Enterprise FOSS Adoption Beyond Linux Servers? 227
An anonymous reader writes "I am working with a couple of large companies that are purchasing web and collaboration software stacks from Microsoft, IBM and others. These are for thousands of end users and are (supposedly) ready for multiple data center deployment and other big-corp requirements. I have suggested some open source alternatives such as Liferay and Drupal, and the technical people are interested but management types are not. They have given a few reasons, such as concerns over supportability and enterprise-readiness, but my feeling is that they are being won over by FUD from large vendors and the fact that most corps do not have significant deployments of FOSS technologies beyond Linux yet. All this seems to be in line with a survey on Web-app servers by OpenLogic. So my questions are: How have you persuaded larger enterprises to adopt server-side OSS, beyond server-room Linux and a couple of demo JBoss boxes under someone's desk? And which products are truly ready for enterprise-scale deployment?"
-Enterprise (Score:5, Insightful)
Could someone re-write this story without the buzzword "enterprise" substituting for the actual requirements?
Until then, I will have to mod this down.
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Thank you. Of course you can, you just need to know how to use LDAP, rather than some proprietary solution built on top of LDAP (Active Directory, EDIR) which probably never really fit you 'enterprise' needs to begin with. (Buy more plugins! Plugins, modules, and extensions! Gotta get 'em all!)
Re:-Enterprise (Score:4, Informative)
That's perfectly doable on Linux, and SunRay systems have been doing it for years...
There are all kinds of ways to do this... LDAP, Kerberos, SSH keys and client certs (if you've authenticated to your user account and got access to your homedir then all your user specific keys/certs are there)..
On the other hand, having a single password to access anything is not the most secure option, it's a case of convenience over security.
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Hey, I love single signon's. Make sure your email and bank account have the same password, so I can shoulder surf my way into your life. Oh wait, I don't even need to look, your machine already has a keystroke logger. :)
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Actually, that's exactly how many "enterprise" requirements are stated by the managers. If your new Open Source tool doesn't play ball with somebody's fancy new scanner/sign-on tech (that the company spend $100k on 5 years ago) then it gets put on the shelf... and the company uses a technology that does play nice.... like Sharepoint!
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aw c'mon I was happily enjoying some food until you posted that.
sharepoint - to file sharing as Excel is to databases
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Yeah, because you certainly won't find nerds at Microsoft and Apple!
Re:-Enterprise (Score:5, Insightful)
You just got out of Microsoft school, didn't you?
In the real world, the majority of servers are *nix based, with the majority of those being Linux. You'll find them all over the place.
Yes, you'll need to learn the CLI to do it right. Playing point and click just doesn't cut it in the higher levels. Even in the higher levels of Microsoft stuff, you'll need to know how to use their CLI, except it's not well documented, and a quick Google search won't tell you all the answers.
Wait until you have to start programming. Don't worry, if you get beyond help desk support for your local ISP, telling people how to renew their DHCP lease, you'll have to (oh my gosh) actually type things. Since you're probably unaware, the nifty point and click programs were actually written out and compiled. They didn't just start life as pretty interfaces. When you start scripting (batch, VB, Perl, PHP, or whatever) you'll live in the CLI. That is, unless you live on crutches provided to you by others.
I'm a *nix/Linux admin. I get pulled into the Windows arena on occasion. Because I'm really good at what I do, it's assumed I'm good at anything. The truth is, I'll figure it out faster than most people, which is why they call me. Once I had to add several hundred new sites to an IIS web server. They were pointing and clicking, and wondering why the occasional one didn't work (you missed a click). I wiped out the 10 sites that they had done by hand, and scripted the whole thing. My script took less than 20 minutes to write, and less than a minute to execute. It would have taken them days to get all the sites entered and fixed, and even still, customers would have called complaining because particular check boxes weren't clicked when they should have been.
Linux and open source are in the enterprise, and they're going to stay. They are the future, and Microsoft is struggling to keep up. But hey, MS is all you know, it's what you learned in your tech school, so you could get your MSCE, and now you hang it proudly in your cube at your call center. Congratulations. If you want to succeed, pick up some more skills. Linux, Solaris, and AIX are a start. MySQL, and Oracle, Apache are good too. Pick up Perl, PHP, shell scripting, and maybe get some decent exposure to C*. Go get your Cisco cert too. Once you're there, then you're allowed to play with the big boys. Until then, sush up and answer your support calls from housewives who can't figure out what the mouse is. Don't forget those winning Microsoft skills you picked up. Once you've shown that you are great at what you do, you'll still be asked to fix office computers because they have malware or some mysterious crashing problem.
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Aw, that was chill. :)
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you're still glowing... chill some more.
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Hehe.
I don't have an MCSE, because I don't want one. :) I was talking to some folks who are experienced with the test side of that. From what I've been told, you're drilled on the test until there's no way you couldn't know the answers, and then you take the test. So, you're exactly right. Unless the real world problem arises from a test based problem, it's very likely they will have to call someone for help.
