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Linux Business

Open Source Making Inroads in Small Businesses 257

Posted by michael from the price-sensitive dept.
prostoalex writes "In a story mainly about new OpenOffice release, NewsFactor Network quotes an interesting finding of Jupiter Research analyst: "Open-source productivity suites did "surprisingly well" in the mid-size business market, with the OpenOffice suite alone claiming a share of about 6%. Furthermore, [Joe Wilcox] found that some 19% of small businesses ran Linux on their desktop, and a whopping 26% ran Linux on their servers.""
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Open Source Making Inroads in Small Businesses More

Open Source Making Inroads in Small Businesses

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  • where's the beef? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by garcia ( 6573 ) * on Friday October 03, 2003 @09:44AM (#7123195)
    And those pockets are in small and mid-size businesses -- those of 1,000 employees or less -- where paying top dollar for Microsoft's very expensive productivity suite does not make much sense. In conducting research for a new report, Wilcox found that open-source productivity suites did "surprisingly well" in the mid-size business market, with the OpenOffice suite alone claiming a share of about 6 percent. Furthermore, he found that some 19 percent of small businesses ran Linux on their desktop, and a whopping 26 percent ran Linux on their servers.

    I want to know some more detail... What state? What area of business? 26% server share, sure, believeable, 6% OO share, eh, not too believeable, but I will go with it based on the fact that they have shown no data to back up this claim... 19% on the desktop? Uh, no way, that's just too unbelievable for me.

    I love Linux and I think it has great potentional but I think this "research" is just as skewed as anything that is funded by MS...

    • Re:where's the beef? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Eponymous Coward ( 6097 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @09:54AM (#7123295)
      Want to know some more detail? Then buy the report. That's the whole reason they bait you with these findings. In the end, they are just trying to sell some research.

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @10:04AM (#7123392)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • 19% on the desktop?

      Pay attention to what was said. Not that 19% ran Linux exclusively on the desktop, just that in 19% of companies there exists a linux desktop. Might be that one cranky developer, might be like me, the IT guy who runs the Linux servers also has a Linux desktop to help him test scripts and new patches.

      Remember, Lies, Damn Lies, and then Statistics.

    • I agree. I think we'll see that those percentages are "some computer in our shop uses this." rather than "most or all computers in our shop use this."

      I was the IT guy for a 35-desktop company a few years back. We ran Linux on exactly two of those computers. Furthermore, each of the "Linux computers" multibooted with WinNT and the WinNT partition was definately the primary.

      Would my company have counted as one of the "19% that use Linux on the desktop"?

      TW
      • Would my company have counted as one of the "19% that use Linux on the desktop"?

        That depends. When a researcher calls you on the phone and asks "Do you have or use any Linux desktops?" Would you answer yes?

        They don't exactly do office visits to confirm this stuff

    • I have intimate knowledge of the networks of two large corporations, 3 medium sized businesses, one educational institution, and 2 small businesses. In each, Linux is only used for web servers, traffic filtering, firewalls, and small database servers (at one location).

      I'm sure that my observations mirror those of many, many others. Linux is making significant penetration into many new markets, true. But the desktop and small-business-server aren't two of those markets.

      • "I'm sure that my observations mirror those of many, many others. Linux is making significant penetration into many new markets, true. But the desktop and small-business-server aren't two of those markets."

        Hold on here. I run Linux on my home machine. I was just hired by a company where I have only met one other person in the company and I do most of my communication with the rest of the company via email and xls files. Even if before I was hired this company did not use Linux and OpenOffice, they do no

    • Re:where's the beef? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Umrick ( 151871 )
      110 user business here. Medical practice using Electronic medical records (EMR) and computerized practice management.

      7 Windows 2000 servers (darned vertical apps and Exchange)
      4 Linux Servers
      112 Workstations total
      3 Linux workstations for now (though moving Win98 boxes to Linux + LTSP where possible)
      Open Office is on 9 boxes as we ran out of MSOffice licenses... 72 other machines have MSOffice, rest run vertical apps only...

      OO 8% of all workstations
      Linux 36% of all servers
      Linux 2.7% of all clients (mostly
    • 19% would be vaguely believable, though very surprising, but the number together don't work. 90% use MS Office, 6% use OOo (presumably 4% use other stuff). If 19% run Linux, then 13% of desktops run Linux but not OOo -- whether they do no office suitish work or use Gnome or KDE office or whatever is anyone's guess. That's even harder to believe. What's even worse, is that if we assume basically all small business desktops do wrd processing or spreadsheets, then about 9% or SMB desktops run MS Office on

  • Good. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by grub ( 11606 ) <slashdot@grub.net> on Friday October 03, 2003 @09:45AM (#7123208) Homepage Journal

    Small to mid-size business move faster than big business. When the smaller ones are more competitive and saving cash the larger businesses will have to follow suit to remain competitive.

