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Linux Business IT

Unilever Ditches Global IT Linux Migration 295

Posted by samzenpus from the free-as-in-not-using-it dept.
GP writes "One to stir the open source debate. The CIO of global consumer goods giant Unilever says in this interview with silicon.com that the company has ditched plans to migrate its enterprise IT platform to Linux running on Itanium. He reckons hidden support costs and security issues have emerged over the past two years with open source and that proprietary vendors have also raised their game in response to the 'threat'."
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Unilever Ditches Global IT Linux Migration More

Unilever Ditches Global IT Linux Migration

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  • I wonder. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Poromenos1 ( 830658 ) on Wednesday August 31, 2005 @08:29PM (#13450360) Homepage
    Hmm, not to troll or whatever, but why do we care what OS does some company use? It's not like I ever work for the company, the most that change is going to affect me is the 404 page will say IIS instead of Apache. And it doesn't mean that one OS is better than the other, just that that company decided to use one. I'm not a company, I'll go with whatever suits me.
    • Well, if you're not going to troll, you might want to RTFA. They aren't running Windows.

      • Re:I wonder. (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Poromenos1 ( 830658 )
        That's not the point. The point is, what do we care what they're running? It's about as useful as an article saying what OS I run.

        • Re:I wonder. (Score:5, Insightful)

          by geekoid ( 135745 ) <dadinportlandNO@SPAMyahoo.com> on Wednesday August 31, 2005 @08:44PM (#13450448) Homepage Journal
          because at it's heart, Slashdot is a Linux site.

          So when a very large company says there are switching to/from linux it gets posted.

          It is relevant to people who want to see Linux grow in the indutry.
          • I think it's a bit childish to crave other people telling you how they like something you like. I like it, it's useful to me, it works for me, I'll continue to use it if I'm the last person on earth (that goes for any OS).
            • That is not childish, it is human nature.

              However, the point is, people want to see how the favorite thing(in this case Linux) is adopting and growing.

              No different then I like to see my favorite game company grow (peginc.com), or would like to see more coverage of my favorite contest (Fencing).

              " I'll continue to use it if I'm the last person on earth (that goes for any OS)."

              so if you have a problem with it, you wouldn't be interested if there were other people using it you could help you?
            • But if you are the last person using it, there won't be anyone else developing for your OS, now will there? It's not about people telling you how they like something you like, it's about improving things.

            • Re:I wonder. (Score:4, Funny)

              by vettemph ( 540399 ) on Wednesday August 31, 2005 @09:22PM (#13450665)
              > think it's a bit childish to crave other people telling you how they like something you like.

              Agreed. Let's put an end to Playboy, Rolling Stone, Getting laid, Sportscasters, Prepaired food, Money, Thongs, Name brand TV, videocards...etc.

              Anything that gets popular by word of mouth needs to go.

            • Re:I wonder. (Score:5, Insightful)

              by ShieldW0lf ( 601553 ) on Wednesday August 31, 2005 @09:22PM (#13450669) Journal
              Think of us all as Honda mechanics, technicians and manufacturers of after-market parts. When a huge company makes a public announcement that they are switching their whole fleet to Hondas, and then reverses that decision, it goes a bit beyond "oh, what a shame, they don't like my car" and into the realms of "damn, there goes a bunch of future employment".

              Does it make a little more sense now?

              • Re:I wonder. (Score:3, Insightful)

                by ThaFooz ( 900535 )
                Not really, because you're implying that the majority make money off of Linux rather than saving a few bucks by using it... systems people are needed regardless of the platform, and there are very few people paid to develop OS Linux-only apps (a number that won't change as long as it is mature as a server, and infintile as a desktop).

                It's more of a political/religous idealology; kind of like how cult leaders gets when one of their own wants out.

    • Re:I wonder. (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anakron ( 899671 )
      RTFA
      ..switching from a Unix server platform to Linux running on Itanium
      (Emphasis mine)
    • We care because the more large scale installs of OSS there is only helps keep it alive.

