On Tue, 5 Oct 2004, Bryan J. Smith wrote:
> It looks like the current testing is a _desktop_ consideration for its
> 70,000 PCs. I don't want to argue, and I'm trying to be nice. But I'm
> kinda shocked when I see Linux enthusiasts not realizing just how far
> Linux adoption has _already_ gone. This isn't about just servers
> anymore, we're talking widespread adoption on the enterprise _desktop_.
I think we will be seeing some major announcements (or rumors) in the
next 12-16 months on the desktop for the following reasons.
1) Cost. Savvy CIO's know that Windows on the desktop costs them
everyday, 24 hours a day. Software management suites, virus suites,
email suites, addon's here and addon's there, viruses, trojans, etc.
Not to mention the lost productivity when machines reboot, etc.
2) PHB comfort level with Open Source. This is going up all the time.
They've nibbled around the edges, found it tasty, then bit off some
bigger chunks and come back for more. (And the techs just keep cooking
up some more!!)
3) Standardization of the corporate intranet. The company that I work
at has a huge issue with IE specific coding of our internal
applications. Some (but not all) of the development teams have spent
the last 2 years moving to standards compliant coding practices, etc.
I'm sure other companies face the same issue. And it is not really a
cost issue. You can't hire and manage enough people to recode 5 years
of internal development spread across thousands of servers and get it
all done in 12 months..even if someone had the audacity to try. But
some companies HAVE gotten the message and reworked their internal apps
(IBM for instance). Once that work is in place, then you can switch
200,000 desktops much more easily.
4) Realization that 'good enough' costs a lot less than 'the latest
thing'. With all due respect to owners of luxury cars, the groceries
you bring home are the same ones I put in the trunk of my Saturn.
Dollar bills don't care how many bells and whistles the operating system
that processes them has.
5) Realization that the platform of choice for many of the best and
brightest to develop on is Gnu/Linux and especially LAMP. Why spend
money to get a development environment, then spend money to get the
programmers trained, then pay license fees to deploy the application
when we can just use LAMP? Very few people have a WebSphere development
environment at home that they code at for fun. Lots of people have
Tomcat.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim Wildman, CISSP, RHCE jim@rossberry.com http://www.rossberry.com
"Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best
state, is a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one."
Thomas Paine
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