  • OpenOffice in schools... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 03, 2003 @09:45AM (#7123213)
    If only schools could switch to OpenOffice to, and we could probably get rid of the MS Office dominance for ever in a few years...

    • Re:OpenOffice in schools... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by godders ( 517242 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @09:58AM (#7123330)
      Personally, I find it sickening that schools (here in the UK at least) are teaching lessons as what amount to "Microsoft Office Classes"... My housemate is a teacher, she has little knowledge past the standard MSOffice skills an average office worker would pick up, yet she's planning lessons and teaching these kids.
      IMHO there needs to be a definite line between teaching kids how a word processor works, and teaching kids "MS Word 2000" or whatever...

      What happens to all these kids when they finally get jobs? their employer has to either spend more money training them, or shell out for the latest microsoft product that they are vaguely familar with...
      • hmmm... quite interesting. My wife said one of the most useful classes she ever took was one on MS office(Word and Excel mainly)

        She uses both programs quite a bit for a stay at home mom.

        Do you find it sickening that they are teaching kids MS Office, word processing, or what? I don't get your pint unless you just hate MS.
        • The main problem with teaching kids MS Office is also money. Office is expensive. Not every kid at home can afford the latest version of Office. The other issue is the Shear stupidity of it. There is a private school here and they wanted to set up a computer lab. The decided that they did not want to use Open Office becasue... That is not what the kids would use in the working world. Okay except that the school stops at SIXITH GRADE!!!!!! I swear that it like saying that they need a tractor for there garde
    • Trying --- I am a Tech Director at a school. We are handing out copies of OpenOffice to students to install at home. Pushing teachers to use it in their classes (that's the hardest part getting the teachers to change - not the students)

      If OO sticks around there will be more and more future employees clamoring for it.

    • Re:OpenOffice in schools... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Doesn't_Comment_Code ( 692510 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @10:03AM (#7123386)
      If only schools could switch to OpenOffice to, and we could probably get rid of the MS Office dominance for ever in a few years...

      I'm working on a project to recycle old computer parts into working computers for schools. The school I'm working with now has no money... none. That's why we're doing this. So I can't very well turn around and ask the school to drop a couple hundred for an OS for each computer they get. Obviously we will be using 100% open source - OpenOffice on Linux.


      Interestingly, for all the complaining I hear about underfunded schools, some schools refused free computers because they didn't look like the others that they had purchased. Even more refused because they had to choose between using Linux free or paying for an OS.

      • Interestingly, for all the complaining I hear about underfunded schools, some schools refused free computers because they didn't look like the others that they had purchased. Even more refused because they had to choose between using Linux free or paying for an OS.

        You might want to think about appealing these decisions to the court of public opinion. Have you considered writing letters to an editor or three? Parents who are upset that their kids can't get on computers at school might decide that it matte


    • If only schools could switch to OpenOffice to, and we could probably get rid of the MS Office dominance for ever in a few years..

      Not necessarily. Apple owned the school market for years but couldn't make great inroads into the business market.
      • Apple owned the school market for years but couldn't make great inroads into the business market.

        Apple Macs in academia typically had Microsoft Office on them. I know - I used to use them. I actually still feel that little has changed in how I use word processors since Word 4.2 for the Mac, running on an SE/30. Well perhaps one thing - I can now see the document at its proper width. That's about it though.

        Office dominance couldn't have been broken by the Macs, because Office was available on both. Meanw

    • Re:OpenOffice in schools... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by stephenbooth ( 172227 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @11:54AM (#7124524) Homepage Journal

      A couple of weeks ago my 12 year old neice (who uses Microsoft Word at school) was visiting (well my sister was visiting and unfortunately the kids come with her) and wanted to type up some home work on my PC. I sat her down in front of the PC and started up OpenOffice.org for her automatically (it's what I use myself, I only have MS Office on there cos a) it was already there and b) sometimes OpenOffice.org has problems with MS files). She'd been working for about 2 hours and had produced about 3 pages with a number of font styles and some inserted graphics she'd pulled out of my clip art folder before she realised it wasn't Microsoft Office she was using. She's not brighter than most other kids her age and that was the first time she'd used OpenOffice.org.

      Stephen

  • 19%? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Syberghost ( 10557 ) <syberghost@@@syberghost...com> on Friday October 03, 2003 @09:46AM (#7123218)
    Where? Silicon Valley?

    Everywhere I've been, it's more like 1% running Linux on the desktop. At least, if you're only counting places where the management has made the decision to run Linux, not places where individual IT folks are running elicit Linux boxes on our^H^H^Htheir desktops.

