Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2000 14:45:04 -0600 From: Joe.Warner@smed.com To: freebsd-newbies@freebsd.org, freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Subject: Manager's response re: FreeBSD Message-ID: <85256907.0071D89C.00@Deimos.smed.com>
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Here's a response I got from one of my managers re: FreeBSD. Any comments or replys would be welcome. Thanks. Joe I had actually heard most of those questions and answers before, but that was a nice review. As I see it, our problem has several facets: One is that Novell and now Microsoft have spent years training and certifying people to use and administer their products. In so doing, they have created a captive sales force to promote their products at the expense of the competition. Once you have invested a lot of time in getting yourself certified, and your future career seems tied to that certification, there is a natural reluctance to jump ship and start working with something new or different. If you don't constantly work on Novell servers, for instance, it will be hard to keep sharp in that regard. A second problem is that there is a lack of trained Unix administrators within our organization. Even though Unix and Unix-like operating systems are very common on the planet, our organization has few of them in the IS dept. That is true locally, and obviously is true at corporate. Those who would be good at this are scattered in various departments, making it hard to get their presence felt. This shakes down to two issues; training and organization. If this OS is going to make progress in this company, there must be sufficient resources available to make it work (especially in transition), and there must be sufficient visibility that it can influence decision makers, especially at high levels. A third problem is the famous Microsoft marketing plan. We are a business partner with Microsoft. That probably means that in order to get good pricing on application software, we are encouraged to use NT as our platform of choice. While there are other products to compete with Microsoft,again you run up against issue #2. Clearly, when you look at our company, it has actively sought out arrangements with the largest and most powerful partners it can find, in this case, that is Microsoft. Even our strong tie with IBM did not put OS2 or AIX on any desktops. While I think there are good and persuasive arguments for Linux/FreeBSD Unix as an operating system, for these reasons, right now I don't see it having the political clout in our organization necessary to actually be placed in service. The places where I think it could make inroads is in those areas that NT is weakest. Unfortunately, most of those uses are handled out of corporate (Webservers, large volume servers, firewalls, gateways, etc.). What is left? I think that is our challenge, to find some niches where NT is too expensive or inflexible to offer a solution. Your solution of the packet sniffer is an excellent one. We need to promote that solution, install it and train the staff on its use. Once we are all using it, you will need to find a way to sing its praises to corporate in a way that won't offend any entrenched interests. If you are ultimately successful, then you can use that beach-head to find other niches to exploit. Good luck. As always, if you or any of your IM force is caught or killed our secretary will disavow any knowledge of your activities. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message
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