      Remember, OSS is being attacked from several directions, and every bit of 'support' helps ensure that in another 10 years you get to choose what OS you use, like you can today.
    • If you follow the discussions about graphics and sound on Linux, you will find that poor support by chip vendors (especially ATI, to a lesser degree NVIDIA and Creative) is a problem.
      The more people use Linux, the more attractive working with the kernel developers and releasing decent specs will be. A company may ignore 5% Linux users on the desktop, but ignoring 20% will hit the bottom line enough to be visible.

  • Linux on Itanium (Score:5, Funny)

    by eyegone ( 644831 ) on Wednesday August 31, 2005 @08:29PM (#13450363)

    Well, the problem must be Linux.
    • They could have save a lot of money by running Linux on a bunch of old 486's.
    • This is the CIO of Unilever, one of the world's largest mega-corporation conglomerates. This guy makes big decisions that make a difference to a lot of people. My guess is that this guy didn't get his job because he's an idiot. I'd listen to what this guy has to say over an academian, any day.

      • Re:Yeah, maybe, actually (Score:5, Funny)

        by piecewise ( 169377 ) on Wednesday August 31, 2005 @11:59PM (#13451487) Journal
        My guess is that this guy didn't get his job because he's an idiot.

        uh. have you met many IT professionals and corporate executives?
      • My guess is that this guy didn't get his job because he's an idiot.

        No, he got there because of his impeccable political instincts, ability to brown-nose when needed, take credit for co-workers' or sub-ordinates' work when convenient and shift blame to them when expedient, knowing the right people on the first name basis and playing squash with just the right crowd.

        And this concludes the abbreviated Lesson 1 of "Corporate Ladder Climbing for The Utterly Clueless 101".

        I'd listen to what this guy has to sa

      • The Peter principle (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Colin Smith ( 2679 )
        "My guess is that this guy didn't get his job because he's an idiot."

        You've never heard of the Dilbert or Peter principles?

        Anyone who says they're going to migrate their entire anything from one platform to another is a moron. Nothing to do with Linux, Itanium. Exactly the same would apply to Windows, AIX, OS X.

         
    • Don't be ridiculous. It's common knowledge that this CIO guy is getting a free laptop from Microsoft.

  • Dark Day for OSS Community (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It pains me greatly to see such a respected multi-national organization to shy away from a large-scale Linux deployment.

    My guess, is that won't bring unwanted attention to their IT iniatives and its strategic partners were probably not well-versed in Linux support and enhancements.

    But I'm certain that other conglomerates will continue to see Linux as a true reliable OS.

    Which is nice.

  • Cost or Freedom? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Famatra ( 669740 ) on Wednesday August 31, 2005 @08:34PM (#13450380) Journal
    "support costs and security issues"

    And what of the costs of lock-in, and giving up freedom?

    I'm not a big company but I often choose slightly 'worse' free/open source software in comparison to closed source simply because I value and put a premium on freedom.

    You've got to weigh the pros and cons and be pragmatic - but I'd lean towards the free(dom) choice since it seems freedom is often undervalued.

    • Support costs are quantifiable now. The cost of vendor lock in is harder to measure.

    • Re:Cost or Freedom? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Svartalf ( 2997 )
      The problems with what they claim is that while the initial support costs might be there, the ongoing ones AREN'T. Typically, most of the CXO crowd doesn't look at the long term picture- only what they read in a marketing piece and what the sales reps will tell you.

      Really bright idea, guys.

      Windows is a security nightmare, moreso than Linux- all one has to do to realize this is to take your blinders off and see all the worms, spyware, etc. and know this to be the case. And people keep using this stuff for
    • I'm not a big company but I often choose slightly 'worse' free/open source software in comparison to closed source simply because I value and put a premium on freedom.

      I put a premium on not needing to run programs on my network that scan for license violations, being audited by vendors or the necessity to "prove" I own software before it will work. I'm not at all sure most companies have a grip on how much time they spend with endless niggling license and compliance issues. I work in some offices that e

  • Linux + ITANIUM??? No wonder. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by wmshub ( 25291 ) on Wednesday August 31, 2005 @08:35PM (#13450387) Homepage Journal
    The snippets of text in the article imply that Linux was the part that no longer makes sense, but I suspect that switching to Itanium was also part of the reason they stopped. I can't believe that attaching massive Itanium use to any major infrastructure would increase its cost competitiveness. Sure, you could argue that Itanium in a few niche areas gave better bang for the buck than x86, but for the global IT infracstructure of a company? It can't be a good idea.