  • Hoax ? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 03, 2003 @09:50AM (#7123246)
    I ran into several companies and except one, no one runs Linux as a Desktop operating Systems, and every computer runs Micorsoft Office.

    Strange, is not it ? I don't believe in that report

  • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Different here (Score:2, Informative)

      by sumiciu ( 685713 )
      Well, as the previous poster says, you must be a Linux consultant. I have spent the past five years doing some consulting jobs around all Spain, about twenty medium companies, and all I can say I have seen is about half a dozen Linux servers, mainly in file and web server tasks. Most of the remaining servers run Windows 2000, and there even were a couple of ancient HP 9000 running HP-UX.
    • Hey - I looked out of the Window and didn't see any chinses people! All that crap about 1/5 of the worlds population - its a boax!

  • Excellent to see... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Kandel ( 624601 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @09:51AM (#7123263) Journal
    As we may remember from a recent interview with James Gosling, he made the statement,
    "There's no way that I could pay nearly $4,000 for a freaking word processor at home. It just isn't going to happen." [weblogs.com]
    If the home user cannot justify purchasing an expensive office suite, it is no surprise that the small business will try to avoid it as well. Initiatives such as OpenOffice really help to push these boundaries, making Open Source software appealing to business, and to the end user.
    I personally use Abiword and OpenOffice in my day to day word processing, and I prefer it much to the expensive Microsoft Office suite.
    • Microsoft Word isn't $4000, it's $199.88 [amazon.com]. The entire XP suite is $399.99 [amazon.com].

      There is a world of difference between $400 and $4000, especially considering that $400 gets you not only a word processor, but a spreadsheet, presentation software, database software, personal information management software, etc. etc. And clip art libraries. And all kinds of other useful crap.
      • the quote is a little out of context. Gosling was talking about a license for six computers. He was still exaggerating, but not as much as it seems. For a small business, whether it's $2000 or $4000, it's still a lot of money. If all you need is to create text documents and spreadsheets, open office makes a hell of a lot of sense. Especially if you're running windows, so you can run it natively.
      • especially considering that $400 gets you not only a word processor, but a spreadsheet, presentation software, database software, personal information management software, etc. etc. And clip art libraries. And all kinds of other useful crap.

        That's still not worth $400. Office suite software is a commodity item now. All of the problems involved with creating such software were solved 10 years ago. (That's why Microsoft is trying to invent new problems that we didn't know we needed, like DRM'd spreadsheet

  • No surprise... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Xentax ( 201517 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @09:52AM (#7123274)
    For those companies that are:

    1) Big enough to worry about getting busted with unlicensed (pirated and/or over-installed legal copies of) software, but
    2) Unwilling to spend $x99.99 on Office per seat,

    OpenOffice is a no-brainer alternative. Heck, Notepad is a better choice for some percentage of the staff, I'm sure.

    It's pretty much inevitable -- good research becomes commoditized over time, everything from Velcro on the Space Shuttle to Spelling and Grammar checking in a Word Processor. I'm actually sort of surprised that it's taken this long for a Free office suite to start (more accurately, to be SEEN to be) really getting into mainstream commercial use.

    Still, I think there will always be a percentage of people who want the latest and greatest features, and organizations that are willing to spend to provide them. And organizations with the money to spend will continue to standardize across their staff, etc.

    IMHO, neither 'side' (MS, Oracle, etc. on one side and Linux, OpenOffice, MySQL etc. on the other) should really focus on 'winning'. Keep those core users, go after the others. MS is gradually learning to be competitive instead of anti-competitive, something that will benefit both sides in the long run.

  • Easy way to verify it (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ajs318 ( 655362 ) <sd_resp2@@@earthshod...co...uk> on Friday October 03, 2003 @09:53AM (#7123279)
    It would not be too hard to verify Open Office.org's market share by experiment. All we need to do is start sending out .sxw and .sxc attachments. If we get e-mails asking what programme opens them, we tell them Open Office {though I'd expect MS Office to be able to open them just fine; after all, the Open Office.org file formats are public knowledge, whereas the MS office file formats are closely-guarded secrets}.

    Also, it might give some people a dose of their own medicine.
    • "Also, it might give some people a dose of their own medicine."

      Bull. This is your primary objective, not some useless experiment.

      And a pretty damn good idea too, I might add.
    • All we need to do is start sending out .sxw and .sxc attachments.

      You know, this has always irritated me. Why is some specialized document format used for sending documents back and forth? With Word, it spreads problems like macro viruses. Yes, at least an open format is nicer because you don't require a $600 office suite to read it.

      But shouldn't we really be using PDF or something similar? Then there are no issues with document formatting - it looks exactly like it would when you print it. There are n

  • You bet (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Doesn't_Comment_Code ( 692510 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @09:54AM (#7123293)
    We're a small business, and we run open source on our server and a few desktops. We'll be moving to more in the future.

