Hold on there. You're talking (typing?) like I'm the one who make all the IT decisions in my company (I don't).
First of all, because of the MS's recent deal with Turbolinux, Turbolinux has now become an option for us--one option out of many, mind you. Turbolinux wasn't even on our radar before. Nowhere in my post did I state that we were going with Turbolinux. If you must know, we are considering Red Hat among numerous other options.
Secondly, you are going with the assumption that all businesses of the world think the same. You obviously don't understand how traditional Japanese businesses work (most people don't--how could they? They only way they would be able to understand is if they were to actually work for one, which is something I would not recommend). The gist of things is that people are promoted to higher positions in the company based on their age, not on their relative level of ability/talent, or even experience in the field (it is normal to have people work sales, then switch to accounting, to IT, to HR, etc. This is done, I think, so that employees have a wider view of the business, which is a good thing. The only drawback is that you have a bunch of generalists, not specialists).
Obviously, this has great implications for IT (i.e. having 55 year old, conservative, Japanese men with limited knowledge of the industry). In general, decision making tends to lean towards what is known or what is mainstream, and what maintains the "harmony" of the company.
So, from the standpoint of a conservative, 55 year old salary man with a limited scope of the industry and who does not want to 'rock the boat', Turbolinux is a viable option because (1) he's heard of it ("what's Ubuntu? What's SuSE?"),(2) because, contrary to what you may have heard, Turbolinux is (relatively speaking) mainstream in Japan (my company actually owns a few Turbo Linux servers), (3) and because Turbolinux has shiny new deal with MS guaranteeing greater operability between the two systems (i.e. Linux and MS working in harmony together. Harmony, harmony, harmony...).
Admittedly, I'm not actually sure if we are considering Turbolinux because it is "made in Japan." I will have to retract everything I said about that. So, yeah, forget I ever said anything about that issue.
Wow, so much hate. Is there anybody out there who actually works in an IT shop in Japan? No? Just me? Okay.
The only two viable Linux distributions at the enterprise Level are Red Hat, and Turbolinux (sorry Vine). But Turbolinux has been on the decline for some time, and due to the growing intrest in Ubuntu and SuSE Turbolinux is feeling the squeeze.
I think that this deal could be huge for Turbolinux. You have to understand, MS is the norm, the standard, the *everything* in Japan. Linux exists but it is waaay fringe, fringe stuff. The company I work for is looking to upgrade an enterprise wide system (everything is MS here), so naturally I see it as a perfect opportunity to begin to integrate Linux/Open Source and the benefits that come with doing so. We've been talking to a lot of big vendors. When I ask them their stance on open source they laugh at me. They litterally laugh at me. They tell me something to the effect that "this is Japan; Japan is Microsoft." They gave me blank stares when I asked them if they knew what "Ubuntu" or "MySQL" was (well, one or two people knew what MySQL was). None of the vendor solutions we have seen so far is compatible with non-MS/Oracle technology.
So given the assumption that Japan is a Microsoft world, if you wanted to integrate Linux wouldn't you want to use a distribution that played nicely with your existing MS infastructure with minimal hassle? Wouldn't you want a distribution developed in your native country by people who understand Japanese culture? (And beleive me, Japanese corporate culture is waaaay different from Western corporate cultures). Of course you would--to a Japanese "salaryman" it is a no-brainer issue.
With this latest move by Turbolinux, my company is now considering the viability of incorporating Turbolinux into our infrastructure. We will be running tests. Maybe we'll go with Turbolinux, maybe we won't. Either way, this is a good move for Turbolinux (how MS will benefit remains to be seen...).
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Hold on there. You're talking (typing?) like I'm the one who make all the IT decisions in my company (I don't).
First of all, because of the MS's recent deal with Turbolinux, Turbolinux has now become an option for us--one option out of many, mind you. Turbolinux wasn't even on our radar before. Nowhere in my post did I state that we were going with Turbolinux. If you must know, we are considering Red Hat among numerous other options.
Secondly, you are going with the assumption that all businesses of the world think the same. You obviously don't understand how traditional Japanese businesses work (most people don't--how could they? They only way they would be able to understand is if they were to actually work for one, which is something I would not recommend). The gist of things is that people are promoted to higher positions in the company based on their age, not on their relative level of ability/talent, or even experience in the field (it is normal to have people work sales, then switch to accounting, to IT, to HR, etc. This is done, I think, so that employees have a wider view of the business, which is a good thing. The only drawback is that you have a bunch of generalists, not specialists).
Obviously, this has great implications for IT (i.e. having 55 year old, conservative, Japanese men with limited knowledge of the industry). In general, decision making tends to lean towards what is known or what is mainstream, and what maintains the "harmony" of the company.
So, from the standpoint of a conservative, 55 year old salary man with a limited scope of the industry and who does not want to 'rock the boat', Turbolinux is a viable option because (1) he's heard of it ("what's Ubuntu? What's SuSE?"),(2) because, contrary to what you may have heard, Turbolinux is (relatively speaking) mainstream in Japan (my company actually owns a few Turbo Linux servers), (3) and because Turbolinux has shiny new deal with MS guaranteeing greater operability between the two systems (i.e. Linux and MS working in harmony together. Harmony, harmony, harmony...).
Admittedly, I'm not actually sure if we are considering Turbolinux because it is "made in Japan." I will have to retract everything I said about that. So, yeah, forget I ever said anything about that issue.
Wow, so much hate. Is there anybody out there who actually works in an IT shop in Japan? No? Just me? Okay.
The only two viable Linux distributions at the enterprise Level are Red Hat, and Turbolinux (sorry Vine). But Turbolinux has been on the decline for some time, and due to the growing intrest in Ubuntu and SuSE Turbolinux is feeling the squeeze.
I think that this deal could be huge for Turbolinux. You have to understand, MS is the norm, the standard, the *everything* in Japan. Linux exists but it is waaay fringe, fringe stuff. The company I work for is looking to upgrade an enterprise wide system (everything is MS here), so naturally I see it as a perfect opportunity to begin to integrate Linux/Open Source and the benefits that come with doing so. We've been talking to a lot of big vendors. When I ask them their stance on open source they laugh at me. They litterally laugh at me. They tell me something to the effect that "this is Japan; Japan is Microsoft." They gave me blank stares when I asked them if they knew what "Ubuntu" or "MySQL" was (well, one or two people knew what MySQL was). None of the vendor solutions we have seen so far is compatible with non-MS/Oracle technology.
So given the assumption that Japan is a Microsoft world, if you wanted to integrate Linux wouldn't you want to use a distribution that played nicely with your existing MS infastructure with minimal hassle? Wouldn't you want a distribution developed in your native country by people who understand Japanese culture? (And beleive me, Japanese corporate culture is waaaay different from Western corporate cultures). Of course you would--to a Japanese "salaryman" it is a no-brainer issue.
With this latest move by Turbolinux, my company is now considering the viability of incorporating Turbolinux into our infrastructure. We will be running tests. Maybe we'll go with Turbolinux, maybe we won't. Either way, this is a good move for Turbolinux (how MS will benefit remains to be seen...).