  • Sounds like a smart plan (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BooRadley ( 3956 ) on Wednesday August 31, 2005 @08:35PM (#13450388)
    According to TFA, Unilever is not so much "going with the lower bidder" as stepping back and applying common sense to their IT decisions.

    "Unilever CIO Neil Cameron, said the cost benefits of migrating en masse to an open source platform are no longer as clear cut as they were two years ago because of security and support issues."

    Sounds more like he got his ass handed to him by an enterprise architecture team after attempting to push through a bad idea based on a flawed financial model.

    • Yeah, but you know what? It makes wonderful security and economic sense to build a diverse infrastructure. It's when large companies realize this that we will see the biggest Linux deployments yet.

      Wouldn't it be great if you could deploy an enterprise app on both Windows and Linux platforms? Any given virus, worm or hacker would be highly unlikely to take out both. Add OS X and BSD to the mix while you're at it and you have a rock-solid deployment.

      Doing that wouldn't necessarily be all that difficult. Use a
      • I'm not sure that makes sense. Sure, a diverse infrastructure is harder to crack (though also requires more expertise to maintain). But then turning around and saying, "That's why everything should be cross-platform" is worrisome, because it undercuts the diversity that you're relying on for security.

    • "Migrating en masse" (Score:5, Insightful)

      by WebCowboy ( 196209 ) on Wednesday August 31, 2005 @09:16PM (#13450634)
      ...seems to be a very bad idea in most cases IMHO--at least if it can be avoided. I should hope any CIO that would suggest that sort of thing would have his ass handed to him by his team.

      Is it just me, or does it seem that most big, all-encomapssing IT projects are unmitigated disasters? It doesn't matter if it is Unix to Windows migration, Windows to Linux, VMS to whatever...or even the initial implementation of a big system like SAP--it is extremely difficult to pull off. Really, what "financial model" could possibly show that uprooting the entire IT infrastructure of a large corporation all at once would be favourable? Is there no risk analysis done? Hell, does common sense not even come into the picture?

      There are only a few situations that I could see where a massive enterprise project like this would be justifiable--and in the case of large corporations I would say that such situations would be due to neglect and incompetence--for example they've got a bunch of elderly Win95 PCs, a VAX that you cannot get parts for anymore, etc. and if anything bad happens to any of it the results would be catastrophic. So even if a massive IT project is not a foolish idea, it was foolishness that led to the need.

      The article says that Linux is still part of their plans--it is just going to be used more strategically and selectively. I don't really see where the big argument is here. I'd rather see a large number of smaller success stories than one huge successful Linux project if it means hearing about 4 more Linux-based disasters that Microsoft could use as ammunition (ignoring the fact that the failure rate of massive Windows-based projects would be at least as bad).
    • Unilever is not so much "going with the lower bidder" as stepping back and applying common sense to their IT decisions.

      I don't know about you, but anyone who picks Itanium as a desirable platform to migrate to, can't be very bright.

      Also- who is Unilever?

      • Re:Itanium...smart? (Score:2, Informative)

        by quanticle ( 843097 )

        Unilever is a giant umbrella corporation that's the parent company of brands covering everything from soap (Dove) to food (Hellmans mayonaise [sic], Bertolli pasta, and Lipton tea). A significant fraction of the brands in your local grocery chain are owned by Unilever.

      • Also- who is Unilever?

        You're kidding, right?

        Let's just say Unilever isn't a dude selling bars of soap on eBay.
    • This architecture was NOT his. It would have happened from down below and then percolated up to him. Afterall, He is the CIO. Once he saw the model AND the real costs, he decided that he liked it. However, after announcing it, MS almost certainly brought tons of pressure to bear on them or had other companies do it instead. The political costs were probably to much.

      BTW, interesting that you mention a flawed financial model as being the issue. Where have I heard that before?

