Tim Cook wrote:
>
>
> Then that makes it an opportunity for opensource advocates to go
> and have an audience with less competition from the naysayers
> doesn't it?
>
Open source will need both kinds of audiences. I suggest using the
preaching to the choir time to plan strategies for communicating to the
naysayers. For example, at a recent meeting I learned how University of
Minnesota moved an important production application off IBM SP2 boxes
running AIX to Linux. In this case, they initially did it not as a
feasability study, but to address a real problem that existed. Once
management understood a solution was in place to a pressing problem,
they then asked how that solution (Linux) could be brought into the
enterprise model for production applications. It turned out that the
key was to provide a support contract with an established company, which
ironically was IBM. Another key factor was that the switchover was
transparent to the end-users, with the exception that the application
ran a lot better.
Linux, Apache and Java are the 'hot' technologies now. Big and small
company recruiters are finding they need to have one or more of these
technologies in place in order to attract high quality job applicants.
That creates opportunity in the 'traditional administrative IT' space,
i.e. the MIS shops. Actions such as those at Minnesota move the
technologies from 'investigative' status to 'production' status and
capitalize on that talent.
We don't live in an IT field of dreams: they won't necessarily come if
you build it.
