The City of Largo has 15 years of WordPerfect documents and is in the process of moving over to OO running on Linux. A project to create a WP import filter has begun. We have joined monetary forces with several other people and contracts are being signed. Please, if you would like to contribute money to this project contact Josh (agliodbs at openoffice.org) and cc me (drichard at largo.com). We are hoping that it will ready in about 60 days and then will be placed into the OO build.
Microsoft coming in here and trying to do a 'top-down' push won't work. There operating system and software would cost a LOT of money, and require many more servers and support staff. What we have now is working, and responsive and stable. Local Governments are really often about money, Largo enjoys a very low tax rate, and part of that is because of low IT costs.
I've been getting email from people about this '
leaked memo' and wanted to let those interested know that in no way has our roadmap changed.
We were contacted by Microsoft, and they asked questions about how we have deployed Linux and what issues are keeping us from using more Microsoft products. We expressed concerns about licenses, and about the number of people that can be run on Windows in a centralized environment on the same hardware (about 1 to 5 compared to Linux) and how many more people we would have to hire if we moved in that direction. We had a short meeting with them to review the XP product line and see it running in person. We have some stand alone PCs that are running at our library for patrons and at some point those machines probably will be running XP, so we wanted to check it out. We also run some Citrix/WTS products on NT and wanted to review what their plans are for the future to ensure we can continue to run those programs.
We are still seeing Penguins for almost everything running here and in fact there are 3 servers sitting 15 feet from my desk that are spinning RedHat 7.2 right now and being prepared to enter production.
Nothing has changed...and we certainly appreciate those people that cared enough to drop us a line.
Dave Richards
City of Largo, FL (Yes, "City of Progress")
Systems Administrator.
That actually isn't true. WordPerfect runs in Xwindows on Unix. The bulk of the software here is running on Unix/Linux over Xwindows.
While Excel, Powerpoint and Access are currently coming from WTS on NT, they are going to be removed in favor of OpenOffice hopefully in FY 2002.
The 18GB of disk is used for just KDE and not other applications. Those are on other servers. The server could run on far less than 18GB, but you can barely get your hands on smaller drives now. WordPerfect, email and other items that are saved are on the other servers.
The 300,000 savings comes from projecting out having about 450 units, and swaping them out on 3 year rotations. 150 per year, budget 2000 each. 3 year upgrade cycles is not 'aggresive', and in fact about 1/3 of your users will be disatisifed with performance in the last year of the user of their machine. While thin clients are 750 dollars, they have a 10 year duty cycle. That comes to 75 dollars a year. A 2000 dollar machine every 3 works out to about 700 dollars a year. Plus you know darn well you have thrown a few extra parts into each of those machines during the 3 years. Some extra RAM, some extra harddrives, etc. The 750 dollar price for a thin client is a sealed terminal, with no moving parts. No extra costs, because nothing is upgraded.
I wish as you mentioned that no one here at Largo used email, because it should would make my life easier!;) In fact, all 800 employees have email and probably 600 of them are heavy users. Around 200-250 users are in email during the day. Email comes from another server, currently GroupWise on OpenServer. This isn't a shop where people just have a few green screen windows open. We have graphical software running all over here, some from NT and most from Unix.
The price quoted for Exchange is accurate, and perhaps could go higher. Everyone forgets that you have to start up the Win32 *client* software on NT then too in order to use it. It isn't just bringing up Exchange, its bringing up 250 concurrent Outlook sessions too on WTS. That means 800 NT logins, CALs. Centralized NT doesn't hold as many users, so then we have to bring up clustering, and *hope* we can run 50 users per server....and run 7 servers just to provide Outlook. Instead, using Bynari/Insight the server AND gui Client will all be brought up on the same machine. The post office will deliver email, and the 200-250 clients will all run on the one machine. The cost savings is high, along with much better stability.
Anyone that doubts this model is welcome to fly to Florida, we would be happy to give you a tour!;)
It probably would have helped to describe what the 10 people in Largo are doing. NONE of the 10 are allocated for desktop support.
1 - MIS Manager
3 - System Administrators (working on future projects, NOT working on desktop support).
2 - Programmer/ Analysts (working on software, NOT support desktops).
2 - Operators (Work fulltime support the standalone PCs - mostly at the library for patrons - NOT supporting desktops described in the article).
2 - Operators (Taking all calls that come into the help desktop, including software questions, settting up user accounts, changing tapes, ordering necesary hardware and software, and taking the occasional desktop question or problem).
It is known that each 50-75 PCs easily take 1 person to run. That means we would have 7-8 people running around here fixing machines. And since we can't increase the size of our staff that means that Admins and Programmers would be fixing PCs. I think that having 1/4 of 2 people supporting 400 desktops is a pretty desirable arrangement.
