Re: Free UNIX for non-commerical use.

From: Ken Green (Ken.Green_at_kgcc.co.uk)
Date: 08/01/03 

Date: Fri, 01 Aug 2003 14:25:03 +0100

Anthony Mandic wrote:

> Ken Green wrote:
>
> > I would be very surprised if none of your companies purchasing decisions were
> > influenced by by peoples personal preferences.
> >
> > Initial purchase price is easy for accountants to look at on their own, but it
> > wouldn't be the first time a major system purchase wasn't influenced more
> > by what the FD (CFO)'s nephew just started at college's personal preference
> > is than anything the technical IT staff in the company felt.
>
> Except that anyone in accounts seldom has any influence in that
> area. Usually, the decisions are made by department heads based
> on the recommendations of their own staff (possibly influenced
> by the sales people they've dealt with) and the advice they would
> have recieved from their IT people. Costs come out of that
> department's budget so it doesn't really matter to the accountants.
> Smaller companies would operate differently (no departmental
> budgets) but its unlikely that the accountant's nephew (or even
> the janitor's niece) would have much if any influence on purchasing
> decisions.
>

All I can say is that your very lucky not to live a the same world as I seem to.
With out getting into a religious war over Windows against real computers :-)
How do you think we have ended up with many companies having made a
strategic decision to move to a Windows only environment? These decisions
have almost always been made in direct opposition to all the technical staff in
a company. The decisions have been made by upper management.

In every large company I've ever dealt with department heads don't get much
say about buying $50M worth of kit. They make recommendations yes. but they
probably don't even get invited to the meeting where the decision is made.

>
> > Running cost of system are much more difficult to gauge. If the guy costing
> > how much time admin'ing the system will be, prefers brand X to brand Y they
> > will probably feel brand X costs less to look after, coz for them it does...
> > they know it better... every thing is quicker.
>
> But their wages/salary doesn't change. They still get $N per annum
> regardless of what system. Its only when other, additional staff
> are required that added costs are considered. You would also look
> at annual maintenance contracts and obviously power consumption
> for the system(s) and ancillary costs (air-con in a computer room).
>

Wages/salaries are different for different kinds of systems. look at job adverts.
Wages/salaries are paid on the basic of hours spent working, not on amount
of work done. If you find that it takes twice as long to do some thing on box
Y as opposed to box X, then it probably costs twice as much as own box Y.
How long it takes quite often depends on the familiarity of systems.

>
> > > For smaller installations maybe. But what renevue do You think such "smaller
> > > installations" bring to Sun, HP and Co:? Nothing...
> >
> > hat depends on how good the dealer chain is. Lots of small systems are worth
> > more than a few big ones. Hence Compaq could buy DEC.
>
> So what happened to Compaq?
>

Dell

>
> > Linux originally found it's way into lots of companies through the back door.
> > In many/most cases the management didn't even know it was there.
>
> Is that right? Amazing how some people run their companies.
>

Systems that work are usually invisible to management. They only tend
to worry about things that don't work. If it ain't broken don't fix it.

>
> > I've come across cases where an administrator has got fed up with re-installing
> > Windows for the n'th time over a weekend trying to solve a problem. Then
> > at 6 PM on Sunday evening made a decisions to move the box to Linux so
> > that they can just make it work and go home to have a life. The first time
> > management knew that the system wasn't running Windows was when it's
> > lack of down time stuck out like a saw thumb. And no this wasn't a small site
> > this was a major international company.
>
> Not that I don't believe you but can you cite some actual cases
> with details? How come this was allowed with out proper procedures
> in place? What if Linux didn't solve the problem? Was the software
> compatible?
>

No I won't quote companies names, I'd be breaching confidence.
In this instance the job the windows server was doing was something that
Linux could do just as well, without any user ever knowing the difference.
How could they do it? Their job is to make something work. If it works
then no one notices. If they'd got it wrong, they'd have been screwed for
do doing it.

>
> > If that experience teaches them that some things are easier on one box than
> > another, then they would be foolish in the extreme not to use that experience
> > at work as well.
>
> Except that at work its not like it is at home.

No there are many differences between home and work, but there are also many
similarities.

One of the major things I learnt from have a rp7400 at home is that it's bloody
noisy
and throws out too much heat. This is not relevant to work. At work I keep boxes
like
this is a computer room.

On the other hand I can learn an awful lot about, partitioning tools, scheduling in
MP systems, managing memory in systems with multi gigabytes of RAM, IO balancing
multiple IO connections and raid controllers... etc.

> Its the employers

Employers are people too, they also have personal prejudices

>
> who make the rules not the employees. If you don't follow the
> rules you don't keep your job.
>

In all of the places I've worked you get measured on results. When
results aren't good, then following rules is important.

>
> -am © 2003

Isn't copywriting your usenet posting just a little bit silly?

Cheers

Ken

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