    You can just imagine the look on my boss's face when he asked how much he had to pay for my software and upgrades.

    Basically, we use open source because this company lives month to month. We make plenty of money, but there's not enough to throw around on wild expenses. Also, the only excuse for not using open source is not having any employees smart enough to handle it. The MS philosophy is to make computers dumbed down to the level of the dumbest user. And that's why a lot of businesses use windows. But in a sense, if you have open source knowledge and background, then the sum of all open source software is like a benefit you bring to the company once they hire you. Because you have free or cheap access to a program to do just about everything on just about any hardware. What could be better for a small business? This had a large role in my employment.
    • Open source is not free. The cost to your boss for running open source software is the time it takes for you to support it. He also needs you, or someone like you, to make sure that his systems keep running etc. This is why many companies shy away from open source solutions, the perceived lack of support.

      • Re:You bet (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Zachary Kessin ( 1372 )
        True, but as anyone who has ever had an office full of computers running windows will tell you, those machines need support too. Probably more hours a month than linux does.

        True there are costs with linux, but moving to windows will not make them go away.

      • Re:You bet (Score:3, Insightful)

        by 4iedBandit ( 133211 )

        Open source is not free. The cost to your boss for running open source software is the time it takes for you to support it. He also needs you, or someone like you, to make sure that his systems keep running etc. This is why many companies shy away from open source solutions, the perceived lack of support.

        So by inference, if you buy closed source software you don't have to worry about having someone on hand to support it and keep it all running. As we all know Microsoft products require absolutely no on

        • > Companies benefiting from OSS should donate some money to the OSS developement teams to
          > help keep things going. I'd like to know if that is actually happening.

          My company does this is some small way, certainly not in proportion to how much we use open source. That said, I don't suspect open source will thrive on donations made by companies out of the goodness of their hearts, any more than the forest will thrive on the goodwill of logging companies.

          I would counter that companies should commission

      • Open source is not free. The cost to your boss for running open source software is the time it takes for you to support it. He also needs you, or someone like you, to make sure that his systems keep running etc. This is why many companies shy away from open source solutions, the perceived lack of support.

        Ah but that is such a complete canard anyway. The price of Microsoft products is hundreds of dollars per desktop (more if you include the extra hardware needed) plus the cost of the time it takes for t

      • I think none of the other replies to your post mention the TCO of the vulnerability to viruses and worms that Microsoft products bring to your organization.

        Most of the TCO figures are bogus because they must absolutely include either of (1) the cost of virus/worm related downtime, OR (2) the cost of a corporate edition of some antivirus software and its ongoing subscription costs. Any TCO figure for MS that does not include costs for one or the other of these is bogus.

  • Stages (Score:2)

    by rf0 ( 159958 )
    Well at my company Linux has 100% desktop usage. Well its only a few linux peeps but does that count? The point it depends on the sample size and no mention is made of where the data comes from, number of people etc.

    97% of stats are made up on the spot

    Rus

  • Linux is eventual in its nature (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mnmn ( 145599 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @09:59AM (#7123346) Homepage
    I'm in the IT department of a small company.. ~70 hosts and ~8 servers. The need arose a while ago to have a seperate database offloading data from the MS SQL server for reporting purposes. I installed linux on a redundant P3 lying around and set things up because I didnt want to hit the management with a bill for some fancy UNIX solution, and I'm just used to linux.

    So now theres the need to use a better VPN solution than the one that comes with win2k, and to replace the MS proxy server. Will I hit them with a bill for the cobalt raq server, an RS/6000 or a used Pentium3 with Linux/FreeBSD? I've no beef with FreeBSD, but I had to install something on the RedHat that doesnt install on FreeBSD.

    So Linux is eventual. Everyone will have a need for a utility server and not want to pay for it... and the techie who suggests it will be preferred, for saving the small business some money, natural selection of OSes comes with it.

    • Freedom from hassles (Score:5, Insightful)

      by wayne ( 1579 ) <wayne@schlitt.net> on Friday October 03, 2003 @10:48AM (#7123838) Homepage Journal
      I installed linux on a redundant P3 lying around and set things up because I didnt want to hit the management with a bill for some fancy UNIX solution, andI'm just used to linux.

      I think the freedom to "just do it" is as significant a factor as the free price and the freedom to modify the code. The ability to download open source software, install it on an old, redundant computer, and play around with it without having to ask anyone for permission or money is a huge factor. Even if the techie knows that his boss will probably approve the money, it is still a hassle. The boss might say "no", the boss might not be around, the boss might use the discussion to bring up other, unpleasant things, such as WTF those clueless users in Marketing are demanding right now.