    • The problem is PEOPLE (Score:4, Insightful)

      by MarcQuadra ( 129430 ) * on Thursday September 01, 2005 @12:31AM (#13451653)
      Every time I've seen Open Source fail in the enterprise it's been because of personal issues.

      You can't fire the entire IT staff and replace them with (half as many) new Open Source aware folks. It's just not possible. The people who are from the closed-source world don't understand the ramifications of open data structures and 'built-in-house' middleware, so they fight it because they don't know it and they see it as a threat.

      I've seen it time and again, most recently at my current employer when I proposed a NAS based on Linux that would cost less than half of what we ended up buying (the difference, mind you, was more than I get paid annually). The manager in charge of purchasing it didn't 'trust' that 'this Linux thing' would stay free or that he'd be able to keep it running if I left for another job. I've even been asked to do all my work on the Active Directory cleanup with Excel instead of grep and sed because they're scared that I might leave with my 'toolkit' and ;eave them high and dry.

      Open Source necessitates a trust of people's goodwill and happiness, while commercial software relies on vendors' goodwill and contractual obligations. If I could get the contractual part down, I'd be able to implement open-source AND make a bunch of loot, but until then, my employer trusts vendors and sales reps more than their own employees.

  • Rush to judgement on corporate-wide Linux adoption (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Sheetrock ( 152993 ) on Wednesday August 31, 2005 @08:38PM (#13450410) Homepage Journal
    I've got my own (more positive) story about the rush to adopt Linux by corporate and can attest to the spiralling development process that can occur when one is fanatical about recycling prior programming effort.

    A few years ago, there's a need for a fair to middling department store chain to develop and deploy an epherimal business monitoring system. The current in place at six test stores is doing well and promises to provide detailed and instaneous headcount monitoring data to the central office which, when fully deployed and combined with sale pricing, inventory and geographical demographic data, offers an unprecedented degree of feedback to the decision makers. Consequently, the decision was made to give the project the go ahead.

    In a nutshell, the current system listens to the infrared people detectors that go "bong" when people walk into the store and "bong bong" when people walk out, and feeds the data over the token ring to the store computer. But this won't do for the rest of the stores because they're using wireless networks.

    The general idea thus becomes to make these systems wireless and functional out-of-the-box so that a store clerk can take it out of the packaging and situate the device near a source of power and within listening range of the people detectors. And since there was a great deal of buzz about achieving a lower TCO with Linux the company's "Linux on new installations" initiative meant they wanted to switch from Windows (used on the prototype machines) to Linux on the new devices to avoid per-site charges and network worms.

    That's when things start going downhill -- not from an inherent flaw in Linux mind you, but from the fact that the original app was compiled Delphi and the compiler was in Norway with Jacques, the former IT developer, who returned to his family to work on their penguin conservation efforts (I imagine a matter of keeping the penguins fed and the polar bears fed with something else.) The current guy, a Linux enthusiast familiar with Wine, figures that instead of trying to rewrite the application from scratch it'd be quicker to wrap the Windows binary in a layer of emulation and wrap all that with a layer of Perl to interpret and route the results over the wireless network.

    But the damnedest thing always seems to occur in these situations; it never takes as much time to rewrite as it does to kludge. Everything looks right after a week or so, functionwise -- these were embedded systems and therefore difficult to debug, but the development was done at a workstation that had a .wav recording of the "bong" sound that could be played into the unit for testing. The system listens, transmits a byte over the wireless when it gets a hit, and the central computer tabulates the data. No worries.

    Except that nobody seems to be leaving the store. 0 counts for exits, average stay is 16 hours (from open to close.)

    To say the guy was frantic at this point is an understatement. There were five days to go until the devices needed to be shipped to meet the deadline, and they're only half functional. To add to the problem there is now no time to rewrite, he's no good with a disassembler, and the embedded environment thwarts his further attempts at debugging.

    Nevertheless he keeps at it. GCC/GLib are at stable versions, libraries are properly loaded as are the drivers -- indeed, the device isn't crashing and is able to speak with the network. He checked LKML, he stopped by #linux on EFnet, downgraded and upgraded the kernel all to no avail. His last resort was fervered e-mails to Jacques to see if he knew anything about the situation.

