training DVDs on Typo3 and Typo3 specific subjects. And if you're looking for a job as a web professional, it's more or less a safe bet to get into a little Typo3 & TypoScript - you'll get a gig in no time. Or at least a project or two to make ends meet. Even during this downtime there are serious job-offerings for this sort of thing.
Now if only T3 wouldn't be such a bizar behemoth operating system of a PHP CMS, I'd be really happy. But since it's open source, I guess there's not that much to moan about.
I'm a Joomla guy btw. I've seen the fucked up appmodel reverse enginered of a T3-DB of Typo3 4.0 and thus will not look at T3 again until the entire redo is finished in Version 5.0. :-)
Bottom line: MS and other proprietary vendors are a minority in this field in Germany and still businesses are thriving around the prime software solution which is FOSS. I don't see why this shouldn't happen other places aswell. It's not like German businesses are particularly known for their recklessnes or their lack of sense of quality.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
How? Easy: it met their three requirements for a third-party product
That's all it took, plus the hidden criteria, of course: it worked better than SCO.
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
I work for a small to medium sized company (4,000+). Our intranet group went with Drupal. It's been remarkably configurable. Some folks were pushing for SharePoint. To get there, we had a group (in-house) review current system types (static, CMS, Portal) and features of each group. Then made a decision as to what level we wanted to shoot for. SharePoint didn't sufficiently make the feature list, and Drupal (and others) did.
You forgot to mention that the salesman is paying for lunch after we finish the 18th hole, have you ever seen open source that does that?. -- the Management team
There are plenty of examples of web services running on Open Source for 'enterprise' use - groupware, CRM, accounting, the works. Some of these packages are very good.
Its hard to be specific/determine what you're trying to do without knowing more specifics as to what you're looking for. Of the groupware projects I'm aware of, I know the following have a fair amount of support/use:
* Plone CMS
* OBM
* eGroupWare
* Drupal
* Typo3
Of these, I know that Plone, Drupal, and Typo3 are all "platforms" for developing, managing, and extending content. I seem to recall either eGroupWare or OpenGroupWare extend/integrate with MS Office products. No, it's not going to be the level of integration that Sharepoint stuff offers, but it's something to mention, at any rate (and isn't going to have the massive licensing costs + perpetual lock-in that a MS solution has*).
Plone, in particular, has a lot of support and corporate/"enterprise" use. From their site:
Plone is among the top 2% of all open source projects worldwide, with 200 core developers and more than 300 solution providers in 57 countries. The project has been actively developed since 2001, is available in more than 40 languages, and has the best security track record of any major CMS.
It is owned by the Plone Foundation, a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization, and is available for all major operating systems.
Sources: CVE and Ohloh.
That alone is impressive enough; but also consider some of the notable companies which utilize Plone in/for a variety of purposes:
Akamai (yeah, that Akamai - the guys who load balance Microsoft web servers)
Nokia (QT Software stuff)
MyCity ("real time monitoring system for Cities, Towns, Districts or utilities. It makes use of the GPRS service offered by the various GSM network operators")
Discover Magazine
Novell, Inc. (for enterprise services)
NASAScience (public site for NASA's Science Mission Directorate)
FSF (yeah, those hippies)
universities, university science/it departments, hospitals, public/government sites... the list goes on.
Those are notable company names, and at least in the case of Akamai, Novell and Nokia, everyone in IT should know about them. They're also some fairly diverse (and expansive) implementations using the same central CMS - and they're not shackled to a single software backend, able to run on any OS and server combination they could imagine.
* The cost factor associated with MS solution lock-in is a big consideration, bigger than just a simple argument of something like "OpenOffice vs. MS Office". With a web-based, top-level technology like this, it's much, much more important to keep the technologies used "open" - because it is the top-level interface to all your data. You can not move away from a closed package on the backend without moving the entire system, at once, to something open (more often than not, with MS). You're basically stuck with that stack unless you want to start over; there's no ability to independently consider parts of the stack and replace them, as there often is with open systems.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
That's about the sum of it. Big "enterprise" is steeped in the "no one ever got fired for buying [large lumbering vendor]" culture. One of the advantages of small businesses is that they're nimble and willing to experiment, especially if they can realize cost savings along the way. Bigcos only started using Linux servers after they percolated their way up from the bottom, and that's going to be the case for every new grassroots technology, whether it's open source content management, open source collaboration, etc.
Gunning straight for the enterprise is a losing proposition.
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