      Of course, this "freedom from hassles" is also why people use the software that is installed by default on the computers they buy instead of going through the hassles of downloading OSS. It does cut both ways. This changes when it is time to upgrade the system, and then the hassle factor comes back in. If you can upgrade that Win98 box to Linux without having to get permission, then even if the TCO is higher for OSS, it will still get done.

  • Those numbers sound questionable. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by stratjakt ( 596332 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @10:02AM (#7123372) Journal
    I visit tons of small businesses, and this guys telling me 1 in 4 are running linux somewhere?

    And what exactly does he call a small business? Are these .com startups or what? Sounds like a dataset skewed towards tech-oriented businesses.

    I mean, your local mom and pop dry cleaner or deli stand doesn't usually have a server farm in the closet or care how many megaflips per flop the electrowizzer can do.

    When I think small business and computers, I think of a cheap dell in the corner running QuickBooks..
    • When I think small business and computers, I think of a cheap dell in the corner running QuickBooks..

      That's about right.
    • I guess an old POS (as in Piece Of Shit) computer running POS (as in Point of Sales) on Linux would count as one. And Windwos servers on my company out numbers Linux servers but my company would still be counted as a business running Linux.
    • Well at the mom and pop 1 terminal for sales and reporting level I'd assume your correct. My company produces Point of Sale software and we rarely sell systems of that size. However when you get 3 or more terminals for sales or any kind of complex inventory you quickly realize that quick books just isn't upto the task, this is the market we've recently entered into.

      You average 3 terminal system will cost you about $18,000 just in software costs from us and we're priced lower then much of our competition.
    • "When I think small business and computers, I think of a cheap dell in the corner running QuickBooks.."

      When I think of small business and computers I think of the Lotto machine in the local convenience store.

      Like anyone cares what OS in in their cash register?

      If the local mom-and-pop is running Windoze and their kid comes back from school one day and converts them to Linux/OO they'll thank her for saving them a few hundred bucks. They'll also finally have someone they can call for tech support.

      • I recently wandered into a bottle shop to buy some beer. So I plonk it down on the counter and the checkout-chick scans it and I then notice that the PC she is using is running an app in KDE! Holy crap I think ... then I think striking up a conversation with her about Linux and KDE would not impress. Ah well.

        But if the task bar hadn't been visible I just would never have known.

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @10:03AM (#7123382)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • I'm in that 26% (Score:5, Interesting)

    by cenonce ( 597067 ) <{anthony_t} {at} {mac.com}> on Friday October 03, 2003 @10:04AM (#7123391)
    I'm a solo practicing lawyer with one employee. I use two Macs for desktop stuff, but keep all my firm files on a Linux x86 Server I built and set-up myself. The Macs mount the shares via NFS. It also acts as a print server. I've never had a problem with it and would never be able to afford to have a dedicated server if I had to pay Microsoft licensing fees. I also figure I saved myself about a thousand bucks by using Linux instead of buying OS X server and another Mac capable of acting as a server.

    -A

  • small businesses need to conserve money - Linux is free and its TCO is usually less than MSindows, so it seems obvious that Linux would make inroads at small businesses.

    the important thing is that when some of these small businesses go big, they'll choose Linux because of familiarity and loyalty....
  • As noted at the end of the article, M$ already has the problem of companies not upgrading old versions which now do more than what the company needs. If Microcrud forces an upgrade a lot of that upgrading is going to be to OO rather than to Orifice.

    Basically, Microslug is losing market even if OpenSource doesn't gain market share. If they try to regain market it is going to be at the expense of market share. Short run, they'll have no real choice but to force their customer base into either upgrading or

  • Why Not? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by 4of12 ( 97621 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @10:09AM (#7123429) Homepage Journal

    These small and medium sized businesses can move more quickly and make changes that they see as being a better business decision. Costs and benefits of any decision are up-close and personal.

    Hmmm... let's see ... I have to retrain myself a little to understand the new application (which takes time), suffer a little loss of features, but it costs a lot less, especially over time.

    Large companies take longer to do this. The costs and benefits appear different. Large companies like MyCorp have negotiated multi-year, site-wide contracts with companies like Microsoft for things like Office. Consequently, at the department level those products appear "free", we don't pay for them because it comes out of some company wide expenditure, just like electricity and phone service. (And, too, the standardization on One product helps to minimize support costs; so the old One product line is more firmly entrenched . The support techs are more familiar with the old devil than the new devil.)

    OpenOffice still has a way to go to compete against that impression in large companies. CIO's are cautious about making a big move unless they feel real comfortable that they understand the costs involved.

