[Sussex] Business without Microsoft

[Geoff Teale]

Nik, 

:-)  Keep plugging it.. 

Just for the record, I'm aware of several businesses that run without MS
software, it's just that they tend to either be people like 3aIT, ISPS's
or the likes of Red Hat up in Guildford[1].

Whats different about Ernie Ball is that they are a market leading
company (though still a reasonably small company) with no explicit tech
savvy.  The situation (basically blatant abuse from companies they were
customers of) forced their CEO to make an angry decision to drop all
products produced by Microsoft and anyone involved with them. Here he is
two years later talking about increased efficiency of his people and
massively lower costs derived from running Linux as apposed to Windows.

To my mind this demonstrates two things perfectly:

1. As Sun's research showed nearly 5 years ago, Office software is
usually a prohibiter to effective use of computing power in businesses
rather than an enabler.

2. The idea that Linux isn't ready for the business desktop is
fundamentally untrue - it's a question of actually getting people to
think about what is best for their business rather than saying "well
this is what we do now, so we must replicate that".  Ernie Ball actually
demonstrates several ways in which Linux is much more _suitable_ for
business use than Windows has ever been.  Any one who is any good at
software development in the commercial field will know that this is what
happens when you develop software - people always desperately want you
to repeat the same mistakes they already live with.  The important
questions are not "how do you do it right now?  What reports do you
run?",  but instead they are business process questions like, "why are
you running off that report?  What happens to this information?  How
does this relate to generating cash?". 

[1] I had never realised I didn't know how to spell Guildford until that
moment.  



On Thu, 2003-08-21 at 18:07, nik at wired4life.org wrote:
> so, let me check , when I say to people that businesses can survive
> without Microsoft, oh the flame wars and retribution but when some two
> string operations from the states[1] opens its mouth... all is light.
> 
> should I point out that weve not used Microsoft to run our business I
> mean dont we count <sniff!>
> 
> cue the visions of me standing on the hilltop shouting out, I WAS RIGHT
> I WAS RIGHT I WAS RIGHT.
> 
> Theres just no bleeding need for Microsoft and I will keep saying it
> until its truth.
> 
> 
> [1] no disrepect to Ernie Ball and co, its just annoying that im not
> part of the story[2]
> 
> [2] these are the sort of stories we ant to create[3]
> 
> [3] yes bitter and twisted, thats me[4]
> 
> [4] damn these footnotes are addictive
> 
-- 
Geoff Teale <tealeg at member.fsf.org>
Free Software Foundation