[ILUG-BOM] Re: Pitching Linux to corporates?

[krishnakant Mane]

On 24/09/06, Vivek J. Patankar <list307 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 20 mails on this subject and nobody has mentioned one of the main
> factors major corporates care most about.
> I'm talking about the "Who's responsible for an f-up?" or "Passing the
> buck." factor.
>
> A common scenario would be something like this. A server running
> Windows 2003 fails due to a problem with the OS. The business owner of
> the server screams at the IT Manager, who inturn screams at the techs.
> The techs promply point a finger at Microsoft who is ever willing to
> bend over, take it up the tailpipe and provide a solution/workaround
> ASAP, ie. if the company is a "Gold" customer.
dude, with gnu/linux every one is a gold customer.  and the support is
quick enough.  if you by it from redhat, they help you.  and even
before they do, ask the community such as ilug.
> I have seen this happen, and I believe that this is a common occurance
> as most major corporates end up being Gold customers of Microsoft.
yes a golden cage indeed?  and just give all ur data to the biggest
spy whare"M$".
today I am only waiting for that beautiful screen reader called orca.
and listen m$ guys, the moment that is released in late november, ur
windows days on my computer are gone!
> A certain corporate has a very large mail setup, several servers
> hosting thousands of POP mailboxes. The OS used here was RH7.3 or RH9.
> A decision is taken to cut down the number of servers that mailboxes
> reside on to two. The hardware selected was powerful intel based
> hardware from Sun. The OS of choice was Centos 4.0 because it was
> recommended by the vendor who supported the mail servers. A hardware
> related hiccup caused the corporate to refer the matter to Sun who
> promply refused to provide support. The reason cited for the refusal
> was that the boxes were certified for RHEL and not Centos, so Sun
> wouldn't be responsible for problems.
this is the problem of an organisation not of gnu/linux.  and I will
give you many cases of m$ of a similar case.  and the biggest example
is "we are coming up with a new version.  buy it and get ur problem
solved (with millions of other security bugs)." this is m$ for you my
dear, this is m$ for you.
> After being stung by something like this, the business side decided
> that the servers are to be migrated to Solaris, and any software
> distributed with an open source license, specifically if the
> license/documentation states that "THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED AS IS AND
> WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY" and that the developer is not resposible for any
> data loss or other problems arising from using the software.
> To what extent this  decision was adhered to, I don't know.
by the way does m$ vorent that all ur data will be safe?  does sun do
it?  do they not say "for all damages, including but not limited to
consiquential, insidental, punitive bla bla sun or its licensers will
not be liable or responsible?"
this is every where.  and yet most web servers run apache not the
rubbish shit of IIS.
may be this is one case of sun or redhat.  but again why did the
company not turn to the community?  and unlike windows which is only
provided by M$ gnu/linux has so many enterprise brands to select from.
an enterprise level system can be run very well by debian for example.
 Ubuntu is a good choice, as is IBM Linux.
what do you say?
Krishnakant.