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Adam Tauno Williams wrote:<br>
<blockquote cite="mid1195528649.5389.40.camel@aleph.morrison.iserv.net"
type="cite">
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<pre wrap="">Sure, and "cost effective" means allot more than upfront cost. Since
most businesses pay a pittance for desktop machines, let alone the
software on them, the business case for LINUX is a pretty hard sell.
</pre>
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<pre wrap="">Errrr, I take it you have never actually see a M$ Enterprise support
agreement and the eight figure ransom big business pays for the real
cost of these "cheep" desktops.
</pre>
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<pre wrap=""><!---->
Are we talking about enterprises or small/medium businesses? Seems to
me the mile post in these kind of debates gets switched back and forth
allot. Enterprises just don't care, it isn't that expensive relative
to other things. No small/medium business I've ever encountered has an
M$ support agreement.
</pre>
</blockquote>
I thought I clearly said BIG Business ;-) I have been in several BIG
Businesses, and they care enough to shell out BIG money for it. They
also get "services" from M$ to resolve problems before the rest of the
M$ customers who don't care....<br>
<blockquote cite="mid1195528649.5389.40.camel@aleph.morrison.iserv.net"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">
</pre>
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<pre wrap="">If they don't pay, they risk the very
real probability that malware will take down their business.
</pre>
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<pre wrap=""><!---->
Bogus. I admin a network of ~250 Windows 2000 & XP workstations. No
support agreement. The threat of malware is drasitically overstated by
fear mongers and alarmists, the issue is actually quite easily to deal
with using well-known techniques. Openness to Open Source solutions
only makes it even easier. In all the years I've been an admin there
has been one lonely incident of malware disrupting (not shutting down)
normal business and the issue was resolved within hours.
<aside>Fortunately for us our competition was down for a couple of
days. :)</aside>
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<br>
Sorry Adam, I was talking about Enterprise - BIG Business. 250 nodes is
not even a single suite on a single floor for big business. My personal
experience. Not conjecture. I personally have seen Tens of MILLIONS of
real dollars in lost business on multiple occurrences in BIG business
due to M$ systems being wacked by malware in a production environment.
Again, personal experience, not grape vine, and not small business.<br>
<br>
The topic of this tread is "A big opportunity for Linux?" and that is
where I am attempting to show I think Big business is ripe for the
opportunity.<br>
<blockquote cite="mid1195528649.5389.40.camel@aleph.morrison.iserv.net"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">
</pre>
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<pre wrap="">Then, there's the cheeper cost of AV and infection mitigation for the user
induced events.
</pre>
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<pre wrap=""><!---->
Well, the cost of our AV protection solution... $0.00.
</pre>
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Well, for a small privately held company, it sounds like you have
faired well.<br>
<blockquote cite="mid1195528649.5389.40.camel@aleph.morrison.iserv.net"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">
</pre>
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<pre wrap="">AND, if they have an envirornment where a vedor sells them a WIN OS
embeded device (MF copier, manufacturing machinery, appliance, etc) they
are at real mercy of the desktop devicing causing interruption of their
core business when the cheep desktops cause faults
</pre>
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<pre wrap=""><!---->
Eh? This doesn't even make sense. If you have any kind of embedded
device / appliance you are always 110% at the mercy of the vendor.
Nothing changes that. Fortunately my experience is that most embedded
devices are far too stupid / limited / sealed to respond to malware in
anyway (you're lucky if most "appliances" even manage to do what they
were advertised to do).
</pre>
</blockquote>
Again, I was talking about personal experience. I have seen this. Just
dig under the covers of most of the Multi-function copiers. Again, this
is for BIG business, so we are talking about tens of thousands of
dollars for a single machine - they all too often have Windoze 2000
Server as the embedded system. It is not "limited" or "too stupid" to
become infected with a host of malware.<br>
<blockquote cite="mid1195528649.5389.40.camel@aleph.morrison.iserv.net"
type="cite">
<pre wrap=""></pre>
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<pre wrap="">- maybe infections -
of these "turn key" opperations. Most of these embeded devices never
get patched and the vendor usually tells the client they can't touch the
</pre>
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<pre wrap=""><!---->
Sure, and what does this have to do with Windows vs. LINUX desktops?
The embedded devices are just there - nothing anyone can do about the
bloody things. (I have well over two dozen hosts running NT embedded,
real crap).
</pre>
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"A big opportunity for Linux?" - Topic - yes? So, all these systems I
spoke of are WIndows Desktop systems that cost a ton of money after the
fact, and Linux desktops have a clear benefit against malware - less
cost and more reliability. It is clear to me. I' m sorry if I have not
articulated this well.<br>
<blockquote cite="mid1195528649.5389.40.camel@aleph.morrison.iserv.net"
type="cite">
<pre wrap=""></pre>
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<pre wrap="">OS. I have seen all of this. It is costing business multi-billions to
mitigate the risks and clean up after this so call "cheep OS".
</pre>
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<pre wrap=""><!---->
And I've seen those numbers; same thing with SPAM... it is costing some
unholy amount of money. I don't buy it. If this is true then those
networks are being administered poorly or someone is quite happy to just
fork over buckets of money for someone else to deal with the problem (a
legitimate business solution in some cases [although, I suspect, usually
not]).
</pre>
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Well, I personally have seen this is BIG business, first hand, not a
trade rag. Choose to believe what you want. This is about Opportunity
for Linux, not opinions - mine nor yours.<br>
<blockquote cite="mid1195528649.5389.40.camel@aleph.morrison.iserv.net"
type="cite">
<pre wrap=""></pre>
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<pre wrap="">I thought eveyone knows M$ does not make the bulk of their $$$ from
selling the actual software anymore....
</pre>
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<pre wrap=""><!---->
So? This is true of IBM, HP, Sun, etc... hardware & software is just a
platform. The solution is valuable part, so of course that is where the
profit is.
</pre>
</blockquote>
Again, back to the topic of discussion. Opportunity for Linux based on
real total cost of ownership.... <br>
<br>
Are you a tried and True MSCE ? :-D I usually don't get slammed so
hard by Linux people what I talk about Linux, particularly when the
lack of Windoze security is a factor.<br>
<br>
-dave (CISSP)<br>
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