|
|
Login/Become a Member! | 32 Comments
|
| | Comments are owned by the poster. We aren't responsible for their content. |
Re: Part II: Corporate Desktop Linux - The Hard Truth
(Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Feb 15, 2005 - 07:56 PM
|
And so your solution is - continue to do the same while Bill gets richer and richer?
Not to mention that your competitors might not do the same - which means their costs go down while yours goes up - forever (or until you are put out of business)...
There comes a time when you have to bite the bullet and make a switch from one technology to another.
That time is now for switching from Linux to Windows.
Nothing says it has to be done overnight...With some decent planning (I know, no such thing in corporations, but still...) it can be done in a manner to minimize disruption.
Your legacy apps are going to go away some day - might as well start planning it now and turn it into an asset rather than a liability.
Because some day Microsoft-based apps are going to be looked on the next "Year 2000 bug"...
|
Re: Part II: Corporate Desktop Linux - The Hard Truth
(Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Feb 16, 2005 - 03:53 AM
|
The Bitland Prince makes a great point, but does not go far enough. I do kernel work in both Windows and Linux so I am well aware of the technical superiority of Linux over Windows. This is great for the Hackers and the like. Unfortuately I.T. Managers have more to concider. Like the whole reason for having I.T. in the company is to lower the cost of doing business AND to enable the company to capture more business from its competitors. Even if you half the TCO by migrating to Linux this does a company no good if doing this breaks the business processes it needs to function, and most of the time such a migration will. This can mean opportunity costs far in excess of what the company saved on TCO of it's computers. Microsoft are very good at writing there software so that it becomes part of the company that uses it so that it is very costly to get rid of.
A perfect example was given in the comparision between TheGimp and Photoshop (althought I am a paintshop pro man myself). No point in a product being free if it does not help you make money, which is what businesses do.
All most business do is buy/sell stuff, maybe add some value. They tend to have the attitude if it aint broke, don't fix it. And since they are happy making money they would concider Windows/Office to be not broke. It does what they want and they are not about to put $millions of business are risk just to save $thousands on IT. These are the real reasons most companies dont migrate, and they are not technical but business reasons.
Now if you were starting out from scratch you would be crazy to buy into Microsoft cancerware, but that is another story........
|
Re: Part II: Corporate Desktop Linux - The Hard Truth
(Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Feb 16, 2005 - 04:22 AM
|
That is more a question of long term planning.
Where do you think the Linux applications will go in the longer term. Will there be a Photoshop for Linux? Will there be an import filter in OpenOffice.org which can convert the scripts?
Of course, if you have lots of People using MS Office scripts you can't easily within a short time switch to Linux. But you can still save money by introducing OOo to the people in your company who DONT need MS Office scripts. As the boss you can tell all your staff to try to switch more and more of the scripts over to OOo, and in the end (after 5 years) you will have only very few scripts remaining that need MS Office. Then it will be paying off to make the switch complete and discard your old MS Office.
Also think about what an upgrade from MS Office 97 to MS Office 2003 does to your scripts. I know what it does, because in my company some people had to make that switch. I comes down to completely rewriting your scripts, because old bugs in VB you programmed around are removed, but sometimes replaced by other bugs which need completely different handling. So in effect you have to compare not "Cost savings over 3 Years with Linux" versus "Switching costs", but "Cost savings over 3 Years with Linux" versus "Switching cost to Linux minus switching cost to XP".
I always look at the case where that famous string-maker (guitar strings and the likes, I do not remember his name) in America was raided by MS and decided to make his company Windows-free IMMEDIATELY, ON THE SPOT (because he was angry). He had to go through all the trouble (finding replacement apps, finding competent sysadmins, ...) you would expect from such a move. But in the end he not only was MS - free, but his switching costs were less than anticipated.
I think, if you plan your switch in too much detail you end up with too many scripts and in-house programs (you know, all these little geenies) being transferred by the conversion guys. If you just put the new Linux box as "the new computer" next to the old Windows machine, ensure that data can be copied back and forth and tell the guy that within 2 months he should be working almost exclusively with the new machine, then after 2 months look at what tasks he still performs with the old one because there is no simple replacement, you will find that tere are maybe 1 to 2 apps remaining at each business unit that require some extra attention to get them moved to the new platform. Then you focus on these apps, and do not try to make an exact copy of each old business process. In fact, this switch can lead to new business processes being created, which are more efficient than the old ones, because human beeings are lazy, and if you HAVE to make a rewrite this is the time for the programmer to make it better than last time.
Do not fear the change, use it to become more efficient.
|
Re: Part II: Corporate Desktop Linux - The Hard Truth
(Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Feb 23, 2005 - 10:41 AM
|
Except nothing had any relevance to switching the OS. Really, these are application migration issues, which if you are reading along, you probably identified (and resolved) long before you got to this point. In any case, I must have missed the part in the article where he advocated shoving a square peg in a round hole.
Application quality has *nothing* to do with OS migration, if you are doing it properly. Less so now than ever. First you migrate the applications, if you can't find acceptable alternatives, than you may not be able to migrate those *specific* platforms, or you may need to find another way to deliver those applications. But in most environments those platforms would be the exception, not the rule, so it's moot anyways.
A couple of other points:
The problem with real professional graphic designers is not taking their Windows Photoshop license from their cold dead hands, it is taking that one-button Mac mouse from their cold dead hand. Allthough that is starting to change, traditionally, Mac's kick blanking plate over PC for graphic work.
OO vs MSO, macros and scripts concerns. That isn't an OS or application thing at all. That more properly is a thick vs thin issue. The question is the desirability of storing business logic is such a dispersed format, with the attendant liabilities and issues, vs storing business logic and data seperately and centrally and gaining better control, consistency, and survivability. Not to mention a whole lot less of a reliance on the computing skills of your users... In any case not an OS switch issue, you'll have that problem with OO on windows too.
OO and no Access. So what? I have yet to see an Access deployment that wouldn;t have been better handled by a real RDBMS. Cost traditionally has been the obstacle, one which certainly is not the case anymore. This too is more a thick/thin issue than an OS issue, but the real issue is the right tool for the job. Access, in my recent experience is never the answer, and quite often the problem.
VS and Eclipse. Apart from shoving square pegs into round holes again... Let's face it, if you can't migrate a platform you don't. As for language and compiler switching, well why wouldn't you? If your enironment is Linux machines, compiled using gcc, written largely in C, is it so compelling to code applications using a different compiler, in some largely unsupported language? Bottom line, you select the IDE for your environment and needs.
What the article is discussing is evaluating OS switching, what you have brought up are either edge cases or issues for the thick vs thin debate.
As for the fallacious "quality" argument. What defines "quality"? You apparently believe Microsoft is delivering a plaform of or for quality applications. What makes them "quality" applications? That is a subjective value assessment, and has no basis in a cost analysis. The application either does everything you need, or it doesn't. If it doesn't you can either get the vendor to make the changes or make them yourself. This concept of "quality" is fallacious and flawed, worse still, deliberately misleading. After all, what is so "quality" about proprietary data file formats? What is so "quality" about black box applications which obfuscate and conceal their workings?
|
|
|