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The City of Largo has 15 years of WordPerfect documents and is in the process of moving over to OO running on Linux. A project to create a WP import filter has begun. We have joined monetary forces with several other people and contracts are being signed. Please, if you would like to contribute money to this project contact Josh (agliodbs at openoffice.org) and cc me (drichard at largo.com). We are hoping that it will ready in about 60 days and then will be placed into the OO build.
Thanks!
Microsoft coming in here and trying to do a 'top-down' push won't work. There operating system and software would cost a LOT of money, and require many more servers and support staff. What we have now is working, and responsive and stable. Local Governments are really often about money, Largo enjoys a very low tax rate, and part of that is because of low IT costs.
I've been getting email from people about this '
leaked memo' and wanted to let those interested know that in no way has our roadmap changed.
We were contacted by Microsoft, and they asked questions about how we have deployed Linux and what issues are keeping us from using more Microsoft products. We expressed concerns about licenses, and about the number of people that can be run on Windows in a centralized environment on the same hardware (about 1 to 5 compared to Linux) and how many more people we would have to hire if we moved in that direction. We had a short meeting with them to review the XP product line and see it running in person. We have some stand alone PCs that are running at our library for patrons and at some point those machines probably will be running XP, so we wanted to check it out. We also run some Citrix/WTS products on NT and wanted to review what their plans are for the future to ensure we can continue to run those programs.
We are still seeing Penguins for almost everything running here and in fact there are 3 servers sitting 15 feet from my desk that are spinning RedHat 7.2 right now and being prepared to enter production.
Nothing has changed...and we certainly appreciate those people that cared enough to drop us a line.
Dave Richards
City of Largo, FL (Yes, "City of Progress")
Systems Administrator.
That actually isn't true. WordPerfect runs in Xwindows on Unix. The bulk of the software here is running on Unix/Linux over Xwindows. While Excel, Powerpoint and Access are currently coming from WTS on NT, they are going to be removed in favor of OpenOffice hopefully in FY 2002.
The 18GB of disk is used for just KDE and not other applications. Those are on other servers. The server could run on far less than 18GB, but you can barely get your hands on smaller drives now. WordPerfect, email and other items that are saved are on the other servers. The 300,000 savings comes from projecting out having about 450 units, and swaping them out on 3 year rotations. 150 per year, budget 2000 each. 3 year upgrade cycles is not 'aggresive', and in fact about 1/3 of your users will be disatisifed with performance in the last year of the user of their machine. While thin clients are 750 dollars, they have a 10 year duty cycle. That comes to 75 dollars a year. A 2000 dollar machine every 3 works out to about 700 dollars a year. Plus you know darn well you have thrown a few extra parts into each of those machines during the 3 years. Some extra RAM, some extra harddrives, etc. The 750 dollar price for a thin client is a sealed terminal, with no moving parts. No extra costs, because nothing is upgraded. I wish as you mentioned that no one here at Largo used email, because it should would make my life easier! ;) In fact, all 800 employees have email and probably 600 of them are heavy users. Around 200-250 users are in email during the day. Email comes from another server, currently GroupWise on OpenServer. This isn't a shop where people just have a few green screen windows open. We have graphical software running all over here, some from NT and most from Unix.
The price quoted for Exchange is accurate, and perhaps could go higher. Everyone forgets that you have to start up the Win32 *client* software on NT then too in order to use it. It isn't just bringing up Exchange, its bringing up 250 concurrent Outlook sessions too on WTS. That means 800 NT logins, CALs. Centralized NT doesn't hold as many users, so then we have to bring up clustering, and *hope* we can run 50 users per server....and run 7 servers just to provide Outlook. Instead, using Bynari/Insight the server AND gui Client will all be brought up on the same machine. The post office will deliver email, and the 200-250 clients will all run on the one machine. The cost savings is high, along with much better stability.
Anyone that doubts this model is welcome to fly to Florida, we would be happy to give you a tour! ;)
It probably would have helped to describe what the 10 people in Largo are doing. NONE of the 10 are allocated for desktop support. 1 - MIS Manager 3 - System Administrators (working on future projects, NOT working on desktop support). 2 - Programmer/ Analysts (working on software, NOT support desktops). 2 - Operators (Work fulltime support the standalone PCs - mostly at the library for patrons - NOT supporting desktops described in the article). 2 - Operators (Taking all calls that come into the help desktop, including software questions, settting up user accounts, changing tapes, ordering necesary hardware and software, and taking the occasional desktop question or problem). It is known that each 50-75 PCs easily take 1 person to run. That means we would have 7-8 people running around here fixing machines. And since we can't increase the size of our staff that means that Admins and Programmers would be fixing PCs. I think that having 1/4 of 2 people supporting 400 desktops is a pretty desirable arrangement.