On Mon, 16 Mar 2009, Quentin Hartman wrote: > Regardless, I was not talking about patterns within an individual > organization. I was talking about the scope of the entire IT > industry, wherein each individual purchase-making "entity" is a > single datapoint. Within that context, I think that the question of > "which platform?" as a technical acquisition criteria is in decline, > and in the next 5-10 years will likely be completely irrelevant in > the vast majority of cases. The only reasons it will be a > consideration for purchasers will be aesthetic ones.
Good point, though I think your window will be closer to 10 to 15 years than to 5. Inertia in ultra-large organizations is just too great. :-) At our company, there are only only two or three positions (out of 35) that have prescribed platform needs. We offer every other new hire his or her choice of Linux, Windows, or Mac OS X. Our shared infrastructure is deliberately built around open protocols, leaving choice of client application to the individual. Our few platform-specific applications are distributed via remote-access mechanisms (X11, RDP, or CLI over SSH) to clients with incompatible local environments. There are some inefficiencies with this approach. Shared calendaring, for instance, is currently difficult to implement. Also, IT support needs to be broader -- which usually translates to "more expensive." Complex documents, like spreadsheets with multiple windows and dependencies, tend to be tool- and platform-tied. Still, I think it's the way forward. Users determine their own efficiency and comfort level, and they interact with shared digital assets via open protocols. Here, anyway, it's not utopia; it's the present. -- Paul Heinlein <> [email protected] <> http://www.madboa.com/ _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