I won't say that's true of everyone though. Say I
Re:-Enterprise (Score:4, Insightful)
I never have to worry about paying an additional software licensing fee to a vendor when my PostgreSQL database passes the 10 GB boundary, or when I add another server on the domain, or when I install an extra CPU in a server. I never have to worry about being unable to buy an additional new copy of my Linux distribution. I don't violate any terms of use when I post performance comparisons or feature complaints or any other comment about the products.
Now on the bright side, I think open source software has become so good partly as a reaction to the good moves by proprietary vendors. OpenOffice plays catch-up to Microsoft Office. The various open source VMs play catch-up to VMware and such. PostgreSQL keeps racing to try and match Oracle, DB2, and SQL Server. But the gaps are getting very narrow, in some cases open source has a clear lead, and the open source licensing advantages are a very strong argument all by themselves.
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You know--"Enterprise", "Enterprisy", ... (Score:2)
Well, let's see. It has to be priced at at least $2,000,000, so the big boss can say "Whatever the price is, we get half off!" and save the company a million dollars. And also, uh, what were we talking about?
Re:You know--"Enterprise", "Enterprisy", ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:-Enterprise (Score:5, Interesting)
Enterprise is not a buzzword. People in management like a single sign-on system and a well-knit integrated system that works, not a bunch of assorted code each in a silo that needs a separate login. At my place we have these open source apps:
1. Linux servers - 7 of them, mostly file servers
2. JBoss servers - 1, we are trying to replace a Websphere-based Insurance app with JBoss
3. One Or Zero Helpdesk software, which has been customised for multiple support functions such as ICT, HR, Accounts, Payroll, Purchase, Inventory etc.
4. DotProject - To manage 'scheduled' medium and long term tasks (not breakdowns or ticket-based tasks)
5. Zimbra - Experimenting with Zimlets, we still use Exchange; Zimbra is servicing couple domains with about 220 users
6. Open NMS / Nagios for Network Monitoring and alerts - works in sync with One Or Zero
7. B2Evolution Blog software - seems to be the best fit for our needs, better than WordPress according to our programmers.
8. PACS-One - open source PACS system for a hospital in the same group
9. Exodus chat tool.
10. We also use Joomla, vTiger CRM, Subversion and Tortoise SVN and other bits and pieces of FOSS code as starting points for some projects.
All of the tools from 3 to 9 have been customised to use a single sign on system and centralised user management. Reply below this post with your email id if you like more details to be emailed to you.
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Sphinx for full-text searching (Score:3, Interesting)
I've plugged this before... but Sphinx [sphinxsearch.com] is a great full text search engine. I've helped with a couple of production deployments and folks have been happy with it. The Ruby on Rails integration is good and the API is easy to use... for a simple demo including excerpt highlighting, try some searches on my military reading list [sphinxsearch.com] site.
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> try some searches on my military reading list site.
Doh. Make that here [militarypr...glists.com].
Use the big vendors to assist (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Use the big vendors to assist (Score:4, Interesting)
Vendors should really rethink this...
Whatever they sell, they will have to support anyway...
If they sell an MS product they might get 6%, but if they sell OSS then they get 100% of whatever they sell it for... OSS isn't about zero cost, it's about freedom to use and modify the code in any way you choose. You can sell the OSS products for 7% of the cost of the MS products and still make more money off them....
It's win win for ISVs really, if the client wants to pay for something, let them pay for OSS and you keep the whole cost, and it can still be a cheaper option... If they don't want to pay then OSS is your only choice but you can afford to give it away for free because you didn't pay for it in the first place.
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Sadly enough, I know some IBM employees. They're on their last weeks. Their jobs have been outsourced or eliminated.
IBM is adopting (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe not true FOSS, but close.
Re:IBM is adopting (Score:4, Insightful)
I've used Lotus Symphony (and use OpenOffice at home). To me, it actually seems slower than MS Office and is a little bit of a pain to work with at times. Unfortunately for me, saying MS Office was "nicer" is not a hip thing to do on Slashdot, but it's unfortunately true. At least in my case.
Re:IBM is adopting (Score:5, Insightful)
I use OpenOffice under Ubuntu (and MS Office only when I absolutely must). I agree that OO is slower and less polished. But I have found that it gets the job done, and the MS Office interface has its own issues (I'm among the hard-core ribbon-haters).
The great thing about IBM adopting symphony is that this should lead to improvements in the software. Nothing like eating your own dog food to make it taste better.
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MS office is faster launching (by several factors on my PC), the UI is more polished. But the 80/20 rule states (as you say) that OO would be enough for the vast majority.
It will be interesting to see how IBM will handle this internal change, while the customers keep using MS Office, and sending MSO documents.
Re:IBM is adopting (Score:4, Funny)
(I'm among the hard-core ribbon-haters)
The hard-core ribbon haters now have a support group. It's called "Everyone". We meet in the bar at 5:30 PM local time.
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I just used Symphony today for the first time and I must say the polish on it is really impressive. It was extremely easy to use and I didn't have any compatibility issues with my old MS Office created documents.
I did notice however that in Symphony Documents, my options for creating fields were all missing! A minor nuisance to be sure, but fields are nice...
