Mindbridge Saves "Bunches of Money" In Switch To Linux

While Mindbridge didn't start out as an open source company, it has since managed to save what they can only describe as "bunches of money" by switching to Linux. "Today, Mindbridge has repurposed itself as an open-source-friendly company, and revamped its infrastructure to run completely on Linux and other open source software. 'Having deployed [Linux servers] to our customers, we turned around and said, we can do the same thing internally and save bunches of money. We began a systematic but slow flipping of servers from the Microsoft world over to predominantly Linux — although there are a few BSD boxes around as well,' Christian says. 'It's to the point that today I only have two production Windows servers left, out of 15 or so.'"

Re:Linux...

[jt2377]

"Puckette says it takes some extra time to get an open source infrastructure configured the right way. "The challenge as opposed to buying solutions from one vendor is that when you buy from Microsoft, you can assume it works with other Microsoft products. With open source you have to take more time to make sure all the products interact and all the pieces fit together. But the cost benefits clearly outweigh going with all Microsoft."

I don't see how OSS can take over Microsoft or Microsoft take over OSS.

Re:obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

How can a first post be marked Redundant?

choice quotes from TFA

[bzipitidoo]

when you buy from Microsoft, you can assume it works with other Microsoft products.

Assume?! MS is known for all sorts of lock in. Of course their products work with each other! But only the most recent versions, that too is key to MS's overall strategy. It's when you don't want to upgrade or they don't have some need covered that you're out of luck. 3rd party stuff that works with MS is always chancy. Never know when MS might make an internal change and break half the 3rd party stuff as well as old MS stuff.

.. had only ever administered Microsoft boxes in the past, and had to get used to the idea of command lines.

Can such a person exist? A system administrator who has to get used to the idea of command lines?!

...looked specifically for new hires who were eager to learn. "The people I like are pretty inquisitive type people. I tried to filter out the others in the interview process."

Sounds like the way we wish hiring decisions were made. Sounds too good to be true.

Re:The story is rather misleading...!

[belmolis]

Strictly speaking, yes, it's a contradiction. He should have said "almost completely". Big deal. It hardly invalidates the story.

Not news

[OrangeTide]

Having lived in silicon valley for several years now, it is not news when a company tosses out Windows boxes and replaces them with Linux boxes as an alternative to buying more Windows licenses (for upgrades or for expanding their collection of systems).

Business as usual is when companies adopt Linux for practical business reasons. It happens all the time in the valley, probably because there are many IT guys here with the experience to manage large networks of Linux, BSD, etc machines.

Real Company?

[mcrbids]

Well, it's not like you can't run an "Enterprise Business" on 15 servers. I am CTO of a software company servicing school districts in California. We have 70 school districts, hundreds of users and tens of thousands of students in our databases, we make it work with a surprisingly small cluster of 4 4-way Opteron servers, running at just under 5% of capacity. (mid-day load average)

Our annual sales exceed $1 million dollars this year, we've been growing 40% - 70% annually. No, we're not a megacorp, but still quite legit. (and our servers are all 100% Linux)

What really happened...

[--daz--]

Company fires IT director, hires new IT director who fires all the worthless IT staff who were responsible for 50-60 (insert OS here) servers that were poorly managed -- hires new IT people (fewer of them) that are competent and set up 15 servers running (insert OS here).

I've see that story dozens of times with the (insert OS here) being Linux or Windows.

It's not a hard choice, just perhaps costly.

[brundlefly]

To anyone who knows Linux (or BSD, or any Unix) it's a no-brainer to run the fast, open, free, fully-configurable stuff.

It's only a legitimately difficult decision to make when a company doesn't have Unix expertise. (Which is often.) Pay the cost to replace your IT staff, or pay the cost to rent software from Microsoft?

I wish people would do cost/benefit analyses on this latter point. After all, everyone knows Unix is cheaper. But is it cheaper than replacing your Win32 GUI point-n-click admins with their Unix replacements? I honestly have no clue... and I suspect it really depends upon the company, the culture, the size, the market, etc.

These "I switched to Linux and I saved money articles" are old and meaningless.

"I switched my career from real-estate to oncology and now I make more money!" Great, but what's the real-world cost of doing so, if it's not already a simple option?

(I'm a multi-platform guy with a hybrid environment at home, so save your breath if you're going to point the Finger of Anti-Linux SentimEnt at me.)

Eh, no. It's "Guy with 60 Windows servers"

[Colin Smith]

Converts them to 13 Linux servers.

See Microsoft's problem now? See the point?

Say, did you graduate high school? Your reading skills seem to be lacking, it's right there in paragraph 3 of the article. Oh wait! I get it you didn't RTFA and decided to spout of anyway. Oh and the mods, good job there.

As you were.