    While in a small business, the proprietor feels and benefits the costs directly, in the large business, the CIO assumes all of the costs of worrying about the transition. If they're wrong, it's not like they'll just go back the next day like the small business can. No, a bad IT decision in a large company is head-on-a-platter time.

    Therefore, study the issue and defer a major transition decision until more evidence is available.

  • I haven't consulted for small businesses in a few years, but when I was, I didn't find ANY linux, I couldn't even convince them to convert from SCO Xenix to linux.

    If these numbers are accurate, it must be for a small microcosm where the VARs that set up systems for small businesses have switched to using linux in their deployments. Even then, small businesses tend to stick with what is working...even if it doesn't work perfectly.

    I think they need to provide more details and some source information to bac
    • I haven't consulted for small businesses in a few years, but when I was, I didn't find ANY linux

      Yes, and we all know that the world is a fixed, static place, where nothing ever changes.

      I haven't consulted for small businesses in a few years either, but when I was, I didn't find ANY Windows servers. Everybody was using Novell!

      So, therefore (by your own logic), Novell must be the most popular server platform for small business.

      Wow, I think somebody should tell them, I'm sure they'd love to hear that!

  • Makes perfect sense (Score:5, Interesting)

    by _underSCORE ( 128392 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @10:15AM (#7123475) Homepage Journal
    About five years ago, I set up a linux server at my godfather's business, and it's been running like a tank since then. It replaced an NT machine that required constant fixing and administration on his end. Since he's not the most savvy user, this was a constant source of complaint for him.

    The linux machine grew with his business, and was only recently replaced (due to a motherboard failure). When I asked him what kind of OS he wanted on the new server, the choice was clear: Linux. Since it requires so little maintenance (none from him and only remote administration from me) he's been one of the most vocal Linux advocates in the small business community, and had several business in our area come in to see how well Linux works with their existing technologies.

    Did we have trouble? Yeah... ACT didn't like to be on a SAMBA share (until I found out it needed oplock tweaking), and getting tech support from his ISP was troublesome, but once everything was set up, there was nothing more to do.

    Small businesses often can't afford to have a full time IT person, so this kind of set it and forget it proposition makes great business sense.
  • It runs under Linux, WinXP, and MacOS, it handles ALL the MS files we've run into, and gives us a solid office package for free. Ok, so we're a 3 person company, with only two "office" machines, but our company is 50% MacOSX ;), and we run OpenOffice for productivity. For the cost of one copy of MSOffice, we can get an entire PC workstation, with an overpriced copy of WinXP, and OO.

  • according to Forrester... (Score:3, Informative)

    by realfake ( 302363 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @10:28AM (#7123589)
    It's more like 70% for big companies.
    http://www.forrester.com/ER/Research/Report/0,1338 ,17096,00.html [forrester.com]

    It's not saying they're *exclusively* using linux, and it's unclear whether this is server or desktop.

  • It's a question of trust... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by 16K Ram Pack ( 690082 ) <tim DOT almond AT gmail DOT com> on Friday October 03, 2003 @10:37AM (#7123705) Homepage
    Once people realise that StarOffice/OpenOffice aren't some geek toys and are serious suites for Office development, they'll be much less fearful of switching.

    That is, once people know 2 or 3 people who say "we used OpenOffice/StarOffice at company X and it was fine and saved us a packet".

    OpenOffice isn't going to grow because of IT Directors deciding to use it. It will be people installing it themselves, or trying it at home and finding they like it and forcing the issue upwards.

  • It is the product activation... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by (H)elix1 ( 231155 ) <slashdot.helix@nOSPaM.gmail.com> on Friday October 03, 2003 @10:38AM (#7123720) Homepage Journal
    I think Microsoft is finally starting to succeed in eliminating the 'casual' software pirating. Sure, there are the larger corporate versions that don't have the activation feature - but most of the smaller companies (less than 25 people) won't have that type of license. A few years back, you could buy a dell and take the copy of office 97 and stick it on every desktop - not legal, but easily to do. Now that is just not the case as today's software loves to finger print your hardware to prevent this from happening.

    So why the increase in OSS? I suspect a big chunk comes from folks who look at the CAL's, email, file, or print servers - all the things in addition to an office suite - and have to decide if they really want to pony up for it. A personal example: a friend was looking to get a copy of office to update their resume, among other things. With the product activation, they could not install my copy of Word. Best case, they could buy a student edition for $130 (and sign up for classes) or plunk down $200 for a normal version. I explained what the activation did, pointed them to some on-line vendors I trust, and then gave them the link to Open Office to use while they thought about what to do.

    Office is just peanuts, IMHO. The back office pieces are the spendy bits, and that is where a lot of the OSS software shines. Even for something as basic as a web server for the public, is it really worth two grand for IIS? Some folks might say yes, others might go Apache...
  • Apparently small businesses do very little surfing [google.com] as Google linux usage is around 1%.

