Open_Source

[Daniel_Curry at Dell.com]

Chris,

You may want to invest in one of these:
http://www.silverneedle.net/content.php?id=121.  :)

The rest of the list,

I know that at a previous employ we used Linux as the development
platform of the CokeMusic.com site.  Clustering services, the variety of
development tools, everything for the development was readily available.
And our product then worked on the clustered Sun equipment with Oracle
backend and WebSphere as the app server.  We only had to tweak for
performance.  But none of those were used 'in-house' except by the test
and QA guys.  And even that was very scaled down.  An E10000 versus a
Sparc 5.

As the management and 'office staff' (ie, non-developers) were most
comfortable with Windows, an MS environment was required.  However,
whenever other needs were identified (e-mail filtering for SPAM and AV,
etc), I put Linux solutions in place to save money.  As a start-up in
Silicon Valley, it was always about services and solutions counter
balanced against money.

At another Silicon Valley employer before that I was responsible for
assisting the Sales staff with identifying where we could deliver a
machine with a Linux solution to satisfy the customer's needs.  In 2000,
this was still in the back office more than the desktop, but we were
still making those pushes.  We were constantly coming in under budget
for projects and delivering customized (sometimes one-off) solutions to
meet customer needs.

Today, I work in Enterprise Tech Support for Dell.  I may not be
designing and implementing solutions, any longer, but I still support
people.  I am often asked, when an MS user is told I support both
Windows and Linux products, which OS provides better solution for X
purpose.  Sometimes they ask for more details, other times they disagree
with my opinion.  But there it is.  

I'm really pleased to see Ubuntu pushing forward the way they are, to
produce a sustainable and end-user friendlier Linux Distribution.  All
of the distributions are improving in this area, as is our
documentation.  The largest failing I see, today, is not so much with
the OS, but with end-user expectations.  So many of people remember the
days of DOS, but have forgotten the learning curve they had to become
fluent.  With the variety of Windows systems, each has been a training
platform for the next.  Thereby lowering the initial learning curves for
the 'upgrade'.  Users expect Linux and it's graphical environment to be
the same as Windows.  So, when they have to learn something new, many
stumble, become frustrated and revert back to what they know.  Getting
Linux onto the corporate desktops will require ways to get around this
issue, quickly.  Labor is still one of the most expensive resources to a
company.  The less time spent training, retraining and learning new
platforms, the lower the entry point for corporations of all sizes and
the more attractive F/OSS solutions can become.

That is my opinion, anyway.

Daniel Curry, RHCE
3rd Shift Enterprise Support


-----Original Message-----
From: linux-poweredge-bounces at lists.us.dell.com
[mailto:linux-poweredge-bounces at lists.us.dell.com] On Behalf Of
christian.peper at kpn.com
Sent: Thursday, June 04, 2009 3:52 AM
To: linux-poweredge-Lists
Subject: RE: Open_Source

> -----Original Message-----
> I want to know out of your experience people the following,
> 1- How open source served your businesses  requirements?
> 2- What kind of application that running on Open Source?
> 3- General experience with Open Source technology?
> 

It serves bus reqs because it costs less than a high-end Unix systems.
Scaling horizontally vs vertically makes more and mroe sense these days
with database driven web apps. I can use a Unix high-end database server
that drives low cost open source web servers and add more web servers as
demand grows. If you're multi-tier and setup properly, this works.
However, many of our legacy apps don't fit into this yet. We're working
on that. As our many other large firms in the Netherlands (KLM,
Rabobank, SNS Reaal, Aegon, Telfort, Shell, etc.) We're starting to eye
OpenSolaris as a possible follow-up for Sun Solaris to perhaps limit the
use of costly Sun hardware/software even further.

Apps we run on (Oracle) Linux: Siebel, Stellent, Peoplesoft, Oracle DB,
AIA, AS, and many more. 

Experiences are great. But you do require knowledgable people (i.e. me!)
and time to check needs, inventorize possibilities and create and
certify your stack with suppliers and manufacturers. But is no different
from using a Windows stack, except the OSS stack has more variables. 
Windows is easy, too easy and no fun. ;) OSS presents a nice challenge
to separate then men from the boys. Hihi, pun intended, let the flames
begin!

Chris.

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