On Tue, Sep 22, 1998 at 06:04:07AM -0700, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> While I tend to agree with some parts of Rich's comments, I do believe
> that the vast number of applications packages for NT/95 tend to weigh in
> favor of it's use on the desktop.
Which raises an interesting question: How many, and which applications,
do you *really* need?
I saw a chart last night in on of the trade rags which gave statistics on
which kinds of software packages users really use. I don't recall the
exact numbers, but there was nothing surprising in it: word processors,
spreadsheets, calendars, and mail clients were near the top, with the
other standard applications following behind.
Which makes sense. If you walk around most places and look over folks'
shoulders, they live in those packages, often exclusively. For those
people, the underlying OS doesn't matter as much as the application:
they don't directly interact with it, except indirectly. This doesn't
mean that the OS is of no consequence: it must do its job, which is
to provide services to the applications in an efficient, secure,
robust, standards-compliant manner. But it does mean that provided that
it does so, it doesn't really impact end users. (It may, however,
impact the systems/network people, and that is a factor that must
be considered. It's far cheaper to run Unix/Linux systems
than Windows boxes.)
So given that the basic applications are already available for Red Hat Linux
(for example), how many others are necessary to satisfy the needs
of the people who fall into the group I described above? Is it so
inconceivable that people who now use Windows XX to run their apps
would be equally productive -- or *more* productive, running those
same or similar apps under KDE on Linux? (Why "more"? Because those
systems have performance that runs rings around Windows systems.
Because they stay up. Because they can be networked in ways that
Windows systems can't. And so on.)
As to the dearth of other applications, that's changing, and rapidly.
In the last month alone, several rather large software vendors have
announced that they're doing Linux ports. More will no doubt join
them this month -- check the front pages of Internet Week, PC Week,
InfoWorld, and company.
But there's a larger question here, and one which frequently gets
lost in big MIS departments run by pointy-haired CIOs.
*WHY* are certain applications necessary?
Let me tell you a story. I spent most of last year doing a firewall
consulting job, and part of that time was spent on-site. My half-cube
happened to be next to another group working on a Really Strategic
Project. The project? A Lotus Notes->Domino conversion/upgrade. This
group of a half-dozen people spent at least six months getting ready to to
The Big Rollout. (That's 3 man-years. Ka-ching!) They found that
most of the desktops couldn't handle the new software, and so PC techs
were sent to individually check out every PC in the company. (Ka-ching!)
A lot of those boxes had to have hardware upgrades. (Ka-ching!)
Then it turned out that the server hardware had to be upgraded (Ka-ching!)
and they had to be converted to NT (Ka-ching!) and then they all had
to take NT classes (Ka-ching!) and then the new application was so
complex that every single person in the company had to take
a half-day training class (Ka-ching!) and then they had to buy
more servers (Ka-ching!) and then they had to figure out a backup
solution because it didn't come with one (Ka-ching!) and ...
Well, you get the idea. They easily spent several million dollars
on this process.
And nobody ever looked outside the box and asked "Just what problem
are we trying to solve here?"
If they had, they might have realized that a judicious combination
of plain old mail and plain old netnews tied together with a little
bit of software glue would have done the job, at a tiny fraction
of the cost. (How do I know? Because I've done it. Many times,
the first starting 15 years ago, and for a user community six times
larger than the one they have. It works. And with zero training.)
Oh sure, it's not fancy. It doesn't let people send memos with
18-point glowing red headers in Helvetica Italic. It doesn't have
a zillion pull-down menus (the ones that require a training course
to learn how to use). In point of fact, it doesn't have a lot of
the extraneous, useless junk that make what ought to be an effective
business communications tool into a "productivity application" --
that is, an application which uses up all available productive time. ;-(
The relevance here? If it's acknowledged that Application XYZ doesn't
run on Unix/Linux and that's a problem, there are two ways to solve it.
One is to wait for it to be ported and run it. The other is to
make it a non-problem by figuring out another way to do the task
without that application. Frequently the latter course of action
is easier, cheaper, and better in the long run. But getting people
to see that it's an equally valid method of solving the problem
is a long and difficult process.
---Rsk
Rich Kulawiec
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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