Steve's Seaside Life

Tagged: OpenSource

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Open Source, the beginning

This is the first real post in the Open Source category of my blog, but one of many in the blog as a whole, and one of many to come on Open Source.  If you have read my blog from the beginning you will know that much of my recent experience is with Enterprise Infrastructures, and that has to a large extent involved software from IBM/LOTUS and Microsoft.  Integration with Unix systems being through well defined and mature interfaces like NFS, X-Windows and DNS.  This means that I have a lot of familiarity with Microsoft and I am open about the fact that there are things to admire about Microsoft, (and many things to not admire of course), however I have a long held low tolerance for Zealotry which I have talked about previously, but want to expand on here.

 

When I say I dislike Zealotry, I am not talking about passion, I am talking about taking a stance for or against something that can not be defended by rational argument.  This causes me a problem, because as an enterprise architect, I spend my life having to defend the decisions I take with rational argument, and for me, ‘I …

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The five top objections to open-source

Computer World has an article on this topic, most of which has already been debated many times with simillar answers to the ones that CW gives.  However I repeat the list here, because item 5 on the list is actually new to me:

  1. Support availability

  2. Functional limitations of the software

  3. Software license terms

  4. Rapid software release cycles

  5. Package road maps or future plans

Items 1 to 4 are answered pretty well, and I don’t think are a major concern now for most companies and the service offerings are developing at a rapid rate.  However here is the answer to item 5:

Package road maps or future plans are important to most companies. Major vendors tend to heavily promote their road maps, even to the extent of publicizing future capabilities years in advance. Of course, there is no promise that any advertised feature will ever see the light of your computer display. Not all vendors publish such road maps, and some share them only with strategic accounts under nondisclosure agreements.

Some open-source groups publish road maps, and some do not. At times, the stated goal is to mimic the functionality of a commercial package, though when any particular feature will appear …

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Microsoft: Linux isn’t cheaper

Yet another Linux isn’t cheaper story from Microsoft.  I don’t get the focus on cost all of the time.  To me cost is a small part of the story.  The Linux/Microsoft debate needs to consider the following in this order, (client side):

  1. The application portfolio that needs to be delivered to the client device.  In most enterprises there will be hundreds of client applications, many of these won’t be deliverable on Linux even using emulation.

  2. Whether you believe in Microsoft’s value proposition.  Only Microsoft has the ‘integrated innovation’ value proposition that links client, office tools, infrastructure services and application services.  If you buy into that value proposition then you are probably going to continue to use office and Windows.  My view right now is that MS is doing a pretty poor job of telling us what that value proposition is in their next generation products,  I think because they are still figuring out how to move forward when they are dragging such a legacy behind them

  3. Whether the user-base can be segmented.  Its likely in every enterprise that some users will be best suited to Windows Portables, some Windows Desktops, some Linux and some thin client technologies or one sort …

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Rich Versus Reach – my perspective

The Rich versus Reach debate is raging in the blogsphere at the moment.  The debate has been very healthy with less of the usual emotional clutter that clogs up most debates that touch on the future of Microsoft.  I am an enterprise guy, with a complex home network as well, which gives me an interesting perspective so I thought it would good to pull some of the threads together.

 

The debate mainly started with a post by Joel on How Microsoft Lost the API War it’s a good article at the start but then begins to lose its focus and starts to make some bold assertions which are hard to substantiate.  These are partially rebutted by Olivier Travers in his post Microsoft Lost the API War? Not So Fast and more thoroughly by Robert in his post Seven Reasons Why the API War is Not Lost After All, which comes over a bit evangelistic but is still a good contribution to the debate.  Robert introduces a new perspective for me on Avalon where he describes how it may be possible to download XAML directly from the web as an alternative UI experience to HTML …

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Which Office Suite?

Which Office Suite? Is shaping up to be a fascinating decision making process.  I am not ready to expose all of my thinking on this topic but it goes something like this:

 

  1. Some people think its easy, MS Office alternatives are cheaper and most people don’t use the bells and whistles in Office so people will migrate provided the alternatives meet peoples core needs.

  2. I think its more complex than this and as a minimum the costs of migration, lost productivity, and compatibility and rework need to be factored in

  3. Intertia is a big one in Microsofts favour, for a business that has SW Assurance or an EA, the decision is deferred probably for at least 2-3 years after their EA expires and probably longer if they do a lot of data interchange.  That probably means 4-5 years from now!

  4. But this is the trivial stuff.  Sure direct and indirect cost comparison is important but I want to consider:

    1. How do people really use Office and is it really true that people only use a small amount of the functionality, and if they do, do they all use a different small amount?

    2. I also want to consider …

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Who will Longhorn appeal to?

Right now it seems to me that Longhorn is being targeted at three communities:

  1. Home users, particularly those looking for a great multi-media experience

  2. Knowledge workers, especially those at the top end, who aggregate, integrate and assemble lots of information from many different sources

  3. Mobile workers, for whom thin client computing solutions don’t work and to whom the blend or personal and corporate features will appeal.

It’s got lots of other features that will appeal to the mass of task and structured task workers in corporate environments, but true thin client approaches will probably appeal more strongly for these users IT managers, particularly with the current wave of smart client rich UI toolkits that run on top of a JVM.

So how might this pan out in reality:

  1. Microsoft might get 20% market share from portable users

  2. A maximum of 20% market share from high end knowledge workers, who are not mobile

  3. Maybe 20% that it picks up just so they can use the same environment as the rest of the people in the office

So maybe that leaves 40% of users who will either switch to thin clients, unless Microsoft can convince businesses to stick with them because of the benefits …