Migration news: Windows to Linux, and vice versa

These days, the "revolution" is all about Linux. The word alone has become a catchcry for everything anti-establishment, anti-Bill, and anti-licensing fees. If you listen to the hype, it's being used everywhere, in businesses of all sizes, to do everything but make the coffee.

Just because everybody's using Linux, however, doesn't mean everybody's happy for that fact to be known, as I found recently while looking for potential candidates for this special report about companies that had made the switch from Windows and Linux, and vice versa.

Based on the ongoing enthusiasm about Linux, I presumed it would be simple to find companies just busting to tell how they'd ditched their Microsoft server software and moved onto Linux servers. Everybody's doing it, after all, aren't they?

Unfortunately, only Wotif.com -- a last-minute accommodation Web site due to be listed this year -- was willing to tell its story.

Wotif CIO Paul Young told ZDNet Australia he had concerns about Microsoft SQL Server's ability to scale.

"I was feeling constrained [by the Microsoft path] and one of the large issues I had at the time was SQL Server being able to keep up with the performance that we required out of it.

"Coping with sustained, ongoing growth of the level that we have is no small issue. It's significant, substantial, ongoing growth, and it hasn't changed for five years," Young said.

In terms of migrating from Linux to Windows, we feature two organisations -- national radio broadcaster Austereo, famous for its stations such as 2Day FM, FoxFM, and Triple M, and Coffey International, which provides academic and professional expertise to support environmental and infrastructure projects.

Austereo doesn't need much introduction but in case Coffey doesn't ring a bell, here are some figures to chew on -- last year, Coffey registered a profit of $10 million on the back of $170 million in revenue.

The full story on why these companies chose to migrate, and the business benefits achieved, can be accessed via the tabs above.

In future, we'd like to assess the impact and future of Solaris. If you're in the midst of migrating from Solaris to Linux, or from Solaris to Windows, drop us an e-mail and let us know. We'd love to hear from you for upcoming case studies.







Editor: Fran Foo | Copy Editor: Ella Morton | Design: Brice Lechatellier | Production: Melissa Siu

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Talkback 9 comments

  1. GNU/Linux Does Make Coffee D.C. Parris -- 25/04/06

    Not only does GNU/Linux make coffee (http://www.linuxsa.org.au/pipermail/linuxsa/1998-October/002868.html), a recent news report has GNU/Linux operating an instant ice cream machine (http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT9296154631.html). It's called Moobella. :-)

  2. FUD Anonymous -- 25/04/06

    OMG.... more ZDNet FUD.... simply depressing. Oh well, I have first-hand experience with switching and know what is involved....and how to succeed.

    Too bad the dime-a-dozen MCSEs can't think in terms of anything outside of MSFT.

  3. Ringing True? Anonymous -- 25/04/06

    Something just doesn't seem right about this article.

    Austereo:
    “Importing our network environment and applications onto a new platform required some fairly specific skills,” he adds, “and those skills were not abundant within the group

    Sounds like the problem was lack of skills in Linux, and lack of knowledge of how to make it work at its best.

    Coffey International:
    "The way they set up their Linux-based infrastructure had promoted the silo mentality; information wasn’t stored in any sort of intuitive manner, and it wasn’t easy to access information across the various geographical areas".

    It seems that their Linux environment was not set up very well. This can happen in any enterprise environment Windows Linux etc. Did they consider doing it right with Linux before going back to Windows?

    Again, it sounds like a lack of experienced Linux admins was the problem, not the OS itself.

    If this is the case, then the article brings into focus the fact that Linux admins are in great demand because good Linux admins are thin on the ground. Perhaps it should have finished urging people to get Linux training so they can get jobs at companies like these and show them how it should be done on Linux.

  4. This tells a good story about the Microsoft/Linux differences Anonymous -- 25/04/06

    This article tells agood story about what I beleive are core difference between Microsoft and Linux environments.

    My experience is that Linux environments are still far superiour in security, performance and stability - even though Windows Server 2003 has made good gains. Linux is an excellent application environment. That's one reason why Oracle and similar application providers use it.

    But Linux still falls short when it comes to supporting a general IT solution for business. Just look at the integration that Exchange/Outlook gives with virtually no setup effort. It just can't be matched by any Linux based solution (yet - I've looked at a bunch in some detail). Add third party product support like Blackberry to the Exchange formula and the argument to deploy anything else is that much harder.

    This is illustrated by the story - the general IT infrastructure guys found it easier on Windows. The guys with the application focus found Linux better.

    So a lot of companies end up with a mixed environment - Windows server for general IT infrastructure, and Linux for application environments.

    A full Linux solution is still attempted by the brave, but until desktop Linux becomes mainstream (face it - Windows XP is pretty good and the best Linux desktops just don't compare e.g. fonts), and Linux servers provide a complete out of the box business environment Windows will have a place.

    For me, the cost of Windows is not the issue - rather my main concerns are the restrictions, overhead in just managing licenses, interoperability and security issues. But that's the price we pay.

    1. Touche Anonymous -- 27/04/06

      It's hard to see the story revolving around two different environments one is general IT and second is Application Environment. Obviously for the companies that moved from Linux to windows, infrastructure isn't setup properly or the network personnel people didn't do proper job. However, Application development especially j2ee provides scalability and security, technical skills are not that hard to find. I believe that if Linux wants to survive they need to concentrate more on provide general IT solutions. I think linux made much progress in this area and it will continue to do that.

  5. linux admin Anonymous -- 02/05/06

    now there IS a good thought.
    BUT what constitutes a good linux admin?

  6. Less resources required Anonymous -- 04/05/06

    I agree that Linux is far more superior in terms of security. However a hardware firewall will overcome that. for simplicity and ease of implementation Windoze wins.

  7. Demonstrative of the Microsoft Mentality Anonymous -- 09/05/06

    This whole article is filled with the result of the mentality of increasing complexity which has been the hallmark of Microsoft from the beginning. For exceedingly "collaborative" environments, one of the simplest solutions is a wiki. Everything is documented (even deletions) which covers the legal trail, everyone has easy access, and access can also be controlled. Instead, people are convinced they need a bloated microsoft application to fill this requirement. I find it quite amusing that so many IT staffers fall for being upchanged like this, especially since it generally equates to an increased workload for them.

  8. The users drive IT - not admins Greg -- 09/05/06

    Perhaps we (IT Admins) need to remember – it’s the users that drive IT procurement, not the Admins. I know the average user in my company wouldn’t have a clue or even care about what a wiki is, or Linux, or GNU whatever. They used Outlook in their last job so they want Outlook here. They know employers want skills like MS Office, Windows XP, et al, so that’s what they want in this job. They used a certain popular Windows-only application in their last job, probably will in their next, so that’s what they want here. I can’t tell them that OpenOffice.org works just a well for most tasks – they don’t care. They want IT to be completely transparent from all that consideration, so they can focus on just doing their job – and not on ours!

    So sorry, until the users themselves request a Linux solution, it won’t even get look in in my office.

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