[NCLUG] Ousting Exchange

[DJ Eshelman]

Yeah - you're probably right.  But I am encouraged to see more companies
taking the RedHat approach (we're selling support, not selling software) and
having it work.  I just think most people feel powerless, especially in the
Business desktop computing arena.  The all-or-nothing Windows versus Linux
ethos has got to go.

By the by, a client of mine just told me he wants to deploy a sugarCRM based
system within the month, so I'm officially foot-in-mouth about the no Linux
servers comment...  They'll be operating side by side with Exchange because
they already bought it, but in light of this conversation, I could have
saved them $2000 by having an all-Linux based solution from the very
beginning.  For a three-person operation, that's pretty significant.

I think, also, that I make a better Philosophiser than Technician most days
:)

Now that my Tuesdays are going to be free during the summer, perhaps I'll
get to philosophise more in person...

-DJ

On 5/2/06, Sean Reifschneider <jafo at tummy.com> wrote:
>
> On Mon, May 01, 2006 at 12:15:52PM -0600, DJ Eshelman wrote:
> >integration with standard apps.  Maybe I'm soapboxing too much here, but
> if
> >the community wants to be taken seriously in this market there needs to
> be
> >some serious work done on the front-end technologies to go with the very
>
> It's always easier to win a battle for your own turf than someone elses.
> Which makes it more unclear that "the community" (whoever they are) should
> be taken seriously in that market.  You, of course, aren't the first
> person
> to state that the Open Source community should be in this market, I'm
> pretty sure that it's been regularly suggested for at least 5 if not 10
> years.
>
> However, it is a HUGE project.  Take a look at Chandler, which is well
> funded and making very slow progress over the last few years.
>
> >system is running at a crawl.  Microsoft is winning the battle not
> because
> >of a superior back end- but because of their front-end!
>
> It's more complicated than that...  They have the desktops and the
> marketing and the momentum behind them.  Even if "the community" had a
> complete drop in replacement for it, it would still be quite a battle to
> get substantial conversion.
>
> If it were easy to get in, one of the current solutions to this problem
> would make this discussion moot.
>
> Remember, Cobalt Micro started out as being a "small office appliance"
> using Linux, and switched fairly quickly to being a web application.  They
> were originally squarely targeting this market.
>
> The first question before "how do we respond" is "do we as a community
> want
> to respond".  The evidence I've seen so far is leaning heavily towards
> "no".  In general, I feel that the "we need to be on the desktop"
> statement
> is, while good intentioned, mis-directed.  It's probably the furtherst
> distance from where we currently are, and we should probably fight for
> targets that we're closer to like enterprise computing (which we still
> aren't there for, IMHO).
>
> Thanks,
> Sean
> --
> "I feel so insignificant...  Like people are laughing at me."
> "You--You ARE a clown..."  -- Bob Newhart
> Sean Reifschneider, Member of Technical Staff <jafo at tummy.com>
> tummy.com, ltd. - Linux Consulting since 1995: Ask me about High
> Availability
>
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