In any case, the lack of an OpenOffice database equivalent made me switch back to OpenOffice. I kind of get the feeling Lotus Symphony was designed for
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It definitely looks more polished than OO.org, I agree. But still less pretty/polished than MS Office. I'm not an anti-ribbon person, I don't really care either way... but having used Office 2003, 2007, OO.org, and Symphony actually all fairly extensively, I would take MS Office over OO.org/Symphony.
But it's hard to say no to Free. :) (but that doesn't prevent me from saying MS Office is a better polished product, and if someone wants to pay for that, then I have no problem with that..)
Re:IBM is adopting (Score:5, Insightful)
So open format standards are more important than overall software quality? Not sure I really agree with that.
I would.
It does seem counter-intuitive, but an open standard at least guarantees that your documents will be readable if you conclude the software you are using does not meet your needs. You simply get a new program and leave the documents be.
An open standard means a more level playing field. And that means some evolution can occur.
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Doesn't really matter tho, it uses open standard formats to store the data which is the most important part.
I don't care what software other people use, so long as their choices don't reduce my choice (like proprietary formats often do).
Nobody ever got fired for... (Score:5, Interesting)
Hard to argue for free software when the buyer's bonuses are based on saving % off MSRP (as it is in government contract procurements). Also if a big name like IBM or Microsoft crashes and burns nobody points the finger at you because there's an entrenched certification system for the monkeys maintaining the damn thing.
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Kind of insane really since being an MCSE doesn't mean shit if Microsoft crashes and burns and isn't around to write patches for you anymore.
At least if you went with IBM(depending on the product) there's a smidgin of hope that the community or your own developers can patch your business critical piece of software.
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Need to talk to whoever devised such a system then, because it's completely open to abuse...
Some big vendors need to offer OSS based products with a ridiculously high MSRP, and then offer 99% discounts to anyone who asks...
Bonuses for buyers should be based on how much of the assigned budget they save while still fulfilling the specified goals.
Re:Nobody ever got fired for... (Score:4, Insightful)
Sadly this is how it actually works in Texas. Maybe not at the local level, but state education contracts are deterimned by total discount as a percentage rather than total dollars saved. Educational contractors have evolved their pricing so that their actual asking cost is 50% (or so) of the MSRP in most cases. High dollar bidding is a bizzare art/dark magic and is completely void of any reason. Fortunately I don't work in state contracts so I'm not breaking any NDAs by saying this.
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Hard to argue for free software when the buyer's bonuses are based on saving % off MSRP (as it is in government contract procurements).
So then wouldn't you just include in the quote something like "Comparable solution using Microsoft Software would cost $x"?
IMO vendors should be doing that anyway.
Look in the mirror (Score:5, Insightful)
To evaluate the success of your recommendations, take a look in the mirror. What's your credibility to suggest anything at all when you have to come to (of all places) Slashdot for advice?
Large corps have lots at stake, and they really, really, REALLY are terrified of any solutions that aren't basically guaranteed to work by large, trusted vendors. Stuff that they consider to be a competitive advantage will be enshrouded in mystery while everything else will be outsourced to the most commodity vendor.
Now, compare 'Drupal' to 'Microsoft'. Maybe everybody HERE knows how painful it can be to get MS stuff to work, but nobody is going to be fired for saying MS because it's the biggest commodity vendor in the software space.
Look in the mirror: are you trusted there? When you are fired, who is MEGACORP going to go to when there's a problem?
These questions are being answered by PEOPLE who are afraid that if they make a risky decision, they will suffer the consequences. (get fired/sued/whatever) To sell your OSS solution you have to that there's no/little risk in going with it.
Good luck.
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Linux got accepted because some big vendors like IBM started supporting it. Until you can get some big trusted vendors to start supporting these apps, they won't see large-scale deployment in the enterprise.
Re:Look in the mirror (Score:5, Insightful)
What's your credibility to suggest anything at all when you have to come to (of all places) Slashdot for advice?
Presumably better than if he was the type to pretend he knows everything.
Large corps have lots at stake, and they really, really, REALLY are terrified of any solutions that aren't basically guaranteed to work by large, trusted vendors.
Is this a rational fear? It probably is for hardware, where the big vendor can overnight replace the entire system for you after a rat eats it, but what about software where the failure causes are different? How does responsiveness and the effectiveness of that response compare between the various guarantees? How often is this actually needed?
Now, compare 'Drupal' to 'Microsoft'. Maybe everybody HERE knows how painful it can be to get MS stuff to work, but nobody is going to be fired for saying MS because it's the biggest commodity vendor in the software space.
isn't this essentially the classic definition of FUD ("nobody ever got fired for buying IBM equipment" [wikipedia.org])?
To sell your OSS solution you have to that there's no/little risk in going with it.
Or that the benefits outweigh the risk, else why would pretty much everyone run Windows instead of something that people don't bother to write viruses for?
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Yes it does matter for software. Moving from system to system IS A MAJOR PAIN and very expensive.
And Yes going to Slashdot is just dumb.
Why is it dumb?
Because if you don't treat FOSS as a professional system to start with why should anybody believe you.
