Linked by Eugenia Loli-Queru on Fri 1st Oct 2004 00:16 UTC
A senior IT executive at a major pharmaceutical company summed up the challenge for Linux at the ZDNet UK IT Priorities conference when he asked one simple question: what are the benefits in migrating from Microsoft to Linux at the desktop?
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With all due respect,
Umm…okay.
"What is the solution to this?"
Dont code in a proprietary language. I know its a little late now. However, a basic rule, if you use custom app's made by custom programming launguages, you asking for trouble. It was and is the job of the programmers to make applications portable (if requested).
You offer a solution and then admit that it is not really a solution because it's a little late now. That was my point!!
"It would be nice if all applications were written in cross-platform a language or toolkit, or if web applications supported other browsers, but that isn't the case. "
There were cross platform languages, it was the programmers/companies/gov choice not to use them
You have completely missed the point of my comment. Your solution is to pontificate about why the problem exists. Thanks, that's really helpful.
All applications, no matter how small, would need to be thoroughly tested on the proposed platform. That would take a large amount of time and money. What about existing enterprise software that doesn't exist on Linux (Workflow, Document Management, Electronic Forms, ERP systems, Records Management Systems, etc, etc, etc)? I know of government departments that took 18 months to upgrade from Netscape to IE.
A solution for a slow migration:
1) Force all future development to be done with a cross-platform language or toolkit (Java, QT, Python, etc)
2) Web apps need to work on all browsers
3) Convince all of your enterprise software providers to support other platforms.
Items 1 and 2 would take time but could be done since the organization controls this. But there would be a training cost for the internal development staff. Testing and QA costs would also increase for each application. Good luck with item 3 especially if you're the only customer making the demand.
Migrating to Linux on the desktop for any large organization isn’t simply a matter of downloading an ISO image and installing it on everyone’s PC. It’s the cost of migrating, testing, and supporting the existing application base on the new platform that will be the real expense.
These costs and the associated risk with users not happy with how their applications work (or don’t) on the new platform, would surely convince most CIO/CFO/CEOs that staying on the MS upgrade cycle is worth the pain and expense. That doesn’t make me happy, but that is reality.
P.s.
You're != your