Businesses Slow to Adopt Linux 373
milenko81 and several others submitted this CNET story about corporate spending on information technology. The reporter seems to interpret it negatively because Fortune 1000 companies aren't dumping Microsoft 100% and going for Linux. But interpret it as you will.
Re:What about the other CNET article? (Score:3, Informative)
Duh (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Not commercial = bad? (Score:5, Informative)
Say a company has spent 5 years integrating NT systems into their department. That usually means it will take another 5 years to get rid of it.
Linux will not be an overnight success...it will take time to supplant Microsoft.
Re:Cost of linux administration cost of windows (Score:5, Informative)
The cost of adminning Windows servers is considerably higher than the cost of adminning Unix servers (of any flavor). You can cover far fewer servers with a single admin, and you need at least 3 times the number of physical boxen than you do with Unix systems because a: Windows scales horribly and only runs on hardware designed to be workstations b: Windows requires at least two redundant servers for each primary server to maintain the uptimes of any Unix c: Windows is only able to perform properly if each box only runs one particular server function. Put a print server, a web server and a file server on the same box and none of them will work well (well by Windows standards).
Re:Cost of linux administration cost of windows (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Not commercial = bad? (Score:3, Informative)
* Bynari Insight Server (seems like your best bet)
* "Exchange compatible server from UK company that starts with an S but whose name I keep forgetting and its fucking hard to search for."
* HP Openmail (though this is being retired soon, so don't really bother)
Linux in the enterprise (Score:3, Informative)
1: DHCP server.
2: Public DNS server.
3: Public Web Server.
4: Private secondary DNS server (or primary if you are not using Active Directory).
5: External "mail forwarders" which act as an email choke point in order to further secureyour internal exchange servers.
6: Filtering routers (should have at least 2 for a decent firewall with a proxy in the middle).
And so on. These ARE NOT the markets that Microsoft is really shooting for when looking at enterprise markets, but that is not the point. These are the areas that Linux is hard to beat.
As for an Exchange replacement-- it might be possible to use a combintation of OSS components to create a custom solution (LDAP/Qmail/maybe an additional dbms like MySQL) or use Bynari. Also IBM has some similar groupware solutions for Linux, but they are proprietary. However, that would take more work to integrate with your active directory than using Exchange, so Exchange is still probably your best option.
OK. Now that I have said this, now let us look at the other side. Linux could have several impacts on Windows in this way-- making customers aware of the necessity of interoperability and putting pressure on MS to deliver (otherwise, they won't upgrade their OS's). And more Linux machines in the infrastructure of the network also means that these areas are NOT controlled by Microsoft.
Here are what is needed in the case of large businesses (in order): 1: Reliability and Supportibility, 2: Interop, 3: Scalability, 4: Managability, 5: development capability. Linux offers ALL these things, but it takes time for them to be implimented in foreign environments (Netware or Windows).
I know this because I have attempted to build extensible, scalable, and powerful enterprise applications (mostly CRM) on Linux and it can be done. My application failed because I did not know what I was doing at the time, and I am currently re-writing it. It probably is being done more than we hear about. But until these become more commonplace, mose IT departments and internal development teams will only know Windows/VB (or maybe ASP) and be unable to make this into a reality in most places.
In fact, I have tried to do the same with ASP and VB and I have always come back to Perl/Python/PHP for my environment of choice because I can put together more elegant applications in PHP than in ASP because ASP has a psychotic way of pipelining the include statements. For example there is no ASP equivalent to the following piece of php:
include ("forms/" . $form . ".php");
(of course PHP CAN be used on Windows).
So, I expect in the next few years for MANY more businesses to begin to really using Linux because of its rich ability to develop enterprise-ready applications.
Re:Not commercial = bad? (Score:3, Informative)
Let XXXXXX=Lotus Notes.
It has better security than Exchange and IBM is much more friendly to OSS projects than Microsoft. They also have a Linux version of their Domino server. It has ALL of the functionality of Exchange and more. It is also a web server to boot (if you want to use it that way). All-in-all a super replacement for Exchange and one worth looking at if for no other reason than lack of scripting viruses.
Re:Not commercial = bad? = About exchange (Score:2, Informative)
If it were just email, then sendmail or another of the freebies.
However you say it is more, so then use Lotus Notes. It does run on Linux, and does *more* than Exchange. We run it here (10,000 -18,000 users I'd guess) and aren't threatened by the Code Red/Nimbda things going on. Machines can be infected in various small ways. For instance, we had a few "I love you" infections, perhaps 80 or so (bear in mind the total above). However, it doesn't spread. And if the administrators are watching for this stuff, Notes can clean it out itself. Running a virus checker on top helps to.