First, I'm a *Nix fan (No, not Nicks, but they're alright too).
However, I thought the article was a little skewed. There were no technologies that are often employed with M$ products to reduce cost while they did mention some options from the Unix side. Also, they didn't objectify the results with anything but cost, but did approach the subject of support and upgrades without facts.
Take for example Citrix Metaframe. With Metaframe you can run apps hosted on a NT Terminal Server to any number of platforms (Linux, Unix, Mac,Windows, WinTerms, etc). If the university only had say, 250 users at any one time running Office, instead of purchasing 500 licenses, they could purchase 250. From Citrix Metaframe they could then simply limit the number of connections to the Office App to 250 to comply with licensing.
Linux clients could also connect to Metaframe and run office remotely as well.
I'm sure there are other options available as well. I think the articles like these try to find a "quick bullet" for comparison and miss many solutions that are provided by independent companies. Also, I think most Universities would consider a deployment of both Unix and Windows. On the backend, I would think a Unix/Linux solution would be a very solid solution, but on the front end they might want to offer a variety of platforms to their students.
I know in my 2 colleges attended I was locked into Macs the first time around (Not a bad thing, but when Windows came into the workplace I was behind) and the second was all Sun. (By then I was pretty much able to use any OS).
I'm still waiting to see a good report where all the factors are taken into the cost analysis, independent solutions are considered, and then I would actually like to see the estimated costs and then the final costs of the deployment.
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At least there is a stable browser on Windows. Still pissed with the crap I have to put up when using linux. ML.
First, I'm a *Nix fan (No, not Nicks, but they're alright too).
However, I thought the article was a little skewed. There were no technologies that are often employed with M$ products to reduce cost while they did mention some options from the Unix side. Also, they didn't objectify the results with anything but cost, but did approach the subject of support and upgrades without facts.
Take for example Citrix Metaframe. With Metaframe you can run apps hosted on a NT Terminal Server to any number of platforms (Linux, Unix, Mac,Windows, WinTerms, etc). If the university only had say, 250 users at any one time running Office, instead of purchasing 500 licenses, they could purchase 250. From Citrix Metaframe they could then simply limit the number of connections to the Office App to 250 to comply with licensing.
Linux clients could also connect to Metaframe and run office remotely as well.
I'm sure there are other options available as well. I think the articles like these try to find a "quick bullet" for comparison and miss many solutions that are provided by independent companies. Also, I think most Universities would consider a deployment of both Unix and Windows. On the backend, I would think a Unix/Linux solution would be a very solid solution, but on the front end they might want to offer a variety of platforms to their students.
I know in my 2 colleges attended I was locked into Macs the first time around (Not a bad thing, but when Windows came into the workplace I was behind) and the second was all Sun. (By then I was pretty much able to use any OS).
I'm still waiting to see a good report where all the factors are taken into the cost analysis, independent solutions are considered, and then I would actually like to see the estimated costs and then the final costs of the deployment.
Never going to happen, but would be nice.
ML.