Subject: misc ramblings OpenSource Integration
From: william bouterse (bill@bouterse.com)
Date: Thu Feb 12 2004 - 22:12:06 AKST
Taken from recent Slashdot discussion on Large Corporate
Pros and Cons of possible migration to Open Source....
How many times over the last few years have we seen the following scenario unfold in various businesses and governmental agencies???
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Unfortunately, it's not that easy. I tend to agree with you in principle - just pick the right tool for the job, it shouldn't matter if it's open source or not. On the other hand, You must remember that there is a lot of pressure against anything Open Source (in the form of marketing from Microsoft, conservatism inside the organization, end-user unwillingness to learn something different) and this pressure should be balanced with an equal force and opposite direction if your Open Source implementation is to be successfull. More and more it becomes hard to chose the right tool for the job because Microsoft tools, Microsoft proponents and Microsoft consultants don't want you to integrate.
I had this discussion with my boss where I used to work a few years ago. He felt that it was OK to include Outlook as an option for a mail client for users alogside Eudora and Netscape Mail, I felt it was risky. This is how it went:
- User starts using Outlook, notices the groupware functions
- Instead of asking for the functions, they ask that those buttons in their Outlook clients "be enabled"
- The only way to do that was (at the time) to replace Sendmail with MS Exchange
- Exchange doens't integrate with current NIS+ servers unless it's through AD + Windows Services for Unix
- That requires master and slave AD servers;
- AD + Exchange will be happier with their own DNS server
- No real Open Source anti-virus software to talk to Exchange while running on Linux, so there's another Windows server
So there you have it: one Linux server that used to run Sendmail, anti-virus, NIS and DNS get's replaced by 1 Exchange server, 2 AD servers, 1 IIS server, 1 anti-virus server. 1 linux box replaced by 6 Windows servers at considerable cost and we lost our ability to chose the right tool for the job for that whole chain.
In the end what I'm saying is that while choosing for the right tool for the job you should be careful not to be locked into something that will force you to pick a lot of tools not so right for the job!
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Food for thought when discussing Open Source integration with existing proprietary systems. I for one know of an incident a couple years ago where a Burrough's governmental offices were running mostly Linux at a cost savings of aproximately 80,000$, however "so the story goes" the new mayor wanted to use Outlook Disgust and subsequently at least two IT people were fired freeing up funds to pay for total M$ Integration.....
THIS IS A TRUE STOREY....The details may be a little hazy but I heard
this from one of the "Ex" MIS Linux staff....
Anyhow keep up the struggle amigos, there are a few glimmers of "light"
up in the area I live which gives me hope..(tiny steps) .....
William Bouterse
Talkeetna
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2a23 : Fri Feb 13 2004 - 10:13:54 AKST