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Can't they just employ immigrants who learned to use computers in order to get a job? We're not talking complex applications here like 3D or compositing apps, those who can't use generic email, word processor or spreadsheet don't deserve to have a desk job.

What's interesting though is that the FAA seems to think that the costs associated with training will in the end be cheaper than an upgrade to Vista.

this isnt going to happen tomorrow, or next week, or next month. training staff to use an entirly new system takes a lot of time and money. i will be supprised if we see this take effect before this time next year

Well, I'm not a systems integrator in real life but I've taken classes. One of the big things to consider here is the potential for an intermediary stage. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Google's Apps are largely platform independent. What this means is that I can think of an instantly perfect intermediary stage--instruct the employees to use Google Apps while they still have XP and old Office applications on their machines. But, you know, give them a hard date by which everyone should be using Google Apps (oh, there's always problem workers but leave that to middle management). I assume the large thing these people rely on their computers for is simply these editing suites so once that barrier is broken, install Linux and give them quick 8 hour orientation classes in how to do the same things in Linux that you used to do in Windows (pretty minimal, I assume).

Other option is just Vista & the new Office. Where at some point you just have to install the new Office (I don't think old & new can be installed at the same time) and make them use it. Now, while I'm sure Vista is more similar to XP than Linux and the Office applications are probably similar also, you know there's going to be bumps.

That said, I don't think the transition to Google Apps on Linux would be any more painful than the transition to Vista running Office. I suppose time will tell though. Hopefully my assumptions are correct and this sparks interest on this huge cost savings?

I guess if you really wanted to promote Linux, you would write tutorials on how to take advantage of this switch to Vista/Office and how to put your workers on Linux/Google Apps. When you make cheap and extremely convenient, they will come.

I don't think training/timing is a big issue. Any time MS releases a major update like new versions of Vista & Office it requires a fair amount of retraining for non-technical people and even a lot of technical people. Since there's a retraining cost involved no matter what, then it's up to the company/organization to decide their best upgrade path, whether it's to the latest MS offerings or an entirely different platform.

Personally I find the big news to be the fact that more and more corporations, governments, and entire countries, are using Vista/Office2007 as justification to seriously consider non-MS products. Granted it's still a very small percentage of MS customers that have done this so far, but if the groundswell continues and a number of these groups are successful, then it could just be the start of a trend away from MS dominance.

training staff to use an entirely new system takes a lot of time and money.

Technical similarities to XP aside, Vista basically IS an "entirely new system" as well, from an end-user and administrative perspective. The UI has been messed with. Security, right from the user prompts down to alterations in driver architecture, has been altered significantly. Applications released roughly in conjunction with Vista (IE7 and Office 2007) have significant changes (new XML file formats in office, more strict compliance with XHTML and CSS in IE7...). Compounding that the benefits to business are minimal compared to XP in its current state. The business case to upgrade vs migrate is less convincing than ever before.

It is nearly that case with my employer as well--we almost might as well move to macs or Linux vs. XP--the impact of Vista on the enterprise thereis nearly that big. Almost all of the intranet apps are designed and tested against IE6. Running them on Firefox is glitchy but it works, but using IE7 often completely BREAKS the app. Over three quarters of the products we sell will not function under Vista and never will ("next generation" replacements are being developed for release over the next couple of years). Fully half of the hardware we have is not "Vista capable". We have XP and it (mostly) works (good enough anyways). Why risk breaking what is essentially unbroken? Do we really need eye candy? We are already firewalled and antivirused to high heaven so is there any REAL benefit to Vista's largely unproven security enhancements? Which brings up the fact that our corporate antivirus stuff apparently breaks in Vista...

FAA's serious consideration of Google's apps really looks VERY compelling and makes a lot of sense, even if adoption would be over a couple of years. The architecture of Linux is more proven and more secure by far than Windows XP OR Vista. The price per client is significantly less. Google's application-server-thin-client model is much less burdensome. Open and Free systems have much better "real" support (MS makes the argument that closed software gets better support because it is backed by a big, rich vendor but I think most people in the know realise that in practice thereis WAY MORE help and support for Linux because of backing by many vendors and a huge developer community, whereas only MS can offer certain levelsof support).

I do thing that Vista is STILL very much on the FAA's horizon though. Government agencies as well as big corporations are coming under more scrutiny and are being more compelled to do due diligence and put as much up for competitive bid as possible--and get the best deal possible. MS' standard prices and offerings are VERY FAR from competitive since they've gone a long time without competing. Governmental agencies around the world are, as often as not, playing low cost Linux-based alternatives against Microsoft to "force Bill's hand" as it were. Even if Google's software suite falls short of requirements in the end, the FAA could very likely get a special sub-$100-per-user offer from Microsoft for Office upgrades.

I'd hate to seeit turnout that way, but anything that cuts down MS (either inmarket share or insane profit margins) is good in my book.

90% of the training argument is pure FUD. I personally have converted many windows users to Linux who had never even touched it before and they are up and productive within a day. Your average office worker (at least in my place of work) uses a word processor, web browser, email client, and one or two propriatary apps specific for their department which are almost all web based and are browser friendly. There have been a few time in which people have some app that cannot be a web app, or will only run in IE or something and we will deploy it to them via Citrix until either a Linux version is written or it is converted to a web based app.

