The State of Corporate IT: A case for Linux

Summing it all up

Some months later, with the market still soft and the bottom line increasingly important to shareholders, the team feels they made the right decision. The proposed licensing agreements would have required a complete switch to new versions of the Microsoft XP software, increasing deployment costs. The system requirements of Office and Windows XP would have mandated a substantial investment in the purchase and deployment of new hardware and the transfer of system data. Changes to the system interface would have required worker retraining. Changes to the core OS would have rendered a variety of third party software and utilities unusable, dramatically impacting productivity and further increasing upgrade costs.

In addition, Microsoft was being put under intense pressure from Federal Regulators, the courts and consumers. They were at odds with Sun over Java, with vendors of the status of icons and with consumers over security and product activation. Hackers were finding holes in their server big enough to drive a truck through, and security experts like Steve Gibson were bringing other serious flaws to light. They questioned the need to include Direct X and other consumer-friendly services into the server version of their OS. They questioned the extensive integration of IE 6 and Smart Tags. They questioned the usage requirements of their Passport software, a key part of their XP and .Net strategies.

Sometimes, when there's smoke, there's fire and heading in another direction can be the smart thing to do from a client standpoint. Companies have been dropping like flies in this marketplace and only the nimble seem to be able to survive. You have to be willing to challenge existing paradigms.

Change does not always have to be a frightening thing, and it is always a good idea to have alternatives at your disposal in the corporate world. Having "all your eggs in one basket" has been considered a risky proposition for a lot longer than computers have been around, but the principle is still sound and timely. In the case of the company we used as a basis for this example, thinking outside the box paid off.

As a result of their willingness to look beyond, they now have a more cost-effective, more stable and more predictable infrastructure in place. They have been able to benefit from the hard work of the Linux community and the support of companies like Red Hat. They have been able to establish and maintain key relationships with forward thinking companies like Dell, who started bundling and supporting Linux on their server machines early on.

Because they were willing to open their eyes to new ideas and challenge convention, they have been able to hang on where others have not. If other companies facing growing infrastructure costs are to survive these difficult times, it may be a good idea for them to do some evaluations of their own. After all, Linux is a free download and Red Hat is only a phone call away...