| SCO Evangelist John Terpstra on Windows Pains |
by Malcolm Dean (October 14, 2002)
DesktopLinux.com contributing editor Malcolm Dean interviews SCO evangelist John Terpstra about the reality of migrating companies to Linux desktop products from Windows 'Back Office' . . .
SCO Evangelist John Terpstra on Windows Pains
by Malcolm Dean
John Terpstra's business card simply says, 'Evangelist', which is rather like describing Mark Twain as a novelist. It gives you no sense of the wit, wisdom, and extent of the contribution. Terpstra is a co-founder of the
Samba project, an Open Source/Free Software suite that provides seamless file and print services to SMB/CIFS (read Windows) clients. After a soured relationship with TurboLinux, Terpstra joined Caldera/SCO, where he now concentrates on community development.
DesktopLinux: In August, you gave a seminar at GeoForum on using SCO products to replace Microsoft Back Office.
John Terpstra: Back Office is the branding that Microsoft put behind the branch office and departmental office back-end server, what some today call the edge server. It's not a desktop initiative. Obviously, we're very interested in seeing Microsoft Windows being replaced by Linux throughout. The key thing that drives the desktop is the availability of core applications, and if we want to replace the desktop OS, then we need to have those core applications available in the replacement.
Our workshop is focused on deploying our Caldera OpenLinux Server 3.11 to replace Microsoft Back Office 2000 at the edge of the network. We've put together a CD that everyone receives which contains additional software for both Linux and the Microsoft desktop.
DL: And OpenServer will become the UnitedLinux OS when it is released.
Terpstra: I contributed to the specification for UnitedLinux 1.0. It will have everything in it which is missing from OpenLinux 3.11 that's needed to successfully position UnitedLinux-based products as an alternative to Microsoft Back Office.
Understand that Back Office is a generic term. In reality, we are talking about Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2000 Advanced Server, the layered applications that sit on top of that, Proxy Server, Exchange, SQL Server. Those are the key functional components that drive Back Office. Of course, Microsoft overloads that with a superset of functionality. It's a very rich environment. If we attempted to deliver everything that Microsoft does, then we would be delivering Microsoft Back Office 2000 in one guise or another.
What we want to focus on is delivering the 80% functionality that counts most today in the small to medium business (SMB) marketplace.
DL: What are those key functions?
Terpstra: File and Print serving, Web and FTP proxy, Firewalling, VPN technology, Electronic Mail (in Volution Messaging Server), and back-end SQL serving data for Microsoft Access and Microsoft Excel applications. We're also providing copies of OpenOffice for Windows and Linux, Mozilla for Windows and Linux, VNC for remote management, Ethereal (network diagnostic tools such as Ethereal.
It may be inflamatory of me to say so, but some of these tools run better on Windows than they do on Linux. And when people see these Open Source tools running on Windows and compare them with the tools that are available on Windows, they see a natural superiority in terms of functionality.
I use OpenOffice all the time, so I'm familiar with its weaknesses and strengths. I've seen dedicated Microsoft Office sites migrate to OpenOffice, and it had nothing to do with price. You know, every time the Open Source community jump on their bandwagon about price, they miss the boat and they leave the corporate community behind. The game has nothing to do with price. We have to win this debate not over price but over how we help the customer to solve his business problem.
There's an accounting practice in San Francisco that had a network that was running perfectly, from their perspective. They had Windows 98 and Windows 95 on various machines. They were running Office 97. They were perfectly happy with their environment, until one machine crashed. The hard drive failed. The new hard drive wouldn't run on the old motherboard, so the machine was replaced. The replacement came with Windows XP. The local dealer who was asked to install that tried to install Office 97, but he didn't install the necessary updates, didn't do everything right. Bottom line, the accountants went to open some recent documents, and they were not formatted the same way. They were all jumbled up.