So what this guy should have done is go the the Drupal website and then found this page. http://drupal.org/cases [drupal.org]
Golly gee case studies about how Drupal can be used. Just like you would find at any closed source vendors site.
Interested in Liferay?
Guess what th
Re:Look in the mirror (Score:4, Interesting)
>What's your credibility to suggest anything at all when you have to come
>to (of all places) Slashdot for advice?
Presumably better than if he was the type to pretend he knows everything.
I'm sorry, I didn't mean this as an attack - just a statement of reality. Is the OP trusted by the organization he's representing? I suspect not. Look at it from the perspective of a mid-level suit to see what I was trying to communicate. I respect OP for learning, and eventually he/she/it will understand this lots better. But don't confuse those who pretend to know with those who actually do!
Is this a rational fear?
Does it matter? It's there, and it's both real, and reinforced by widespread anecdote. Who hasn't heard of a migration disaster or three? Having a demonstrably strong organization willing to commit to supporting your OSS solution goes a long, long way: how else do you think IBM manages to sell OSS-based solutions?
isn't this essentially the classic definition of FUD?
Yes. And FUD often works because it's a real effect that manifests on real people.
Re:Look in the mirror (Score:5, Insightful)
Aside from hardware (game controllers, mice/mouses[?], keyboards, etc.) what does Microsoft guarantee to work? I have read their EULAs. Heck, I even worked second-tier Windows support back in the day. They expressly disclaim all warranties, stated or implied. There _is_no_guarantee_ that Windows or Microsoft Office will work for any purpose. They do not guarantee that it will work, and they certainly won't guarantee that Microsoft Excel can properly add 2+2.
With all warranties expressly disclaimed, HOW does "REALLY are terrified of any solutions that aren't basically guaranteed to work by large, trusted vendors" make expensive proprietary software a better choice than free/open source solutions? The industry entrenched around the theory that you need it, and you will NOT take your mouth off the teats of Microsoft and you will need expensive training and "maintenance."
Finger-pointing? What happens when a proprietary product reaches EOL and support is required? Many companies require you to purchase the new product even before you can purchase the support incident - if they will even support the old version at all. Who fixes the product then? If you need data recovered, it takes someone deciphering the data format with a hex editor, or trying to make heads and tails of a closed-source vendor's idea of a database schema.
When an open-source product loses its backing (project is abandoned, the company which created it is sold or closes, or whatever) who can fix it? Whatever developer you can find who knows the language the product was coded in. Worst case you'll still have access to your data and can migrate it to something else, but in most cases you can get the defect fixed and move on in life and get back to doing your real work.
When looking at it objectively:
Which is the bigger risk?
Which is the safer bet?
You might argue that Microsoft is stable and isn't going anywhere soon, but on the other hand, all you bought was 20 seats of office (or "pirated" (arrrgh!) one across 20 workstations) and to a company with $100 billion in the bank, your threat to go elsewhere if they don't fix your bug in $f00, it's less than the buzzing of a mosquito. It's not even head lice to them. They couldn't care less because a) they already have your money b) you're too small to give a squat about and c) you're ("you" in this hypothetical situation, not "you" specifically) stupid enough to keep buying their product even when they do not fix their bugs.
So, the bug will not be fixed, and you still will pay for the product. That is just how life is. However, F/OSS would have given you the software for free (BONUS!) and you would have been able to get the bug fixed. Now, it is true perhaps that fixing the bug might cost more (if you had to hire a developer to fix it for you) than Microsoft Office would have cost you, but on the other hand, the fact remains that you could fix it and gain access to your data and get on with making a living.
Now, in an "enterprise" situation I would think that in a situation where there is no warranty, and there is an option costing millions with limited hardware support and a limited lifetime and risk of lawsuits in the event of "license" "violations" and there is a free option where the support is JUST AS GOOD, if not better, supports more server-grade hardware, there is NO risk of per-seat "license" "violations" AND the source is available so you know that at worst you can have your IT department fix it, it should be a no-brainer.
Unfortunately, swag and kickbacks convince suits otherwise.
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And you're telling me this because... why again?
I've bet the farm on Linux with great success. Our CentOS server cluster does well north of 99.95% uptime and excellent performance. Our normal client(s) replace anywhere from 1-5 servers with our out-sourced solution, where we serve over a hundred clients from a single cluster of 6 servers. Just ONE of our clients replaced some dozen heavily-loaded servers with our software solution, solving the same set of problems, and we didn't even notice the load increa
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This is just one anecdote, but my institution just screwed up big time trying to implement a set of web services including a CMS. I'm a peripherally involved user. The implementation was such a disaster that the boss has put everything on hold. Best guess is that we will rip everything out and start over. It's that bad.
What's interesting is that the IT folks required, from the outset, the use of commercial products running on Microsoft server; open source was ruled out, and an expensive consulting firm was
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If you're already a MS shop, sure you won't get fired for buying it. But, what happens when something breaks, you can't fix it, and when you call MS support (and pay for it), the solution takes hours.