  • Not this company (Score:3, Interesting)

    by inteller ( 599544 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @10:42AM (#7123766)
    For s small development company like this one, nothing beats the deal MSDN gives you. If you shop around you can get universal subscription for around 1k and that gives you enough dev licences to ALL of their software. The time saved from not having to reinvent the wheel pays for itself.

  • I want to go there today (Score:4, Insightful)

    by krautmann ( 535387 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @10:46AM (#7123810)
    My wife runs a small business (40 employees) and I do the computing stuff (in my leisure time, basically). So I have some experience in SMB and Linux.
    5 years ago I introduced Linux file + print servers, routers, and firewalls. Since I was a newbie in the beginning I had a steep learning curve to climb up. After that, everything was perfect. No problems with the 4 Linux and 1 FreeBSD servers, but there still is a NT machine, because some software the company (fashion business) needs runs only on windows. The maintenance costs for this machine are 10 times higher than the 5 other servers combined. I would be glad to get rid of it, but software we need is simply not avaliable in Linux. This is a big obstacle towards an MSfree life.

    Then, the desktops. All these Win machines on the desktops require far too much attention. Many of them are > 5 years old and need to be replaced. So this is a good time to migrate towards OSS. So I gave a KDE desktop machine a try --> endless hassle with MS office formats, OpenOffice crawls, users dislike it because it's not Windows, 1 GHz + 256 MB RAM needed etc etc. My conclusion is that it is not the MS desktops which are the problem. Maybe some might be better off with Linux desktops but I think the gain will never be more than 10%, if at all.
    The real problem is that there is an overly complex machine at every desk capable of gazillion CPU cycles per sec and able to process GB of data, for what? Writing an invoice (3 kB data) or booking something into an accounting system (234 bytes data). That's what 80% of all workplaces are like. For these 80%, all these diskussions about which desktop is the best are regularly missing the point. That's why I will give thin clients a try. So my idea is: big server machine for those 80 %, old PCs as thin clients, typical desktop with 4 buttons: e-mail, web, write_a_letter, modify_database; Linux or MACs for the remaining 20% (mostly designers). This will take a long time to set up, because there are no off-the-shelf solutions. So the 2nd big obstacle is: there are no experts available to help SMBs. My wife's company would still be locked in Windows if I were not around. Businesses of this size cannot afford a full-time sysadmin. If Joe Fashion or Jill Plumber needs a network for their 5 employees business, they will always end up with MS, provided by the local we-sell-computers shop.

    For SMBs, the break even for OSS is still far, far away.

    • old PCs as thin clients, typical desktop with 4 buttons: e-mail, web, write_a_letter, modify_database;

      This is where linux+Apache shines. You could provide all four of these services via Java+Mozilla at the client.

      As far as thin client setup, this isn't a hard task. Look at the Diskless-HOWTO and Network-boot-howto in /usr/local|share/docs. Do some web searching for Linux+remote+boot and NFS.
      If you can configure a linux server then you won't have any problems with this setup.

      Enjoy,
    • So go there...

      Remove your blinders, and find out what SUN or IBM have to offer you.

      For SUN gear, a server handling 40 users, and SUN Ray terminals wouldn't be bad...

      Ratboy666
    • One possibility to check out is Linux Terminal Server [ltsp.org]. All of your users could be logged into the servers, and their workstations essentially become terminals. You could use your existing client hardware and existing servers.
    • 1st layer the displays, old obsolete PCs running an X server.

      2nd layer login servers with plenty of memory and CPU which serve an easy to use user interface like Gnome, but which do *NOT* run any heavyweight applications.

      2 machines should be plenty to serve desktops to 40 users and give you some redundancy.

      3rd layer an array of load balanced application servers run the heavyweight applications. Sun Grid Engine provides the load balancing and high availability. These can be PCs off the desktop if they hav
  • The point I switched over to RH for work was when it set up the display & wireless card on my notebook straight out of the box. Goodbye Win2K. The only app I'm really missing is AutoRoute - for most things OpenOffice is just fine. Its a bit sad that there isn't more educational software for Linux - all the stuff in PC World is for PCs. Having said that my kids are happy enough with mame, doom, pingus etc...

  • This says it all (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mormop ( 415983 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @11:37AM (#7124353)
    If so, a Microsoft spokesperson did not show it when he gave a cool response about his company's faith in the free market -- a safe bet when that company owns over 90 percent of the market for desktop-productivity suites, according to Wilcox's research.

    and

    Hiser said that OpenOffice version 1.1, due this week, can translate Microsoft files with an accuracy of 90 percent.
    But anything less than 100 percent is not good enough, Wilcox noted.

