Subj : what flavors?
To   : William McBrine
From : Lawrence Garvin
Date : Tue Dec 31 2002 01:01 pm


William wrote to Lawrence at 19:25 28 Dec:

-=> Lawrence Garvin wrote to John Donohue <=-

 LG> Where I think the significant potential market exists is in the
 LG> reclaiming of all of the gazillions of Pentium(tm) class computers that
 LG> are worthless for Windows, but work just as good today as they did 7
 LG> years ago as a departmental Unix server.

 WM> So people are going to pay to put new operating systems on hardware
 WM> that they'd otherwise throw out? I don't think so. Linux or *BSD,
 WM> maybe, but not SCO.

Don't discount the possibility, William.

Keep in mind that the single most significant criticism still levied at the 
Linux/*BSD world from corporate America is the lack of reliable customer 
support. Warranted or not, that /is/ the perception in corporate America.

That was the one single advantage that SCO always had, and, I believe, 
accounted for their relative success in the Unix on Intel market. In 1995 it 
also helped that the product was competitively priced with, and much more 
stable than, the current Microsoft offerings.

What you may also be discounting, or simply not aware of, is that the small 
business community, still has a heavy investment in pre-P2 hardware. It's not 
at all uncommon to find a Netware 3 running on a low-end Pentium 133 system, or 
even an NT4 Server running on a P166 or P200. The challenge for these 
organizations is that they cannot afford to upgrade hardware AND operating 
systems. The only real need for them to upgrade hardware is to install the new 
operating system (read: Windows 2000). Find them a contemporary operating 
system that will still run on their existing hardware, and you've allowed them 
to defer expenses in hardware investment.

Alternatively, you've given an organization a way to expand their server base 
without making significant investments. If the total cost of a Windows 2000 
server plus hardware to run it, is in the $3500 range for a small business, and 
the total cost of an SCO OpenServer plus hardware to run it, is in the less 
than $1000 range -- which one carries the more likely choice.

Remember, also, that the significant majority of small business networks still 
only use the server for file and print sharing. Occasionally as a web or email 
server, and rarely as a database server. It is only the database server that 
truly demands the big-iron hardware for a small business.

I'm not discounting the viability of Linux or *BSD in these environments, but 
there are over a hundred distributors of such products, and somewhere, somebody 
is going to have to make a stable reputation for themselves if they wish to 
gain corporate market share. For the small business, it's not the business 
owner they need to get the attention of, it's the integrator/VAR or consultant 
that is making the recommendations. Show me a Linux or *BSD distributor that 
has a "partner program" that can compare to Microsoft's. Say what you will 
about Microsoft, and I'll probably agree with it, Microsoft is making efforts 
to assist their resellers and integrators on a daily basis.

I'm certainly not suggesting this is a viable solution for all environments, 
but it's certainly an option to consider for those that don't have thousands of 
dollars to drop on upgrading their one and only file and print server.

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 * Origin: lawrence@eforest.net | The Enchanted Forest (1:106/6018)

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