Like, the old Exchange had a problem when it's mail database got too large. It simply wouldn't handle mail any more. The fix was to rebuild and recompress the database. On the little network that I had to work with it on, it took at least 8 hours. We made it mandatory for Frid
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What's your credibility to suggest anything at all when you have to come to (of all places) Slashdot for advice?
Well, actually over the years I've got plenty of helpful advice from /.
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They very well could be if they recommend hobbyware that will not even scale to 4GB (most MS fanboys have never even SEEN the server or 64 bit versions) and you have a large application and a pile of top end hardware that could only ever run MS stuff in virtual machines. You also got the old advertising drivel wrong, it was "nobody gets fired for buying IBM".
The other argument is comparing
I have worked for big companies worldwide.... (Score:2)
As have done several of my buddies and former buddies, all of them Slashdot users.
There is nothing wrong with asking Slashdot, this stupid snobbery has got to stop frankly...
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Nobody got fired when our IT department spends a week of 24 hour days chasing virii out of the Windows Server racks. Meanwhile, all of us *NIX people just sit back, watching the thing probing ports or firing off malformed URLs in our systems' logs. To no effect. Its not the TCO to the organization, or the lack of administrative expertise. We've got multiple systems, experience with both and there's never been a clear advantage for Microsoft products.
I think its because most people are lazy. Microsoft can sp
how to make management happy. (Score:4, Interesting)
I encountered this when I offered to set up open source web filters [ipcop.org] in each of our locations and save significant money compared to other solutions. Management agreed ipcop did everything we need, and would save a lot of money but was still hesitant. When I located local contractors in my city who could make changes if I was ever "hit by a bus" they gave me the go ahead.
If you are looking at open source consider opencms which has commercial support that your company can use when you leave or get promoted to another position.
Not quite (Score:3, Insightful)
The 'users' of a web filter are sysadmins. These expert 'users' are the ones who interface with the server and router software that runs a network.
In this discussion, we are talking about true end-users and the desire of sysadmin types to make them use a nebulous classification of software ('Linux') that only the expert can competently sort through to make a desktop work.
The management types instinctively know that what the author is trying to sell them isn't something most end-users can grasp. And that jus
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Then they get somebody else that knows about sendmail, apache or whatever. I don't know about the USA but in a lot of places they start the students off with linux beacuse it is a really cheap teaching tool - where I am every single IT graduate knows the basics of the platform and where to get more information. So long as you don't make your home gro
Don't ask permission (Score:5, Informative)
Free Software invariably gets into the Enterprise as a skunkworks project. The managers you are talking to have a budget for a business portal. They want the project to succeed, so that they look good, and they aren't really interested in having money left over in the budget when they are done. They are shopping around for a solution, not a project.
If you really want to get Free Software into your business the proper way to do so is talk the manager in charge of the project into spending most of his money on a proprietary product that won't actually work. There are plenty of commercial offerings out there that are likely to be a bad fit for your business. Talk the manager in question into purchasing one of those, but make sure that he takes all of the credit. It shouldn't be hard if you spent the first part of the purchasing process pushing for Free Software.
Watch the portal project crash and burn.
Now fire up a basic portal on the Free Software platform of your choice. If possible pre-populate it with data and tie it into your existing authorization and authentication mechanisms. The idea is to have a working demo of most of the functionality that the executives wanted.
The downside of this method is that, if you do it enough, you eventually end up being forced into management yourself.
Re:Don't ask permission (Score:5, Funny)
This is a horrible idea.
I suspect it would work, though.
You're learning... (Score:2)
Microsoft has been doing exactly the opposite for years.
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Hm. So you talk up a non-free (expensive) solution. You then watch the manager take all credit. You expect all blame to go on manager. Right. What's your credibility now? If I was your manager and you talked up this expensive proprietary product and it crashed and burned AND made me look bad, you're not going to be sticking around too long.
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No, you make it clear that you like the Free Software solution. In fact, for the plan to actually work you have to actually prefer the Free Software solution. More than that, you need to be able to get the Free Software solution to do what is needed. In short, don't try this unless you are confident that you can make the Free Software product work for you. Of course, experimenting with Free Software isn't particularly expensive. It can even be fun.
When the manager then shoots down the Free Software p
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Either way, you are basically steering the project manager into a bad decision.
If I were a manager and one of my IT guys DIDN'T warn me that this or that wouldn't work, and I paid a lot of company money for it, I'm faced with two options, in my mind...
Maybe I'd make a weird manager, I don't know, but I'd rather have my IT guy be comp
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First of all, I would like to thank you for a series of excellent posts. Seriously, very well done.
To a certain extent my responses have been tongue in cheek. I have always liked my direct report managers. In fact, I have never worked for someone that I didn't feel had my best interests in mind. Now that I have some managerial experience myself it was clear that my previous bosses had a great deal of skill and knowledge. In fact, I would consider most of my bosses to be more intelligent than I am. I
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I try. :P :) Hopefully I didn't get too biting... in part, I was probably responding to the idea that some people do seem to have a "managers are all out to get you, so it doesn't matter what you do to them" mentality, no matter who the manager is. I'm actually fairly new to the whole business world thing, but even with good employees, the sort of corporate gossip and frustration (lack of patience and understanding, etc) is kinda ... weird, to me.