    So at the end of the day, why all the poncing around with Media Player and Explorer at the anti-trust trial. Bundling these two packages into Windows pales into insignificence in the MS monopoly when compared to the constantly changing and jealously guarded MSOffice file formats.

    Until Microsoft is forced to compete on the quality and features of MS Office (neither of which are worth the price over OO.org) as opposed to locking everyone else out with convoluted file structures they will have a stranglehold on business.

  • ClarkConnect! (Score:2, Informative)

    by Ira-Waru ( 123421 )

    I think that ClarkConnect [clarkconnect.org] (free as in beer for the home edition) is exactly what the community needs to make inroads in the SOHO: take an old computer, put in two nic cards, pop the CD in the drive, answer about ten questions (mostly everything autodetects), and you've got a small business server.

    Web based administration (you don't have to touch the cli), samba, firewire, vpn, antispam/anitvirus filters, apache, email/DNS backup. Best of all, there's a solid community behind it.

    • I used to use clark connect, but switched to smoothwall. They have basically the same feature set, but smoothwall just feels more cohesive to me. I've since replaced smoothwall with a gentoo box built from scratch to be a firewall/gateway and couldn't be happier.
  • I know a number of people who own and run Small Businesses and being a technical type, I have helped a number of them with their software and hardware problems. Well, I'll bust the bubble on MS and Small Business, hardly anyone in small business pays for their software. About 95% of the software I see in Small Business is pirated. Open Source may not be making huge inroads to small business, but MS is not making money off them either. If MS had a sure fire way to stop people from pirating their software, Op
  • All our servers(3) run Linux. The development team (4 machines) uses dual Linux\Windows machines (a must, since we develop cross-platform software). Development also uses solely OpenOffice (and to date we had never seen a Word document, Excell spreadsheet or presentation we couldn't open nor have produced one of those the other people in the company couldn't open).

    I am trying to convince one of my other (two) partners (Finnance/Project Management) to move to OpenOffice, but since she has been using MS Offi

  • I am beginning to see the shift (Score:4, Informative)

    by ducomputergeek ( 595742 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @12:47PM (#7125052)
    I work as a technology consultant, independant mainly to very small mom and pop shops and small offices. Many have upgraded PC's in the last few months and just now have Office XP/2002 and here 2003 is comming out at the end of the month.

    These people express a disgust that every 18 months, what the buy today won't be powerful enough to run that in the future and its been cheaper to buy $700 boxes every 2 years and chuck 'em than to go through, upgrade hardware and software.

    Many more use FreeBSD and Linux daily. I have helped 4 businesses set up ecommerce sites through Yahoo, they have no idea what the hell FreeBSD is, but that is what powers their site.

    Also, I have a portable FreeBSD box called my Apple iBook that many take a look at and two mom & pop stores have switched to using Macs for Point of sale and other uses and love them because they are easy to use and don't crash.

    I started out in the graphics/video production field with wedding businesses and most switched around 2000 - 2001 to Dell's and PC's. Many are now switching back to mac because of their lost time and work with system crashes.

    Now to the kicker: I set-up a Linux or FreeBSD box with KDE set up and most people can pick up how to launch Mozilla and Netscape w/o any proablems. In fact over the next two weeks, I am converting one office over to Linux on all of their PIII 700 boxes they have. Total cost: About $2540. ($2500 to hire me to do it, $40 for a copy of RH). Most couldn't tell a difference between OpenOffice's Spreadsheet and Excell and since it can read/write MS office formats (at least for now) they have interoperatblity.

    Their office file/print server has been Linux for "at least two years" one employee remarked, but I don't know I didn't set up their LAN. Well I know its RH 6.2 on IBM hardware, how long its been there...

    Why did they switch? They had spent over $6000 US in the last two years just on support calls to wipe off viruses on these machines not to mention the cost in lost time due to data being lost and computer downtime. The hardest issue was to find a replacement for their accounting/payroll/inventroy software. So I recommended buying one new Dell just to run the software package as it would proably take longer and be a hell of a lot more to reset up 4 years of data on a new system and the PR person wanted an iMac, so I recommended getting her one so she can run QuarkXpress and Photoshop.

    People and businesses are sick and tired the MS upgrade game every 18 months and I think Linux is poised to make some grounds in the business world. Red Hat and SuSE has done a wonderful job of taking Linux from Geekdom to so easy grandma could use it. Still the lack of commerical software is hurting the platform. OpenOffice has made some tremendous gains in terms of functionality to the point where it now can be used.

    Special software is getting there too, like the NOLA Enterprise Resource Planning software, phpprojekt group ware, are good resources for medium sized businesses. What is lacking is some good small business software like Quickbooks that is extremely easy to use and designed for small business. Maybe there is something out there, I just havn't found it yet.

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