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Cendant Putting Linux in 4,000 Hotels
sean dreilinger writes "Hotel franchisor eyes low cost, stability of Linux, but says the OS has its drawbacks.
Cendant Corp., the world's largest franchisor of hotels, is rolling out Linux servers at about 4,000 hotels to run the company's hotel management software.
" It's on the server side, but still a large rollout, nonetheless...
But once an app is installed, you don't really need to worry about it any more.
When I worked in tech support hell the biggest problems I faced were when users had installed something new:
Me: Good morning companyname, Joe speaking
User: Hi. I just installed the internet my mainframe. Now your program won't print.
Me: That sound odd. Will any other programs print?
User: I don't know. I can't start them. There's no mousey thingy on the screen.
Me: Can you tell me what is on the screen sir?
User: Just the normal screen. But it's blue and it's got all this white text on it
Me: (on mute) Bugger. (to customer) Have you got your NT rescuse disk handy?
User: I don't know. Where do I keep it? Can't you just dial in a fix this...
How often do you hear of Linux users reinstalling their OS for anything other than sheer enjoyment?
With Linux how often does upgrading a piece of shareware render a real app useless because of some obscure file being overwitten?
With Windows it has to be done just because you install/remove a simple (well it should be) browser.
For power users Linux can be a joy. We get our hands dirty setting it up, marvel at it's stability then break out fdisk and start again.
For people like my Mum this is insane behaviour. Unfortunatley for Mum she has been through the process twice in the last year. And geek or not, reinstalling Windows just isn't fun.
my blog: good times, man, good times
This so called 'upgrade' was annouced about 2 years ago. the official label is 'Project PowerUp'. In reality, it is the biggest piece of horse-shit FUBAR'ed rollout I have ever had the displeasure of even being remotely involved in.
/. material. Suffice to say that if this was a vendor we had hired, we would have dragged them into the parking lot after the first day, tied them to a tree and beat them with a keyboard. An old IBM 5250 keyboard.
I am the lead analyst at a property management company that owns several hotels that are being
forced to perform this upgrade. I will not go into the down and dirty details of this since it is not appropriate
There are three different property management systems available. Each property is assigned a system based on the size of the hotel/motel. The three systems are:
1- Linux based system from HSS (well it was HSS about 18 months ago, its beeen bought out several times during this upgrade).
2- Win 95/Lantastic (no shit) system from MSI
3- Win NT system from Anasazi
The Linux system is the bottom of the line system for the smallest hotels. Virtually no support for call accounting, in-room movie, credit card, point of sale, catering or voice mail systems. This system is the pits. Its not the fault of Linux, its just a poor product from a mediocre (at best) software company.
The MSI system sucks as well. The fileserver is Windows 95 using Lantastic networking. What mental giant thought this up? These are critical systems that need to run 24x7. This is the system we've been stuck with and its actually semi-stable after massive tweaking.
The Anasazi system is not even being installed. After two years it still cannot pass quality control.
The bottom line....
This install IS NOT GOOD PRESS FOR LINUX!
Due the the crappy software installed on the linux system and the the total lack of ability of the Cendant and Synergy (who are doing the actual nstalls) installers, these installs are almost always complete failures. The small franchise owners who do not have a computer department and who are not familier with computers are litterally begging to be 'upgraded' to the MSI system.
Arrgh! My brain hurts just thinking about this (*^$%$@$! I need beers....
Usually the suits hire consultants to tell them what they want to hear. If the suits want Linux,
/.-ers, but not all suits are M$FT backers. In a big company you will have some
they hire themselves a Linux consultant to tell them Linux is the best thing since sliced bread.
If the suits want M$FT, they hire a MS consultant to tell them the appropriate thing.
In the consultant biz, you are hired for what you'll say, not what you'll do. The suits want
to know what you'll say before they hire you. Consultants that spring surprises don't last very long.
In contrast, you are paid for what you'll do, not what you say you'll do. Consultants who forget
this often end up spending too much time on a project making their $$/hour drop like a rock.
If you want to be a consultant, be pretty sure you can do what you say you can do.
That's why many consultants still recommend M$FT. This is what the suits want you to say,
and the consultants know this is what they can do. Until the suits are convinced they want Linux,
consultants have no choice but to offer M$FT or they won't get hired in the first place.
It may surprise some
suits behind every possibility (no matter how wacky). It's just up to now, they were ignored.
However, it only takes a few converts before the tide switches the other way (as we have seen
lately).