    Fortunately, at the last minute Jacques was able to let him know what the problem was and that, in hindsight, it was both trivial and obvious, and everything ended up working out. But he swears that next time he'll start with a rewrite and leave the fancy stuff as a last option.

  • Linux migration was just a bargaining chip (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It is likely that they ran the numbers for the cost of migrating all their custom apps and systems to linux (from unix) and said to their Unix vendor: "We can ditch you and and save $XXXXXXXXXXX. Either you drop your price our we walk." Their linux "migration" plan was probably nothing more than project proposal that they could have moved forward on if they had too.

    That is not to say they weren't serious, but if you rtfa it sounds like they staid with their current non-ms platform for their SAP stuff.

    Just
  • They bit off too much and are now throwing the baby out with the bathwater? What a cliche! :P

    Anyway, they should've switch over to Linux one location at a time and then try to tie everything together at the corporate level. If you try to impose a top-down corporate-wide solution, it might cause more problems than it solves.
    • They have closet psychopaths and the abjectly clueless at the top. So for the sake of "consistency", they hand down edicts from above, never mind that the consequences of the decision in question. They don't care about the technical merits or demerits. They don't care about the actual long-term costs. They don't care about much more than the next quarter- they want to make their numbers "look good" for the quarter so they don't get in trouble.

      I keep seeing it played out, time and time again. Mediocri

  • oh, brother (Score:3, Interesting)

    by pohl ( 872 ) * on Wednesday August 31, 2005 @08:40PM (#13450422) Homepage
    So they were dead sure (for a while) that the right course was freakin' Linux on Itanium, and then they realized that of all the possible downsides of that combination, the straw that broke the camel's back was Linux!? WTF?
    • Exactly. And then to go and blame security issues on Linux?

      You can't tell me they don't have Windows machines!

      The article reads funny to me. Why would you migrate SAP from Unix to Linux if it was already working? SAP is a monster, and if it's not broke, don't fix it.

  • Nothing to see here ... move along ... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by legLess ( 127550 ) on Wednesday August 31, 2005 @08:40PM (#13450423) Journal
    ... announced plans back in 2003 to cut £66m from its IT budget by switching from a Unix server platform to Linux ...
    But he said the emergence of Linux as a cheaper and viable enterprise option has been good for competition because it forced proprietary vendors to raise their game.
    Translation: "We wanted Sun to shit their pants and they did. Like my new Ferrari?"

  • Comparing apples and washing machines (Score:3, Insightful)

    by $RANDOMLUSER ( 804576 ) on Wednesday August 31, 2005 @08:43PM (#13450440)
    OK, so two years ago, Linux on Itanium (kinda leaves a bad taste in your mouth, dosen't it?) was cost-effective against other big-iron Unix implementations, and today that's no longer the case. Meaning that Sun/Solaris, IBM/AIX, or HP/HP-UX on their own platforms have decided they want the business and have come down enough in price (in a REALLY flat market) to be competitive today. Can't say I'm blown away by the news.
    • IBM pushes Linux really strong on it's servers. AIX is still available if you really want it but they charge pretty steep for it. However, if you have custom apps written for AIX it's probably cheaper to stay with it when you upgrade servers. If you are building from scratch then Linux would be IBM's reccomendation. Sun and HP servers will run various flavors on Linux but they are NOT going to be pushing them over HP-UX and Solaris 10.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Or it other words, this guy just doesn't know how to secure a Linux system, or support it with any tech know how.

      Yeah because the UNIX system that they were going to convert from is so much easier to use.....

  • Quite clear really (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 31, 2005 @08:49PM (#13450477)
    Let's guess. Their current Unix platform is HP Unix on PA-RISC.

    They've been told that HP is 'lowering the emphasis' on Itanium. Basically, HP is putting Itanium on the back burner ('supplied as required') for the foreseeable future. However HP doesn't want anyone to know about this for the obvious reason. Therefore the cost of migrating from Itanium in a few years time is not something Unilever want to risk. They'll stay with PA-RISC, which is still earning 5x the amount as Itanium does for HP. If they stay with PA-RISC, they might as well keep their current setup.