The for-our-division method seems like it would be a better
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The managers you are talking to have a budget for a business portal. They want the project to succeed, so that they look good, and they aren't really interested in having money left over in the budget when they are done
That was last year's business plan. This year, you have to achieve the same level of business support with a drastically reduced budget. You want your manager to look good - send him to the board with a successful project implemented for free.
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You've had two staff members that tricked you into expensive proprietary solutions that subsequently failed and then they tried to save the day with Free Software.
And you fired them.
Let me guess, you either work for AIG or GM.
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I've noticed in a number of occasions that Open Source stuff is often a double-edged sword.
You get it in, and it works - it does its job silently and unobtrusively. It has no visibility, no notable interfaces that say "this is open source/Linux" or anything like that. Contrast that to something like Office or Sharepoint which is noticeably branded "Microsoft" - whether through icons, widgets, actual branding. It's always visible, for good or (often, when it's not working) bad. But at least it's visible.
The business side of things (Score:2)
More often than not, what the managers care about is the support. They want to know that they can call someone when the implementation goes sideways and get solutions. They like the fact that Microsoft or IBM can point a finger at a previous deployment and say, "We did the exact same thing that you want to do for this other client over here, and it works. Go ahead, call them." The Microsoft and IBM people have the consulting resources and implementation teams to throw at the project. They have the road
CGI Scared them... (Score:2, Interesting)
They are still recovering from having to replatform web servers to J2EE after some enterprising (courageous) hacker developed their first web site using PERL (before mod_perl days too...).
The "real programmers" looked at it and in their assessment they said that variables should not have $ or % or @ preceding them, that the code was hard to read because they couldn't understand that name => value syntax, and besides, there were all these cool J2EE framework things to play with that had containers and req
Bender says ... (Score:2, Funny)
[Is it possible to get modded +5 Redundant?]
Okay how about. (Score:4, Insightful)
Linux
Samba
MySQL
Postgresql
Apache
Perl
Python
Ruby
Gcc
PHP
Java
Asterisk
I think you will find all of these in large corporations. AKA "Enterprise" situations.
Re: (Score:2)
Or any of these: Twiki, Media Wiki,Joomla, Bugzilla, Trac ...
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Oh, come off it. MediaWiki is not enterprise-scale. It works just fine on FAR bigger deployments.
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Premature (Score:5, Interesting)
Thousands of users and multiple data centers is not the time to ask major stakeholders to leave their comfort zone. "Major vendor FUD" is not the issue, assuming it exists at all. When I have a major investment at stake, I don't need a saleman to tell me where the risks are. The single biggest problem with FOSS is that there is no one to share the risks with.
The time to introduce FOSS is with small non-critical projects. It's about boiling frogs. It's also about demonstrating that community support works without the threat of cancelled contracts and lawsuits. That takes a while.
It also takes some guile. It's a bit like the early days of the PC. At that time the typical IS Manager's attitude to the PC was "over my dead body." So we sold to the end user departments using their office equipment budgets (word processors, fax, telephone, copier) and flew under the IS radar. In one large Canadian federal government department, we had over 1500 PC's and 5 networks interlinked with an X.25 WAN before the ADM/IS noticed (it was the X.25 that got us. WAN came out of his budget). By that time there was nothing he could do. The trick is to introduce it a little bit at a time until it reaches critical mass.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No, the single biggest problem with FOSS is the illusion that MS or other proprietary vendors will share some of your risk. When this illusion is shattered, the rest of the problems are trivial.
Re: (Score:2)
How about this (Score:3, Informative)
Drupal case studies.
http://drupal.org/cases [drupal.org]
And for Liferay
http://www.liferay.com/web//guest/products/portal/stories [liferay.com]
Next question?
Enterprise? (Score:3, Funny)
I'm probably the only one here that read that and thought that migrating from LCARS to Linux might not be in the Federation's best interest. Although I'm sure that 300 years from now, all software is FOSS. ^_^
Useless Survey (Score:3, Insightful)
As a minor aside, the linked OpenLogic survey is useless. They only polled the people who joined their webinar--people already involved enough to be interested in a comparison of FOSS servers. That's one heck of a selection bias.
Do it right and tick all the boxes (Score:4, Interesting)
The biggest issue you need to overcome with FOSS projects in a business setting is supportability. For example, I'm on a project at the moment where I'm transitioning the customer from a proprietary unix solution onto multiple Oracle RAC clusters on Redhat; Oracle Application servers on Redhat; and Linux Virtual Server load balancing clusters, also on Redhat. This is fine, because the software stack from top to bottom is mainstream, supported by commercial vendors, and after I'm gone there is a well defined set of skills they can recruit against and train existing staff to replace me. Since getting here though I've discovered a few bespoke applications (developed in-house by people who have since left) written using Ruby on Rails. While the apps work well today, documentation is poor to non-existent, and no one is left now with skills to understand them, develop them if requirements change or support them. They aren't backed by a vendor, so if something goes wrong they're screwed. It's kind of their own fault: they gave free rain to someone who either wanted to do this stuff using his own favourite tools, or wanted a tick on his resume, instead of sticking with technologies in line with their core competencies. If you want to do something with Drupal for example, then make sure you're able to wrap it up in a support structure (from a vendor) that can give them the security they need. Another example: I convinced my current customer that switching to Zabbix [zabbix.com] for their server, application and network monitoring and alert needs would be a good thing, and they went for it. Why? Because while Zabbix is Open Source, it's also backed by a vendor (Zabbix) and they can buy a commercial support contract. In addition, being a FOSS project they could install and test it at no cost for as long as they like before making a decision and parting with their cash. So if you can tick all the boxes, you stand a much better chance of getting your ideas accepted.