So the Microsoft dealer told them they would have to upgrade everything to Windows XP and Office XP. That meant upgrading half the PCs, for which there was no budget. Now you can say they were very foolish. They should have budgeted for that upgrade. But at the end of the day, they were happy with what they were running before one machine broke. Why should they upgrade? It wasn't broken, so why fix it? Now, because one thing broke, they were faced with many thousands of dollars of expenditure they had not budgeted for.
The head of that company complained to me, and I asked him if he'd looked at alternatives. He said, what alternatives? We've got to use Microsoft Word. So I installed OpenOffice on his PC, and he asked his secretary to take a look. She said she couldn't tell the difference. It looked like Word to her. So at that point, he agreed to have her use it for a few days. After an hour or two of familiarizing herself, there were no complaints. A week later, he took Microsoft Office off every PC and loaded OpenOffice, on Windows. When I smiled, he said, "Shut up. I'm not going to Linux." And I responded, "Yet."
He realized he'd already become committed to an alternative that solved his business needs. This was not about price, in the end. Price was an aggravation, but now he'd found something that he felt was superior. And he wanted to move forward. Now he wants to take that first step.
I believe that if we want to capture the desktop, then we need to have just that compelling an argument. Not just for your basic desktop technology, but we also need to add to that a compelling argument for the standard applications that people use, like
Mind Your Own Business and Quickbooks, that customers seem terribly locked into.
The time is not yet ripe to push the Linux desktop, but it is getting much closer. I believe the thin edge of the wedge today is the edge of the network. Because it is at the edge of the network that Linux and FreeBSD have started to take a foothold. Microsoft has given the world an incredible gift in changing their licensing policy. That's a great catalyst making companies consider alternatives. It's that increased willingness to consider alternatives at a time when the technology is ripening which is bringing a very fortunate set of circumstances together.
DL: Does your package include migration tools?
Terpstra: The way I prefer to look at this is that Microsft has an installed base of back-end technology over 60% of which it no longer supports, or that is close to no longer being supported. Those are customers who are going to look for alternatives. Those are our opportunities. Customers who recently committed to Windows 2000 are not about to reverse that decision. So, therefore, rather than focusing on a take-out strategy, we are far better off focusing on complementing and providing seamless interoperability.
What we've discovered with SAMBA, for file and print purposes, is that where people had to frequently reboot and suffer outages of their Microsoft-based file and print server, SAMBA goes in, and they never hear about it again. It just keeps going and going. In the end, that's its own compelling argument for change. When someone has had a pleasant experience like that, having to make certain compromises in changing OS is no longer an insurmountable obstacle. But if SCO comes in, and tries to make it an either-or proposition, we'll get a lot of resistance. Our best strategy is softly, softly. Here, Mr. Customer, here's our puppy dog. Wouldn't you like to take our puppy dog home with you?
With OpenLinux 3.11, the additional software, the documentation, and training materials we're distributing are helping our channel partners gear up, get them in the groove, so that when UnitedLinux hits the streets with all the good stuff nicely GUI-ized the way people expect it to be, then we'll have traction. We're treating this as a period in which we want to get buy-in from the channel.
DL: There are now some consulting opportunities arising for people interested in taking the Volution products and replacing Exchange, for example.
Terpstra: Absolutely. We're making these extra technologies and the know-how available free of charge. We're saying, here it is, taste our honey, and let's go with it.
DL: Will there be a tour, or will this be available on the Web?
Terpstra: You have a way of asking questions that probe into the heart of the matter. I'm hopeful that, with the release of UnitedLinux, we will have exactly that sort of support program in place. Between now and then, we'll be very selective in where and how we'll engage, but we want to hear from our channel partners. It makes no sense for us to tell them how to move forward. We have to give them what they need to make it a natural decision to run with us.
Our announcements are all geared around letting the partners know that we've heard their moans, we've felt the pain, we've certainly seen the consequences of some bad decisions, and some good decisions in the past, and we want to make it better. I'm convinced that there is a huge, hidden demand to replace Back Office.
Copyright © 2002 by Malcolm Dean. Reproduced by DesktopLinux.com with permission.
About the author: Contributing Editor Malcolm Dean is a writer and IT strategist based in Los Angeles.
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