[Gllug] Microsoft Get The Facts Seminar

[Nick Richards]

On Mon, 21 Jun 2004 11:45:53 +0100, Bruce Richardson
<itsbruce at uklinux.net> wrote:

> On the other hand, most small companies don't have any proper IT staff,
> just one or two people who are a bit better with MS Office than
> everybody else.  Linux is (initially) a more demanding OS than Windows,
> requiring a higher skillset to understand it and do anything useful with
> it.  So small companies may not have anybody with the skills or the time
> to invest in learning and switching.
 
> Their IT person isn't stupid but she's a VB/Access developer who has to
> run the whole show and never finds the time to add to her skillset.  The
> kind of person who can cope in that kind of work environment and add a
> whole new OS to their skillset is rare.  As it is, if she were working
> in a larger IT department alongside knowledgeable colleagues, she'd
> probably pick up a lot but that isn't going to happen there.

> There are a lot of small to medium companies in that boat and they just
> do not have the resources to move to Linux.  Not until Linux skills
> become much more common, at the very least.

As someone who works in exactly one of those sort of companies I've
got to agree with Bruce.  Their next server is going to be a Linux box
because I'm going to be there to administer it and becuase I'm
building their intranet w/ cross platform, open tech (currently
running on Windows, sadly). I'll be training up one of the people
around the office who knows 'a bit more about MS Office than the
others' to be able to do a bit of point and click admin but currently
its as you say. Linux skills are mostly possessed (for a whole range
of reasons) by 'high end' IT people and until they trickle down to the
point and click MCSEs of this world Linux just isn't goingto e an
option for far too many SMEs. Still, one box at a time.

Nick
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