And don't listen to anyone who tells you to sneak this stuff in through the back door. If it's under the radar then your employer is in for a nasty surprise if it goes wrong. And if it's business critical you'll find yourself pink slipped faster than you can blink.
rain = reign (Score:2)
I know, I know. Long day and I'm tired.
All over the place... (Score:2)
Companies these days are deploying OSS all over the place, they just tend to use commercially supported distributions of it.... The trick to getting something installed, is to have a recognized vendor sell it.
A lot of OSS is deployed without companies even realizing what it is, a lot of commercial products use OSS heavily but don't say so in the marketing literature... You might get one or two paragraphs buried deep in the technical documentation or an offer to provide sourcecode to some components as requi
The recession is the best argument. (Score:2)
The software is cheap.
But the fact remains, when the software doesn't work- we can *make* IBM or Microsoft spend thousands of dollars analyzing and FIXING the problem (even if it requires a software patch). We can't *make* a group of random people do that.
I am totally pro FOSS in my personal life. But when my job depends on it, I'd use Microsoft/IBM/etc. on the back end unless the FOSS solutions were absolutely rock solid. My company is so huge that both Microsoft and IBM have had to rewrite portions of
Re: (Score:2)
Multi-million annual dollar contracts for products and services with both companies.
No- we can't retain staff with the necessary technical skill to deal with problems when something mysteriously doesn't work.
The red hat idea is decent if it were treated the same as IBM / Microsoft. You pay them a lot of money for products and then require that they support you for that business to continue.
But a wimpy support contract doesn't generate that kind of support.
Re: (Score:2)
I use all of those products except Scribus at home. Some of them at work.
Businesses like money, then they like things to work. FOSS being cheaper will be attractive in these hard times. But you still need your 30 million record files processed reliably without needing a large expensive support staff. Tho if it were *ME*, I'd have a large support staff and clip a million bucks off the CEO's salary.
Technical -vs- Management (Score:2)
and the technical people are interested but management types are not.
Why do the management people think they should override a technical recommendation? Do they not trust their staff? Is the staff misrepresenting something?
Technical: Vendor X provides the best quality, most reliable screwdrivers. They come in all the sizes we need. Vendor Y does not provide the sizes we need. Therefore, we recommend Vendor X.
Management: No, use Vendor X.
I'll admit that this does happen sometimes. But usually the problem is either that the technical staff isn't providing a solution that
Liferay and Glassfish I thin (Score:3, Informative)
JBoss has been pretty good at penetrating the corporate data center. I think Glassfish will do well also since it's backed by a company that already has a presence in many corporate data centers.
Since Liferay is a J2EE app, it should be a little easier since most corporate customers are already using the J2EE stack. Liferay also offers "enterprise support" if that means anything.
This might be a good time to call a Sun rep and give them your requirements and tell them you want an open source solution.
There was talk of Java Enterprise System being open sourced but I don't think that ever happened. If that's a more palatable solution for management, it might be cheaper.
Sun isn't very popular on here but they're good at getting open source into the enterprise... with support.
Come to the German speaking parts of Europe (Score:5, Interesting)
In Germany and the other German speaking parts of Europe you'd have a hard time with Drupal too - but for entirely different reasons. Here Typo3 [typo3.org] pratically owns the portal, intranet and CMS market. That's right. The FOSS Project Typo3 is the market leader for portal software in Germany and neighbours. The secondary market for soltions based on and built around Typo3 is way beyond critical mass and has been growing since around 2001. You have 3rd party vendors, "Typo3 Agencies" (an actual generic term - no joke!), a f*cking regular quarterly Typo3 magazine [yeebase.com] and hosters specialised on Typo3 with all the bells and wistles. Amazon.de scores around fourty (40!) hits for German books and training DVDs on Typo3 and Typo3 specific subjects. And if you're looking for a job as a web professional, it's more or less a safe bet to get into a little Typo3 & TypoScript - you'll get a gig in no time. Or at least a project or two to make ends meet. Even during this downtime there are serious job-offerings for this sort of thing.
Now if only T3 wouldn't be such a bizar behemoth operating system of a PHP CMS, I'd be really happy. But since it's open source, I guess there's not that much to moan about.
I'm a Joomla guy btw. I've seen the fucked up appmodel reverse enginered of a T3-DB of Typo3 4.0 and thus will not look at T3 again until the entire redo is finished in Version 5.0. :-)
Bottom line: MS and other proprietary vendors are a minority in this field in Germany and still businesses are thriving around the prime software solution which is FOSS. I don't see why this shouldn't happen other places aswell. It's not like German businesses are particularly known for their recklessnes or their lack of sense of quality.