    Considering the cost of a decent Itanium server that just happens to be running Linux, I think you would find these pricing issues. Maybe they're going FreeBSD on Opteron! :p (yeah, yeah!)

    Unless he thinks they owe SCO $695 for each install of Linux that is!

  • Link to article about original decision (Score:3, Informative)

    by GillBates0 ( 664202 ) on Wednesday August 31, 2005 @08:49PM (#13450479) Homepage Journal
    This should probably have made it to the article summary. Here's the original interview with Neil Cameron [computing.co.uk] where he announced his decision to switch to open source and Linux last August.

    Some excerpts:

    What are the main drivers pushing you towards open source?

    Fundamentally, open source is about flexibility and ultimately about cost.

    What applications are being taken across to open source?

    At the moment the migration of applications [is] purely infrastructure, firewalls [and so on]. It's been at that low level and I think we're being appropriately cautious.

    There are other ways today of moving from a legacy cost and performance structure into other available products.It's not quite step-changing but giving yourself a significant benefit that narrows the gap between that which has been available, and some of the open source opportunities. One can walk towards the edge without jumping over it.

  • No sweat. (Score:5, Funny)

    by quokkapox ( 847798 ) <quokkapox@gmail.com> on Wednesday August 31, 2005 @08:50PM (#13450488)
    That's okay--if Unilever doesn't want to use Linux, we geeks will just quit buying their soap, deodorant, and other personal hygiene products. That'll show 'em.

    Err... scratch that idea. They'd never notice.

  • Old-fashioned influence peddling.

    I'm thinking maybe three scenarios:

    1. Lower license fees from existing vendors. Re: "If you don't give me a deal (and some extra incentives in my back pocket) I'm walking.." Possible, but too much change for such a large company.

    2. Muckety-mucks have Microsoftie muckety-muck friends. Despite what the troops may want and may be able to justify, those muckety-mucks gotta keep each other employed in their over-paid jobs. (likely)

    3. Old-fashioned thinking from very high-up the

  • #1 reason why corporation isn't adopting Linux (Score:4, Informative)

    by DraconPern ( 521756 ) on Wednesday August 31, 2005 @08:58PM (#13450537) Homepage
    Support. We are talking about any kind of software, hardware, configuration, etc.

    For example, RedHat 7.3 released in 2002, I can't get Promise drivers for the FastTrak SX4100 (released recently) on it. At the same time, I can't get RedHat EL4 drivers for the SuperTrak SX6000 (released in 2002?). It is frustrating.

    Another example is gtkglarea. It was pretty popular until it got 'deprecated' for whatever reason. Where is the backward compatibility? Now there's no upgrade path for software which uses it.

    Also, anyone notice that there is a tendency not to have backwards compatibility for anything? At least have a wrapper ABI, migration tool, something.

  • Don't be fooled. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 31, 2005 @09:02PM (#13450559)
    I worked for Unilever IT until quite recently.

    There was never a serious itent to migrate to Linux. It was invoked more as a threat in 2004 to get big suppliers like HP and MS to cut prices when dealing with Unilever.

    I guess it worked, and now Unilever can drop the pretense.

  • Having worked there (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I have some cynical views. Going back to MS is the easy option and this is the direction that a Unilever or PHB in any large corporate would take. Once some concessions have been made by Microsoft they must be getting a good deal, and moving to another platform is hard work.

    It is a general trend that large corporates don't pay the best, they have the brands you want to work on, they have the global opportunities, and the working enviroment is good. So why pay well as well. At the entry level of employment t

  • Wait a minute (Score:5, Insightful)

    by aCapitalist ( 552761 ) on Wednesday August 31, 2005 @09:19PM (#13450653)
    You mean open source doesn't solve every software problem?

    I found the "religion" comment particularly amusing. I wonder how many managers have been turned off of open source because they have some employee running around screaming about source code freedom and writing stuff in emails like M$.

    • Re:Wait a minute (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Bogtha ( 906264 )

      I wonder how many managers have been turned off of open source because they have some employee running around screaming about source code freedom and writing stuff in emails like M$.

