Taking the leap to open source?


Contents
Introduction
 From zero to support team
 Closing the skills gap
 The personal approach
 And then there's the desktop
 A strategy for open source
A strategy for open source

  1. Support costs. Don't depend on the kindness of online strangers. If your business depends on open source to operate you must be prepared to pay for support.


  2. Customise carefully. It may be easy to tailor open source apps to your environment, but support firms will take your bill to a whole new level if you modify their supported open source versions.


  3. In support, Linux=open source. Once you have Linux up and running, you may want to investigate other open source applications. Don't expect your support firm to know about them. Install any open source tools but Linux and you may be on your own, so find support channels beforehand.

  4. Support is about people. In the case of Linux, skilled people can be hard to come by -- and harder to keep. Plan to spend big on recruiting, training and defending technical staff on Linux, and consider training existing staff.

  5. Management is still sketchy. Carefully match capabilities with features of open source management tools you may be considering.


  6. Coming to a desktop near you. Linux distributions have recently been joined by enterprise-focused desktops. They offer some benefits in certain environments, but expect considerable support costs to contradict licence savings.


  7. Everyone needs a good VAR. Once you get beyond a few large integrators the companies get smaller faster. Compare the capabilities of small firms to ensure you won't be left in the lurch.


  8. Vendors want your environment to work. Use this fact to your advantage when negotiating support contracts.


  9. Support is also a design issue. Find out how much support can be automated, and how many online resources are available to speed user enquiry response.


  10. No platform is an island. Look for support partners that can provide a consistent level of service across all environments, not just one of them.


This article was first published in Technology & Business magazine.
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Talkback 5 comments

    I think this was a pretty nega ...Anonymous -- 14/03/05

    I think this was a pretty negatively-focused article (e.g., starting with a case study of one person's bad experience). It discusses the issue of what are the pitfalls are of linux again and again yet provides little clue as to why people are interested in linux, i.e., the positives in using it. Successes are barely mentioned. What about the horror stories using windows that cause people to leave windows for linux? That is just as relevant to the author's story. And I have heard many horror stories of Microsoft's (and other propietary, non-open source vendor) support. Apache (open-source) is the most widely used web server software out there.

    For every one of these stories ...Anonymous -- 15/03/05

    For every one of these stories there are 10 success stories.

    I'm using linux servers for critical services exposed to the internet. I administer about 8 Redhat servers. They are reliable, dependable and secure. I am able to administer all of them myself with no help.

    By contrast, we need 3 windows systems administrators to look after 8 Windows 2003 servers. Even though they are patched up and virus protected, they are always giving trouble. Suddenly one day, a service will fail or windows will somehow, spontaneously reset something to previous settings. You can't rely on Windows to just keep running, day-after-day and stay the same. Sooner or later, it will apparently "spontaneously" break or reset some of its settings.

    I've never seen this happen with linux. Admittedly it might sometimes take longer to figure out initially how to do something properly in linux, but once you've done that, it will keep working the same way reliably. You don't have put so much effort into just propping it up and restarting it regularly to pre-empt a failure.

    This story is just ridiculous. ...Anonymous -- 15/03/05

    This story is just ridiculous.

    Perhaps I should post up articles on my Windows system nightmares I've experienced in enterprise over the years? What about my peers?, shall we include all their Redmond Based atrocities too?

    I would suggest that most of this particular persons problems are mainly due to someone not having a clue ?

    I have four words for anyone who thinks finding good Linux support , IBM, Novell, Redhat and Sun.

    I guess if you deal with some chicken-sh*t , noname bunch of amateurs (even if the head guy does have a Mathematics qual...pffft) then those sorts of things are bound to happen.

    I was going to write a rant ab ...Anonymous -- 15/03/05

    I was going to write a rant about over educated people, thinking that they know it all. but it occours to me that they have a very narrow perspectrive, and most likly knows no better, and only ever used Windows and so thinks that this is how this should work.

    There are some very large companies now using and supporting Linux, it can't be that hard to find support, if it is then you are most likly not looking.

    I have setup a number of linux servers on 486's doing what one dual P3 running windows 2000 advanced server, can't do for as long or as well.
    The windows server needs to be re-set daily. I know a number of big companies that do have a regular maintance squedual for thier windows servers, it includes re-setting them each day.

    over all I found the article to be a little narrow minded, maybe these people should talk to those of us who do use linux and other open source projects . If companies are having trouble with open source then maybe when they advertise for employees they should go for the people that have the experience, instead of the guy who lies best.

    Artilces like this should be listed under hearsay, not opinion or insight, cause they don't go into both sides of the story no sucess stories, who can anybody form an opinion with out knowing both sides of the story. These sorts of stories undermine the people that do work very hard in these areas of open source.

    The article is a little weak i ...Anonymous -- 21/03/05

    The article is a little weak in details. What does driver incompatibility mean? If you have an old driver and new hardware, download a newer kernel and reboot. Takes 5 minutes if you read the manual. Plan B is to compile the new driver for the existing kernel. A lot of the other problems seemed more like problems with that other OS than with Linux. That's how lock-in works. Set up a complicated system and make sure nothing else works with it. Set up a lean, clean set of modules that do their jobs and the system will tick away for years.

    I have been using Linux for years and have had no formal training in it or any other IT for that matter. I have been able to get anything I have tried to work in the manner of servers on the web and LAN. Lately, I have been using a single box to do everything on my LAN including printing, filesharing, time, http, dhcp, firewall, routing, thin client service, not to mention huge databases and web applications. It is so easy a teacher can do it, for pity's sake. Just try and read and learn. If you do not not want to muck with stuff, hire the right people to do it. As Linux expands, that is getting easier whether you have one or 100000 PCs.

    If your competition is using Linux, chances are, they will have a lower cost of doing business sooner or later. How long can you afford that?

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