-extecher
This is getting off topic, but Edmund tickled something that I've been thinking about for quite a while now. If this is already being worked on, brand me as a fool, but otherwise, please read on. Here goes (proceed laughing, if appropriate):
Why not write an X server that uses binary modules for just about everything? I mean the kernel does it right? Why not just have video/mouse/monitor/joystick/keyboard binary modules? There would be a base code that does the very basic framebuffer stuff and then you attach an output module for your specific video card/monitor combination. Then there would be another module for your keyboard layout/mouse type. This way video card manufacturers could publish binaries for their video cards. For that matter, monitor vendors could distribute binaries for their monitor specs. I think you get the idea about how far this could go though. This would also cut down on the amount of bloat that X has (face it, X isn't pretty) and allow video card manufacturers to publish drivers without having to give up their proprietary specs.
Think about it. It would be very lean and only have support for what is currently needed (just like a modularized kernel). Distributions could compile everything as a module (just like they do for the kernel) and during setup, write the config file that will load the appropriate drivers for the current configuration.
Gordon
PS I'd be interested in what people have to say about this idea. Please mail me with your thoughts. Heck, if there is enough interest, I might start a project.
"Linux's less-mature setup infrastructure increases the up- front work required to deploy an application, but companies find the struggle worthwhile because Linux is more stable than Windows NT."
- Andrew Allison
I don't know about the rest of you, but personally, I'd prefer to choose good over easy every time. This is an intelligence thing. The intelligent would rather struggle than accept inferior solutions.
... and today's pet project has
Well the people who work in these hotels
doubtless have wordprocessing, and payroll
and so on. It would be easier for me to
train people to use CRT or whatever than
to train them to use CRT, StarOffice, GnuMeric,
and whatever accounting packages that don't
even exist yet, they probably want to print,
they sure don't want to learn TeX... or even
what lpr is...
Okay, so bring it on... What full-charge accounting systems are available for linux?
Don't write to me about CBB. QuickBooks and
Peachtree probably work fine under VMWare, but
that doesn't count.
Point is, there is a whole world of software
that hasn't been touched by the free software
community, nor even developed *for* the free
platforms... Probably because it lacks interest
for technologists. We have a surfeit of
applications that are useful to technologists (various nerds) (you), but we are talking about
the desktop application market... So who's working on accounting, billing, ledger, payroll
and ics systems? These are things that really
do need to be mature before suits will buy them.
I don't think I'd base a real business' inventory
or trial balance on beta software. I'm not trying
to pull MS vs. AlternativeOS strings here, just
realizing out loud that the sort of computerization
desired in a business like a hotel might not be
provided in the current free software idiom.
The accounting software for Windows isn't that good either! (so don't take this comment the wrong way!)
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
To make some kind of point as to how easy linux is to setup, in the past three days, I:
- Built a PC from spare parts I had (p60 MB, 16MB RAM, VGA, 2 ethernet cards, 150 & 250MB HDs, and fd0).
- Made 9 floppies for Debian install (first time using Debian was the same week.)
- Installed Debian base, manually configured DHCP to get my cable modem.
- Ran dselect, which ftp'd the rest of what I needed (GNU, etc.)
- Recompiled the kernel w/ IP masqing
- Setup ethernet & IP masqing
- Coming to you live right now off a IP masq'ed windows box with my very own web server in my closet running debian linux. Took me 2 1/2 days. Now I just have to put some web pages up
:)
This is the reason I get annoyed when technical competent people (like hotel sysadmins) complain about the hard installation of linux.--
Let's look at the reason Windows has better driver support than Linux. How many video drivers has Microsoft written? How many video drivers has the XFree86 project written?
The problem is that all the video drivers for Linux are being written by a third party. Nowadays, if you buy a new video card and use it with Windows, most of the time *IT WILL NOT WORK IN ANYTHING BUT 640x480x4bpp*
The reason? Windows has no driver support.
"Say what?"
That's right kids. Windows doesn't have driver support; the manufacturers do. In fact, if you were to compare Windows to Linux (XFree86 in particular) in terms of video card support, Linux is miles ahead. The reason devices are supported in Windows is that manufacturers write drivers and give them to you with the video card. THAT is what makes the card work.
Now let's analyze why manufacturers can't release drivers for Linux. Support for video has been traditionally put into the X server (with the exception of fbcon, of course). Adding support means that you would either have to make your own X server, hand over the specs, or force you to sign an NDA for the specs.
Now how can we prevent this?
I'm no expert, but as far as I'm concerned, writing a set of drivers for Windows is relatively easy for the designers of the chipset who know all the features inside out. But writing a driver for XF86 means releasing the source. And Windows video drivers are more of a "plug in and go" thing. So what we need is an X server which supports binary-only video drivers which can be loaded when it is starting. That way, a manufacturer can write a driver, compile it, release the binary, and the user can specify it in the configuration and go.
Poof. No NDA, no harrasing, less trouble. We don't get the benefit of Open Source, but we do get more hardware support. If the drivers are buggy, well, we can't do much about it. But hey, it can't be THAT much worse than Windows, can it?
- ed