      Only clueless managers would dismiss a technology because of stuff like that. Think about it, you could essentially persuade such a manager to dismiss any technology with that attitude. Thinking of going with Microsoft? "Just as long as it's not commie Lunix!" Thinking of going with Apple? "The one button mouse makes

      • No matter how many times a Linux zealot wets his pants over "M$", it doesn't make Linux any less valuable to the organisation.


        It also doesn't make any more valuable.

        I think that's a point that many people don't quite seem to grok, and as such they end up calling managers who don't subscribe to their religion, "clueless."

        • they end up calling managers who don't subscribe to their religion, "clueless."

          Was that aimed at me?

          I wasn't saying that a manager would be clueless for not choosing Linux. I was saying that a manager would be clueless for not choosing Linux because a zealot got on their nerves. There's plenty of reasons to choose operating systems other than Linux. Personality defects in a few overzealous advocates is not one of them.

  • Summary is wrong (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    He reckons hidden support costs and security issues have emerged over the past two years with open source

    "Hidden support costs" struck me as a rather unusual thing to say. Then I read the article. It doesn't say anything about "hidden support costs". It says that support costs are one thing that is different from two years ago.

    A PHB reading that summary would think that there are additional costs that a feasability study cannot spot. In actual fact, it just means that the market is different to w

  • So? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by linuxhansl ( 764171 ) on Wednesday August 31, 2005 @09:27PM (#13450689)
    Who cares?! They assesed their options and came to a certain conclusion. If the assesment was correct the conclusion will be correct.

    Different companies have different requirements so they'll come to different conclusions.

    There's no need to evangalize over this. For them open source wasn't the right choice.
    You use the right tool for the right job. Period.

  • Itanium? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cahiha ( 873942 ) on Wednesday August 31, 2005 @09:36PM (#13450745)
    Anybody considering moving to Itanium really can't be taken seriously.

    Anyway, it sounds to me like they were using Linux mainly as a bargaining chip with Microsoft.
  • CIO Neil Cameron, said the cost benefits of migrating en masse to an open source platform are no longer as clear cut as they were two years ago because of security and support issues.

    Who was he buying support from, slackware? As far as security, be real.

    But he said the emergence of Linux as a cheaper and viable enterprise option has been good for competition because it forced proprietary vendors to raise their game.

    Agreed.

    It drives a bit of competition into the marketplace and stops suppliers being com
    • Since they are running on a proprietary UNIX, everything you mentioned involving MS and IE is moot.

      More likely, some vendor did give them a discount and a discount on support. And, support is one of the places Linux lags behind proprietary vendors.

      This story is not an anti-Linux story. This is a "Linux is losing when some companies do a cost/benefit analysis" story.

      Instead of whining, perhaps people should be looking at WHY Linux is (fairly or not) loosing in cost/benefit analysis.
  • It's going away. You heard it here, first. Remember that.

  • Good decision (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dtfinch ( 661405 ) * on Wednesday August 31, 2005 @11:17PM (#13451311) Journal
    The aim was to eventually migrate the company's massive SAP systems onto the Linux platform.

    They probably spend more for SAP than they do on UNIX and all the overpriced hardware they run it on, and ERP downtime can be far more costly than whatever they spend on licensing. Their UNIX investment is a sunken cost, and you don't want to f*ck with the servers running your ERP. They did state their intent to use Linux in other places.

  • Running Linux on Itanium systems? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MarkWatson ( 189759 ) on Wednesday August 31, 2005 @11:29PM (#13451364) Homepage
    Why consider this? I don't know that much about the Itanium chip except that it was supposed to provide great FP performance (right?), and that it is (probably) a failure in the marketplace.

    There are good reasons to stick with more standard hardware configurations.

    The story sounds like a bit of a troll.

  • Not uncommon (Score:4, Insightful)

    by plopez ( 54068 ) on Thursday September 01, 2005 @01:04AM (#13451781) Journal
    Management comes, management goes. As management changes projects can lose their sponsors and be axed for no other reason than that (politics and ego often have more to do with business decisions than reason).

    From TFA though it sounds like someone attempting to be buzzword compliant. A sure recipe for failure...

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