Funny enough, the hardest Linux converts are the Windows "Power users" because they no long know how to tweak...aka fuck up their new desktop. But for a large majority of office staff Linux either already is or could easily be working perfectly for them in almost no transition time.

I personally believe that if all the over protective MCSE's in the world woke up tomorrow with a decent level of knowledge about the Linux desktop within a couple months Linux and Windows in the corporate workplace would trade places for market share.

Definitely. If Google started selling application appliances. Wow. Not only do you get the ease of central management, but if Google does it like they do everything else, it'd be easily scalable. I'd imagine the answer to "We need more processing power / Disk space" would be to add another appliance or so, and make a single config change. This is really exciting stuff, if it evolves to that point.

Google Apps, the way they're doing it, can't be assured to be secure. It's a nifty idea, but
unless you LIKE the idea of a potential information leak (including business critical and identity
type information...), you probably don't want to be using their service unless you've no other
choice.

An Apps appliance probably would be a way around this problem. Buy one like you buy some of their
search engine cluster as an appliance for indexing your intranet and exposed Internet presence-
that way you get the security and control you need (Though make no mistake, while it is more secure
than what the FAA is now proposing, it's not as secure as OO.org would be on a desktop...)

"Hopefully, they are seriously considering Linux regardless."
FAA is outsourcing the whole flight services infrastructure to Lockheed. A rep from Lockheed gave a presentation to our local EAA chapter on the new system and it's rather cool. Each person gets a multi-head display and all the software is running on Linux. I don't recall the distro. So when you call in for a weather report or to check if there are TFRs in your flight path, you will be talking to a guy running Linux. It makes sense for the FAA to switch because they will likely want access to the same software. The only downside is that there will be fewer of these people, so you may be talking to someone far away who doesn't know the local area and local weather.

We're talking about US Government documents being stored on non-government servers. First, I'd be really surprised if something like that was even legal. Second, I have real issues even if it IS legal.

If the "ditch" office/windows they're going to have to use GMail for ALL DOCUMENTS. Anything else would have to be like .txt or .pdf that's emailed around (probably using google servers again, so it's moot).

Furthermore, tell me this slashdot: Why is it better to be locked-in to Googles proprietary software instead of Microsofts?

As others have said, this would only be a good idea, IMO, as a "GApps Appliance" that can be properly audited and approved by US Government security experts.

If I had to leave important FAA information on a server, I'd feel safer with Google than from either the lowest bidding or highest bribing IT company for the FAA.

But the article fails to mention why the XP systems need replacement.

Simple. MS says they won't support XP after a given date. After that date the FAA (and everybody else) would have to upgrade to Vista to continue getting support from MS.

If the DOT/FAA goes with linux they'll likely go with a vendor like RedHat or Novell who will offer full support services without arbitrary drop-dead dates for support, much easier upgrade paths, etc.

You can't outsource security [e.g. oh look google is so much better at keeping our documents secure]

Of course you can. For many organizations, handling document security is a major problem. Even basic stuff like backups is a major PITA

But even more than that, presumably one of the things he was referring to is the security implications of having people download "stuff" that may or may not be legitimate documents, and accidentally running it (and don't even try to give me shit about how there aren't any real viruses for Linux - if a major government agency starts relying on Linux boxes, you can bet someone, somewhere will start looking at ways to use it for intrusion). Yes, lots of apps have far saner policies about running things than Office has, but avoiding downloading files from mail accounts entirely in favor of processing those documents outside of your normal environment whenever possible would have the effect of limiting the potential damage further.

It's not that a webapp is required to do that, but that Google's apps present a possible way of doing it that is convenient and available.

Not only are the google versions of the tools not nearly feature complete, but they're over the internet. Thus guaranteed to be sucktastically slow (especially when a lot of people use it)

Maybe, maybe not. Google Spreadsheets handle a lot of Excel files that breaks badly in Open Office for me, and it's also FAR faster to open a document in than Open Office is on my box, and far less resource hungry to just keep open, which reduces the time to open even more. If I'd been editing lots of large spreadsheets instead of mostly viewing the occasional small one, perhaps Google Spreadsheets would be a pain, but for MY use it's actually far more efficient than Open Office. Haven't tried Gnumeric for a while, and I rarely need a word processor but when I do Abiword just haven't cut it for me (I tried it again a couple of days ago, and the printouts of the document I tested it on just came out horrendously ugly).

Also, if you're just going to use AJAX based web tools, what does it matter what OS you run?

It matters because the IT department has to manage the systems regardless what apps you run on them.

You can't outsource security [e.g. oh look google is so much better at keeping our documents secure] any more than you can outsource responsibility.

Of course you can. Security is one of the oldest businesses ever outsourced (that means taken away from your own employees/slaves/servants and given to a foreign group for money/treasures/valuable gifts). What do you think the name 'soldier' comes from? It's a person working for sold (from latin solidus = a Roman gold coin), not because of loyality or proudness or legal requirements. Having foreign groups serving as your protection is one of the oldest tricks in the book because you hope that the foreign people are ignorant about your internal struggles and intrigues or don't have any local alliances, and if they aren't as independent as expected, you might replace them without fear of a local unrest.

That's the business of Pinkerton and all the other security agencies, and even outsourcing bookkeeping and document production, exchange and storage is old news. Every middle age town had its writers or calculators whose business was to work for the local traders who weren't able to write or didn't have the calculatory knowledge for bookkeeping. And even today you go to a solicitor if you really want your documents to be correct, authentic and secure.