|
I disagree with the author. Microsoft makes it's OS money from the corporate world where users do not have a choice of the software they use. Currently there are no *nix software packages that come close to having functional compatibility with MS Office products especially for collaboration. Try to find the functionality of MS Outlook with MS Exchange in the *nix world. It does not exist. The only *nix programs out there go after the low hanging fruit such as older releases of MS Office and perhaps the current versions of MS Excel and MS Word. If companies switch to a different operating environment, what will they do with all of the archived documents come audit time? They won't get away with "Sorry Mr. IRS Auditor, we can't access any historical records from 4 years ago." A migration away from Microsoft products is a monumental task that can't happen in a short period of time. I've been involved in a few projects going the other direction, Solaris to Windows, MVS to Windows and MCP to Windows. The obstacles are the same as going from Windows to < enter operating system name here >. The bottom line is that the software used is inconsequential compared to the process of migration. The migration process itself is the mountain that must be moved.
I am currently migrating my own home domain from a Windows 2003 Server domain running IIS (web, ftp), Exchange Server, Office Server, SQL Server, DNS, ... to a *nix environment. That is a huge project not counting converting thousands of MS Office files to older formats so they are compatible with *nix office products, if at all. In the end I may not convert the clients to *nix because of the loss of functionality. Instead I'll end up moving applications from the servers to the clients.
|