Re:Remember Folks

[DaMattster]

Yes, the issue is not so simple. It really depends upon the company, its situation in the market, and the like. But, generally speaking there is significant cost savings in using some things as open source. In the case of a small contract call center in my area, open source was the saving grace for the company. Their IT overhead was so great that the company felt it could not longer be competitive and was considering closing doors. Indeed, the IT department shrank to three people. But these three intrepid people replaced the proprietary Nortel Telephone system that was bleeding them dry on maintenance, support, and just plain babysitting with two Asterisk servers and SNOM telephones. The second largest expense was on the maintenance of their exchange server. So, exchange was phased out in favor of Zimbra. Zimbra was brought online in a week's time and has seen 99.999% uptime with only looking at the logs once a week versus babysitting an exchange server every day. This is not some case study, this is my friend that achieved remarkable results. Asterisk and Zimbra have put this call center back in the black. My friend does see some merits to proprietary, i.e. Active Directory. Simply put, he needs it to adaquetaly manage his workstations. He thinks once Samba4 [samba.org] hits a release, there is potential for phasing out the windows domain controllers. Soon, Windows will be relegated to a SQL server. My friend says that programmers are working furiously to convert to an *AMP solution.

Other cost savings

[o517375]

Having converted most of our servers to Linux from Novell/Microsoft, I can say with confidence that there are savings beyond just hardware, power, Microsoft software and server support hours. The real expense lies in the mindset between the two system architectures. In an open source environment, the goal is to do everything with free software. In a Microsoft environment, the propensity is to buy everything including all the maintenance agreements. _There's_ the killer cost: upgrade and maintenance agreements hold companies hostage to complicated licensing schemes. It's really highway robbery which can sink an IT dept. We have about 140 Microsoft desktops and 25 servers (17 Linux) across 4 offices. By far and away the cost of desktop swamps server by a _huge_ margin. It's pretty sad when a loaded laptop costs more than the server that supports it.

Complex decission

[HangingChad]

But is it cheaper than replacing your Win32 GUI point-n-click admins with their Unix replacements?

In terms of personnel it's not always fair to compare admins dollar for dollar. If I've got an admin who can run a Linux environment that performs reliably with a minimum of downtime, that person is worth more to me. They are saving me thousands in licensing costs and thousands more in potential headaches. They're saving me from vendor lock-in, which might be worth a lot somewhere down the road. With Linux I can scale at will instead of the headache of trying navigate Microsoft's byzantine license fees and restrictions. How much is that worth?

It's worth a lot of money to me to keep Microsoft out the mix, not all companies see it that way. Like with any commodity, value is a perception based on a point of view.

Then there are the intangibles. A vendor calls with some zippy-dippy piece of software that's going to make my life so much easier. It's so funny to ask, "Does it run on Linux? Because that's all we use here." Used to be that was inevitably followed by a long pause, not as much lately. More companies are answering that they do support Linux. Which has kind of taken some of the fun out of sales calls. "You don't have any Windows servers?"

Hehe. Priceless.

Three-card Monte with Win 2k Server

[not_hylas( )]

Here's the setup, Installing a Win 2k Server on our intranet for our Windows clients and Freelancers [inwards looking only]. I briefly jumped on the WWW for updates [yes, I know it's not actively supported] having already updated to SP4 manually along with the latest rollup - yada, yada.

OK, now I've been schooled by some of the best on this particular server - in Seattle, mind you, so I got a pretty good handle on this, but hey, I'm no Mark Russinovich.

So, on this "other OS" I was able to quite easily find all things "Microsoft® Windows® 2000 Server", home page, oodles of info.
Jump on the 2000 Server and off to the download section of MS, [Windows Update and Microsoft Update don't work without IE 6] 20 mins of clicky-clicky and I'm getting nowhere. Weirdly, the word "server" is absent where I'd done the same search earlier on that "other OS".

Three-card Monte:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-card_Monte [wikipedia.org]

Next, IE 6.1 SP1.
The stub doesn't work, [as usual] so I try the Run trick for the full update, ("C\Download\iesetup.exe /"c: ie6wzrd.exe - something like that).
Broke.
[not to mention the frequent STOP errors, disk controller errors, etc. on known good hardware]

4 hours on just this. FOR A FUCKING BROWSER UPDATE.

OH LOOK:
Great, some help!

AutoPatcher 2000 August 2007 Core Release & Update:

http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/OS-Enhancement s/AutoPatcher.shtml [softpedia.com]

AutoPatcher description
AutoPatcher 2000 requires Windows 2000 SP4 to be installed (works with Windows 2000 Pro, Server, & Adv. Server)

"August 29, 2007: The development of the Autopatcher project was officially ceased today, when the Microsoft Legal department contacted the Autopatcher team demanding them to put an immediate stop to any further releases. For more details, please read this article."

Classsssy.
Along the way, I got great offers for Windows 2003 Server, lots of links - rich content ... Web 2.0 goodness!!!!

Here's the punch line Guys and Gals:

Like Sony - I'm banning Microsoft, Windows and all things Redmond from our office. I've wasted my time before [and we formally quite supporting Windows here], but this is the last time I do this - it's ALL going, lock, stock and barrel, down to the books and the media it resides on, OUT.

I don't have these problems on the "other" servers - period {.}.

I'm ripping this install out and installing Linux or Solaris, fuck it, at least if I have trouble I haven't got people trying to hide the software I need to get the GOD DAMNED thing running.

Thank you for your attention.
I feel MUCH better. :-)

hylas