Linux Business Proposals?

Brian Chabot brian at datasquire.net
Mon Oct 13 19:46:21 EDT 2003


bscott at ntisys.com wrote:

>On Sun, 12 Oct 2003, at 10:55pm, brian at datasquire.net wrote:
>  
>
> Don't write proposals to increase the use of Linux. Write proposals to
>
>save (or make) the company money.  When appropriate, work Linux or other
>Free/Open Source Software into those proposals.
>
Excellent point. 

The reasonning I had was two-fold:

1. The company has put Linux support on the back burner,
2.  a)Linux I've found (at least for our company's software) is easier 
to support
     b)I had an idea for a bundled product that would be tit to support 
as well as make a decent profit.

Number one just bugs me.

Reason 2 is both personal and makes business sense.  MS changes the 
locations of their relevent IIS config settings mo9re often than most 
people change underwear.  If I have to try to support this when the 
administrators don't know what they're using, it takes up lots of my 
time and that means money the company has to spend paying me and my 
coworkers.


>>A recent announcement at the company I work for that they will be moving
>>to a .NET base got me nervous.
>>    
>>
>
>  Avoid fighting against things.  Fight for things (like Linux) instead.  
>In other words, don't say "Microsoft is bad", say "Linux is good".
>
>  Also: If your only objection to Microsoft products is that they're from
>Microsoft, you have failed to make a good case.
>

My reasonning is for support costs.  If/when we move to .NET, we'd have 
to retrain the entire support staff.  If we standardized on at least 
say... a Perl base, then no retraining would be necessary. 

>  But again: Write proposals to save the company money, and work Linux into
>those proposals where appropriate.  If you do that, these other problems
>with your approach eliminate themselves.
>

Well, the details of my idea were to suggest a (high-end, price-wise) 
hardware & software bundle, mostly pre-configured.  Fire it up, answer a 
few questions about passwords and IP info and bang.  You're up and 
running.  We charge the most for installations and make the least profit 
in support.  SO... Reduce support and make installs a snap for our field 
techs and we maximize profit.

My curiosity was if anyone has had much success in talking management 
into using Linux when you know it's best but management is still hanging 
on a good sales pitch from a pro in Redmond and how it was done.  
(Honestly, my idea would work (almost) equally well under Windows, but 
the licensing fees would be up there... impeding on our profit.)

Brian





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