Three things, including an O'Reilly book (Score:4, Interesting)
How? Easy: it met their three requirements for a third-party product
That's all it took, plus the hidden criteria, of course: it worked better than SCO.
--dave
Re: (Score:2)
Linux 0.98? Wow! If I might ask, what'd it ship on?
We are doing this now with Drupal (Score:2, Interesting)
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That's one thing to like about Drupal: it provides an (optionally) very minimal tool set/framework upon which you can build pretty much anything without mucking into the actual Drupal internals. It's "object oriented web design", which is very nice.
Plenty of examples! (Score:4, Informative)
There are plenty of examples of web services running on Open Source for 'enterprise' use - groupware, CRM, accounting, the works. Some of these packages are very good.
Its hard to be specific/determine what you're trying to do without knowing more specifics as to what you're looking for. Of the groupware projects I'm aware of, I know the following have a fair amount of support/use:
* Plone CMS [plone.org]
* OBM [obm.org]
* eGroupWare [egroupware.org]
* Drupal [drupal.org]
* Typo3 [typo3.org]
Of these, I know that Plone, Drupal, and Typo3 are all "platforms" for developing, managing, and extending content. I seem to recall either eGroupWare or OpenGroupWare extend/integrate with MS Office products. No, it's not going to be the level of integration that Sharepoint stuff offers, but it's something to mention, at any rate (and isn't going to have the massive licensing costs + perpetual lock-in that a MS solution has*).
Plone, in particular, has a lot of support and corporate/"enterprise" use. From their site:
Plone is among the top 2% of all open source projects worldwide, with 200 core developers and more than 300 solution providers in 57 countries. The project has been actively developed since 2001, is available in more than 40 languages, and has the best security track record of any major CMS.
It is owned by the Plone Foundation, a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization, and is available for all major operating systems.
Sources: CVE and Ohloh.
That alone is impressive enough; but also consider some of the notable companies which utilize Plone [plone.net] in/for a variety of purposes:
Akamai (yeah, that Akamai - the guys who load balance Microsoft web servers)
Nokia (QT Software stuff)
MyCity ("real time monitoring system for Cities, Towns, Districts or utilities. It makes use of the GPRS service offered by the various GSM network operators")
Discover Magazine
Novell, Inc. (for enterprise services)
NASAScience (public site for NASA's Science Mission Directorate)
FSF (yeah, those hippies)
universities, university science/it departments, hospitals, public/government sites... the list goes on.
Those are notable company names, and at least in the case of Akamai, Novell and Nokia, everyone in IT should know about them. They're also some fairly diverse (and expansive) implementations using the same central CMS - and they're not shackled to a single software backend, able to run on any OS and server combination they could imagine.
* The cost factor associated with MS solution lock-in is a big consideration, bigger than just a simple argument of something like "OpenOffice vs. MS Office". With a web-based, top-level technology like this, it's much, much more important to keep the technologies used "open" - because it is the top-level interface to all your data. You can not move away from a closed package on the backend without moving the entire system, at once, to something open (more often than not, with MS). You're basically stuck with that stack unless you want to start over; there's no ability to independently consider parts of the stack and replace them, as there often is with open systems.
Don't even try. (Score:4, Insightful)
Gunning straight for the enterprise is a losing proposition.
Re: (Score:2)
even security thorough obscurity.
The Romulans have a cloaking device too, you insensitive clod!
Re: (Score:2)
When times are good, avoiding the unknown is a pretty decent strategy. You might not maximize profits; but you'll do OK on average, and
Re: (Score:2)
Whether you use WebSphere from IBM or Sharepoint from Microsoft, you have the ability to leverage an API and develop a custom solution around something that has a few things.
1. A community.
2. Documentation
3. Support
Now I am all for open source in an environment that deems it important, but having an SLA for a solution that is now going to become your intra/extranet is important -- and Drupal doesn't provide that. Sharepoint does, and so does Websphere.
All these things are available for open source solutions as well. If you don't think the Drupal community [drupal.org] is adequate, there are companies [acquia.com] that provide managed Drupal solutions and support. If you need an SLA, you can get one. If you need design or implementation services, they are available from a growing list of consulting firms. [drupal.org] Drupal's code is open and documented, [drupal.org] and if you can't read code, there are plenty of books. [amazon.com] We handle our own Drupal projects internally, but not because we have to. There are m
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Whether you use WebSphere from IBM or Sharepoint from Microsoft, you have the ability to leverage an API and develop a custom solution around something that has a few things.
1. A community.
2. Documentation
3. Support
You have all of these with various Open Source CMS packages as well:
1) Community. Community defines Open Source in a sense - and there's a much larger, more involved community of users to pull from.
2) Documentation. The bigger projects, such as Drupal, have incredible documentation. I'm unfamiliar with WebSphere, but finding anything specific to help deal with SharePoint issues (short of contacting MS) can sometimes be difficult.
3) Support. Not only can a person very easily get free support through the comm