“Open software comes and goes,” said antagonist developer.  The funniest part is that this developer primarily works with Linux, PHP and MySQL, arguably the biggest success stories of the open software movement.  Open software is not new.  the GNU foundation has been around for quite some time.  As early as 1987, I personally had experience dealing with them for their C complier as well as emacs editing environments.

Microsoft continues to believe in the pay use model.  Recently, they’ve made noise of moving to the “cloud” model with a pay per use model.  Uggg.

“We need to run lean and inexpensive,” states CEO client.  This phrase I hear all too often.  And yet, this very customer always gravitates toward “cheap” laptops loaded with Microsoft Windows (XP) and Microsoft Office.  It’s funny how Microsoft sells against Apple and the open software movement with these products.  Adding a Microsoft Office license to the purchase of a $600 computer adds at least $150.  That’s 25% of the cost of the hardware for a piece of software.  Granted, most users use Office most of the time, so it’s a necessary expenditure.  Or is it?

OpenOffice.org (NeoOffice for Mac Users) has a very viable alternative that costs... um... nothing.  That’s right it’s free and very Microsoft compatible.  For what “most” users accomplish with Microsoft Office, OpenOffice is a very strong alternative.  Word processing and spreadsheet functionality is very strong.

The biggest issue is presentations.  Microsoft PowerPoint has long been the industry standard, and there is little to compete with it in the Open Software market.  Apple’s Keynote is a viable alternative, but only available on OS X supporting machines.

Apple’s suite of office apps called iWork (Numbers, Pages, Keynote) also makes a great alternative if you’re in the Macintosh environment.  Well into their second generation, pages and numbers now offer solid competition for Word and Excel, respectively.  Of course, there is a $79 dollar entry fee and upgrades will cost about $79 bucks each time.  Version jumping is recommended as Apple releases new versions annually.  You can decide for your team whether or not new features in the upgrade are needed.

Can a business move to Linux for it’s back end services?  Probably.  There are two compelling features of the Exchange/Outlook model that will challenge the IT staff.  Calendaring and Shared Folders.

Open Source calendaring has come a long way, and it quickly becoming a viable alternative.  How well it’s integrated with email remains to be seen.

Outlook Folders, which can be shared and replicated to the local workstation for the traveling road warrior is also a challenge for the open source movement.  Sure, those in the know can use FTP to synchronize files with a server, but that’s really left up to the techies.  We need a solution that works for the Microsoft Office loving desktop worker.

If these two issues are solved, or not an issue for your business, chances are you can dramatically improve your computing environment by moving in the Linux direction.  There are fantastic Linux distributions for both the workstation and the server.

Ubuntu has established itself as the premier workstation environment.  CentOS, works very well for the server backends.

Websites, file sharing, open directories, email can all easily and efficiently be delivered to the small business without the costly need of server side software such as Microsoft Server or Microsoft Exchange.  Literally Thousands of dollars can be saved when purchasing or upgrading environments.

Historically, Microsoft likes long development cycles.  It’s been 8 years or so since Windows XP was released.  Today it’s still Microsoft's largest installed based, by far.  The best part.. Support is about to be discontinued.  This will likely force many organizations to make a hard choice.  Upgrade to Vista, Hold on XP (without support) until Windows 7 is viable - then upgrade.  Vista has proven to be a dud.  No recommendation to move to Vista is coming out of this office.  So, we need to hold.  Without support that’s a scary thing.  

Microsoft saw fit to NEVER update Windows 2000 server for the new daylight savings time changes.  Really... how hard can it be?  They do release their “malicious software removal tool” monthly, whatever that is.  So it’s obviously not dead.  This leads us to be in a guess mode when it times to Windows XP.  What services will Microsoft continue to update in XP?  

Updates for Linux are fast and frequent.  Developers in this environment opt for a release it when it’s ready model.  Rarely is a security issue unaddressed for major periods of time.  Additionally, different developers don’t need to hold to the same schedule.  PHP5 for example can be made to run on older versions of Linux.  So, often the services offered by the server, email, file sharing, etc, are updated very frequently, as we’re not made to wait for longer development cycles.

As with all major operating system releases, upgrading can be a royal pain.  Most recommend a full install.  Linux CentOS 4 to 5, OS X 10.4 to 10.5, Windows XP to Vista, all recommend a new computer rebuild.  Let’s face it, we all have junk out there that needs to be wiped from our computers.  Rebuilding need not be the ugly process it is.  But that’s another article.

 

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