Re: Enterprise Wishlists...
On December 16, 2003 12:31 am, Peter Vandenabeele wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 15, 2003 at 07:53:11PM -0800, Michael Peddemors wrote:
> [...]
>
> > Which begs the question, how important is WINE for the environment?
> >
> > Our experience has shown that we can get about 90% Linux penetration at
> > the desktop, and have a client who is happy, and can perform all of their
> > enterprise tasks.. The last 10% are running Windows Apps they "can't
> > live without". This is legacy stuff.. And that is always a factor in any
> > enterprise change..
>
> What is the solution you implemented most succesfully in actual customer
> projects to this "last 10%"?
>
> * leave some Windows PC's in place
> * use a central Windows server with something like Citrix
> * use Wine
> * use VMWare or the likes
For the most part, solution #1, and the company will look to changing over the
rest if/when their requirements change. IE The last company had a small
telco software to monitor incoming/outgoing calls. The product cost was only
$1000 in the first place, so it wasn't viable to 'custom develop' an app for
Linux, and the time involved to make sure it ported to Wine wasn't worth it,
so a single station stayed on Windows for that. As well, 6 members in the
accounting staff were using an accouting application on Windows, that they
had heavily invested in. Now that they have moved 90% over to Linux, they
recognize all future expenditures should run on Linux, or be web based. And
when they will wait for a Linux version of call counting software, and they
are looking to port the accounting software to Wine in the future, otherwise
they expect that in the future a Linux FrontEnd will be avialable. They
managed to do this project with no investment in porting software, and this
is the preferred scenario. Another company looked at porting an application
because it was used in every station, and the only thing holding them from
migrating to Linux. Personally, I don't think there is anything wrong with
leaving a few Windows PC's in place, if it makes the staff's time more
effective. It is a business decision, balancing the needs of the client,
against the higher admin and licensing costs of the machine.
Using a central Windows server usually can't be justified for the smaller
remaining windows implementations, and using VMWare isn't as attractive to
the customer, except in specific cases. Using single Windows boxes make it
easily to migrate one task/computer at a time to Linux, and Samba integration
makes the Windows box become a Thick Client first, and slowly a thin client,
and taking advantage of the Linux stability for file storage etc..
(BTW, Enterprise needs a MUCH better Samba interface. Linneighbourhood is the
best at this time, and as much as we tried to make Komba work, it needed far
more work in a Thin Client environment than Linneighbourhood. A standard for
handling windows share mounting would really help, as long as we are
expecting it to coexist into existing Enterprise environments.)
> Am I right that once you get to 90% Linux (actually 90% Open Standards,
> the implementation seems less important for this issue), the integration
> problems between Linux and Windows start to decrease (compared to a 50-50
> situation).
No, we find that in typical office environments, the main inhibitors are only
a few programs that are used company wide, and once those changes are
excepted, you are at 90% deployment.
Most computers are used for the same general task load, except for a few
stations where either specialized processes happen, or previous investments
in custom software are still in place.
Main stumblers to reach 90%?? Well, users of outlook, advanced excel, some
sites that ONLY work on IE, collaborative tools, and after that it is ease of
use of tools. The other proprietary softwares that are used that can't be
satisfied by Linux deployments economically are normally only used by 10% of
the staff.
(Sure, there are have stumblers that frustrate people.. ie Oo control panels
that don't resize small enough in 800x600 :)
But it is all about, 'Can my people be productive, and can I save money at the
same time'. To that, I state, 90% of them can, and we can integrate with the
other 10% seamlessly..
Another example is staff who have invested years of training on a product..
say Adobe PhotoShop .. you can't expect to switch them over to Gimp and have
them productive right away... For those persons you may not change; in the
future you might hire a eg Gimp graphics person if you expand that
department.
But this is why companies always had a few apple computers in a Windows work
environment.. So this is no different..
(In one case, the company hired a developer who only knew the Windows versions
of the program, (Oracle Developer) and at his hourly rates it was cheaper to
drop one Windows PC in than having his productivity drop. Of course, now
they have learnt, and consider the developers experience in Linux before
hiring :)
> Thanks,
>
> Peter
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